First Impression - TZ150N from PortableOne with P1 Optimized

Hi fellas:

I just got my TZ150N from PortableOne today. I highly recommend you to buy your TZ's from PortableOne; Ivan is very patient and supportive with my order.

My first impressions:
1. Vista is not as slow as I expected even in battery with Aero. It is pretty much as fast as XP. I think, the 2 gb of RAM is a big factor in this.
2. A lot to configure, mostly disabling unnecessary services, annoying Windows Defender, Security Center, etc.
3. Great battery life! Without wi-fi, I can easily get 6 - 7 hours.
4. Great screen! Brilliant contrast and backlight
5. I don't think I will downgrade to XP.

By the way, does anybody know a good firewall for Vista? I use Sygate Personal Firewall, which is one brilliant program. However, I can't find a good one for Vista, and I did a lot of google search on this one.

Thanks

 

Congrats to you on your TZ150N, JLagoon!

As you know, I got mine today too from P1, guess same as yours; 2GB RAM, P1 Optimized Vista....

Beautiful lil' lappy!!!

As you say, Vista so far is not too bad, so not sure that I'll downgrade to XPP after all, but will wait a few days to decide....

As you say, Ivan/Portable One was great to deal with....

Happy camper right now...

As for firewall, not sure about that...will report back if I find something....

Now, if someone would buy my Toshiba Portege 3490CT (thin & light...) I'd be all set....

 

no offence to p1, but it's really sad to think that we need to pay someone else extra cost to get the craps off our brand new vaio ...

 

FWIW, lua, you don't pay P1 extra for their optimized OS if you're buying a laptop....

 

congrats to fellow tz owners its a awesome laptop but even with my 2gigs i prefer xp

 

thanks. that's good to know.

 

You prefer XP because of better performance or ???

 

how is the 1.06ghz processor guys? even though its a core 2 dual, i imagine that its really slow. why can't there be a configuration where u can choose what processor to install in.

 

Personally I have been very happy with the PC Tools Firewall. just type 'firewall' into the search bar on download.com. By default it is set to block internet access. just tell it to allow access when opening your browser. And its free.

I match it to Avast anti-virus which uses very little resources. Doesn't kill battery life like Norton does. And also free.

 

the 1.06 is not slow at all and also i use xp because vista is a resource hog and xpp is less taxing on the computer. When my system boots up I am only using 250mb of ram

 

Interestingly, I have about 100 mb more with Vista in comparison to my Dell D620 with XP pro. I use FreeRam XP Pro to monitor and optimize my RAM. Thankfully, it work with Vista--after ironing out some stuff as Windows Defender.

Thanks for the recomendation for the firewall Jurisprudence; I like the PC Tools firewall.

 

Well, there are 2 ways...maybe not quite what you want....

A) Go to Conics.net and configure TZ the way you want, but it is Japanese market version....but can get it in English...

B) Get the other TZ that has 1.2GHz processor, but more quite a bit more $'s...

 

its not a big diffrence from the 1.06 to the 1.2 in terms of preformance my brother has the tz90 and i have the tz150 and I don't notice any diffrence when using his notebook

 

only real diffrence is the ssd he has compared to my slow 4200 rpm hdd

 

Is it worth getting the 32 or 48 ssd as in the 190 or 195? Is there much difference between these two? I am seriously considering the tz or ordering the g2 from conics.

 

just noticed that PortableOne now offers xp pro for $29 and 48hrs......

i assume all drivers etc....sounds good.

 

Does anyone have an XP Pro conversion from Portable One on their TZ? Would be great to hear some first hand feedback on how well it works, whether it is sorted out nicely (e.g. all fn keys supported, etc.), etc?

 

There's 16GB difference between the 190 or 195....just depends upon your storage needs....

As for TZ versus G2, that depends upon screen form factor you prefer....

 

Well, you're going to find out pretty soon, I'm going to order both the Vista and XP Pro disks from Ivan and test them on my new TZ. Report by weekend.

 

Cool, thanks -- look forward to hearing your results! Also wonder if the AV mode will be supported...

 

Well early SZ reviewers said that "Battery Care" and "WinDVD" were missing from the installs, so i quick installation of any missing drivers or utilities would be a piece of cake compared to going through the laborious process of installing all the drivers and utilities one by one.

 

Hey Ubercool
Once u get your xp disk and downgrade ur vista tz to xp window. could u write a review about it? I'm going to downgrade too but im like a week behind, still lining up the transactions and etc to get my tz and to order xp disk from P1.

 

You'll beat me to it, my new TZ198 is not due in until Nov. 12 at worst. I'm sure you'll be the first to report on this, so I'll follow in your well-trodden footsteps.

 

wow the 98, thats like 4 grand man. u a doctor? lol
anywho, im still wondering if the tz90 with 32ssd will have like 10minute bootup cuz of all the bloatware. i wonder if the P1 recovery disk for vista is as simple as insert the disk and let it take over from there.

 

No, I'm a peon. Iberia is paying for this one, they spilled wine all over my brand-new TZ earlier this month.

The SSD will give you sub-one-minute boot-ups, so enjoy. I'm sure that the disks were created with an installer script, so all you is double-click and follow the bouncing ball. But we should get Ivan to report on this. He's in this forum occassionally, I'll ping him and get him to give us the scoop.

 

damn, under 1minute to boot up. thats fast. i just finished getting rid of everything i dont need on my sz and i thought it booted up pretty fast after that.