Help persuade me to buy a sony!

i'm choosing between the sony fz and the apple macbook pro and i'm completely torn...

so these are my priorities:

1. i'm a writer who stares at text all day, so i'm looking for the best contrast screen and the sony fz hi-color xbrite screen wins hands down. even better than the mbp glossy, which is good, but seems to have a lot more glare.

2. i like to work with the laptop on my lap, so i'm worried about both computers being too hot for that. also, the mbp definitely beats out the sony with respect to battery life, it seems.

other points: i'm worried about sony customer service if i have a problem. i don't care about using vista vs. os x since i'm just doing basic stuff. and i'm also not considering the sz model (despite better battery life) because i can't stand the keyboard. the fz keyboard is so much better, imho.

please help me decide!

 

I've owned two Sony laptops, and my dad owned one as well. All of them were perfectly comfortable to use on your lap in terms of heat. My Vaio CR is the hottest of the three, and it's in my lap right now.
I think the MacBook runs cool enough as well, but I've heard that the MacBook Pro runs hot--really hot. This is, of course, a model specific question. It may have gotten better.

 

it seems like a trade off...the sony likely runs a lot cooler, but only has 1-2 hours of battery life...whereas the mbp is wayyy hotter but lasts 4 hours. ugh. what a decision to make.

 

get a tz191!hahaha i keep telling everyone that.. i dont know. i just love it so much its insane. and you can work with it on your lap all day. why?

1.- not hot (ssd drive not hot)
2.- weighs less than 3 pounds.
3.- happiness

 

and over twice the price of the FZ (non BD model).

 

It sounds like your main concern is the heat. So I can tell you the FZ is not that hot and I work with mine on my lap all the time. If you're just doing basic stuff, then you can use the power saver profile to turn the CPU clock down, which will both reduce heat and increase battery life.

I've customized the power profiles so that power saver still allows maximum screen brightness, and use it that way a lot. The T7700 is so fast that I don't even notice the lower clock speed unless I'm doing something heavy duty like encoding video.

As for your other concern, yes Sony customer service and tech support both suck. Sorry, it just comes with the package.

 

LoL Rick...thanks for the useful advice. that's exactly what i'm looking to know.

but one further question...does the lack of battery life bother you? it sounds like the fz with the gpu option gets only 1-2 hours of battery life. how much battery life you do get with the T7700 processor?

 

I'm not the best person to ask, since mine is plugged in most of the time. I guess it gets around 2 hours, but honestly I've never paid that much attention.

 

I'd consider buying the onsite service because it's much quicker than sending the laptop in for repair.

I'd also consider purchasing it from someone like Portable One who will remove the bloatware from the hard drive. Sony Vista laptops from the factory are almost unusable once they load all their garbage on it. There are dozens of posts here complaining about it.

 

Which MBP are you considering buying? I heard the top of the line MBP runs Vista faster than any other notebook on the market right now.

 

really? how much faster? if i were to consider the 2.4ghz mbp, the boot time would be much less?

 

macbook pro can last 4 hours? how? my friend has one, it can only last 2 hours...

sorry, can't be helped, I'm a SZ fan...

 

the consensus from what i've read in the apple section is 3.5-4.5 hrs.