How happy are you with your Sony SZ?

yea, i'm also quite surprised on how 'cool' the laptop is running o_o

since pretty much everyone complained about heat problems on the previous S models

but this one has no heat problems at all o_o

and Matsuto, it really depends on your needs/wants
I'm in the exact situation as you (student, hopefully going to uni next year)
i really don't like my desktop (4 years old i think)
but i've been waiting cos i couldn't decide on what laptop i want (i want to choose one that fits perfectly with my wants/needs, since i AM gonna use it for quite some time...)

i wanted one that is light, quite powerful and hopefully a considerably good batterylife
and SZ = fits all my requirements
[i do some gaming... and photoshop + illustrator as a hobby.. quite often]

yes, the price is quite expensive... but since i'm at least using it for 3~5 years, i personally think it's worth it

 

Thank you very much for your time! I'm going to buy the SOny without a doubt now.

Thanks again

Darren

 

yeah I'm also at uni and I always use my computer a lot and I ask a lot from my computers so I like to have much power.. SInce I have to bike 8 kilometers, arround 12 miles I think, every day I want a very light computer that is easy to transport! actually I know there is only this laptop that fits my need and I hope to use it also for 3 to 5 years but it is still scary to spend that much money! lol

 

Anyone having problems with the small screensize ?
I mean..... i am meaning to buy the SZ but the 13.3 inch seems rather small, compared to the 15" screen of the FE series

Does the small size bother anyone ?

Why can't sony just launch the specs/looks of the SZ but with 17" screen

 

haha, johnNL, you make a strange point. The most appealing aspect of the SZ to me is its weight. If you make it 17" it's gonna weigh a lot more. A lot of ultraportables are 12" and weigh very little but perform badly. The SZ's 13.3" screen, perfromance and weight seem like a good balance. There is NO alternative from what i've seen

 

i know, its a bit weird to want an ultraportable but have desktop-replacer features

Its just that i have a feeling that 13.3 is a bit too small to work on it for 8+ hours a day. I guess the SZ is not made for that kind of job in the first place.
or i could just buy a cheap 20" knockoff eizo monitor and use that as a desktop filler

 

Well, having use a Sony U70 (5"), JVC 741 (8.9" WXGA), and the Sharp 13.3", I can tell you 13.3" is a great size screen in terms of size vs. portability and power. The TX screen is nice - no question there - but depending on the resolution you use, it can be tiny. 13.3 is NOT a small screen.

 

when is there going to be a review of the SZ? It seems like there are so many owners, but there's not one review yet. Loads of people say it's great but a nice balanced review would be very helpful in getting my expectations right!

 

yep that's true please make us a good review pelase!

 

I agree....lets get a nice thorough review!!!!

 

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?head=36&page=5850

Hey, not sure if you guys had seen this, it was originally posted over at NF. This is the review that made me start to reconsider my bias against Sony.
It seems fairly balanced and objective. I'm really lusting after an SZ now!
Still, I would love to see a user here in the forums write their own review!


...With Pics!

 

Nice thank you!

 

great link! makes me love my machine even more!!! I especially like the comparisons of the integrated vs. nvidia chips....

But as ramrod says in the next post...I am perturbed at the flaws....which is why I voted "it could be better"....

Of course I want it to be the perfect machine...it's my baby!!!

 

I've had my sz160 for over a week and I love it. However, no laptop is perfect and so there's minor flaws if you had to be picky.

1. battery life is not as advertised. I'd say max 3.5hrs. battery is loose also.
2. No finger control for volume
3. slight screen leakage

 

So this battery life is with the Intel GPU, dimmed brightness, light CPU tasks, etc.? That's not terrible, but still, it's advertised as so high! What exactly is the deal with the USB? I heard murmurs of something related to the USB in this lappy being the cause of a lowered battery life. Has anyone tried the larger capacity battery in their SZ? What is it, a 6-cell stock, and then the extended life is an 8-cell?

 

If we all get together and bug CNet I would imagine they would move quicker to get a review posted. Someone needs to find an email address at CNet for the editors and we can make our voices heard that we want to see a review asap.

 

i have been visitng www.trustedreviews.com for a long time its a great sight with always up to date reviews on the latest comp hardware. and best of all its pretty un biased.

Cnet i dunno however their reviews never seem to satisfy me....

 

thanks swatkins. And Trusted Reviews are British too! Perfect for me, heh heh

 

That is exactly the way that I see it. Under 2kg I don't know of anything that compares on paper spec alone.
If only they could fit a slightly better graphic card into the package. Perhaps that is not really possible in an ultraportable under 2kg. Still, they have gone up from the 6400 in the last series to the 7400 in this and still managed to cut the weight thanks to the new chassis materials. Things have moved in the right direction and this is now nearer to the dream spec that I would design for myself, ahead of any other laptop I have ever seen.

 

Most welcome. I found that review to be extremely helpful, and though I'd like to see more like it (from a forum user please! ), Trusted Reviews presents a balanced perspective on the products they review.

Albany, are you from upstate NY? That's where I grew up! I really haven't seen another notebook with a similar form factor and weight that has a better GPU than this one. Designing and buying a lappy really is a series of compromises between portability and performance. The SZ does an excellent job IMO balancing these factors. Keep in mind, I still haven't been able to really put one to task, guess I'd have to actually shell out for one first!

 

Well, having used my SZ premium for a week now, I can't even go back to my old, cumbersome Dell Inspiron 8200 anymore. This machine is fast, very light and the screen is gorgeous. It's not totally perfect, but what machine is? Niggling problems include the slightly loose battery and the fact that battery life on mine is now only a bit over 4 hours without the USB leak patch. I have gotten used to the keyboard in no time, and overall it's a fantastic machine despite the high price tag. Is it worth it though? Hellz yeah.

 

No, I am from South London in England. My apartment block is called Albany

Never a truer word said, it's a question of compromise at this time. I suppose one day in the not too distant future ultraportable notebooks will be so powerful that they will do any task you ask of their regardless of form factor. But I digress

 

Eh, now I have owned my SZ120P for a week. I have used SZ 120P all day for a week and find it quite satisfied. Because the previous machine was R505EL which is pretty old so this machine is much better than my previous one in many ways, performance and screen etc.

About screen,
Before I bought this, I had thought 13.3 is better than 12 because it's bigger.
But I found the size of machine also gets bigger as the size of screen and make me a little uncomfortable. Well, maybe I should have expected it. I found screen quality has improved so much. I am really surprised that premium version has better screen cuz this is good enough( at least for me I have saw many screens of other brands such as IBM and fujitsu and apple and I think Sony is the best or one of the top two or three.

The one thing I hate about this notebook is
the AC adapter!!
I don't understand why others have never even mentioned about it.
In comparison with adapters from other adapters,
sony's are too big and heavy. It's not sleek and "sonyish" at all.

One more thing that can be improved is
it is hard to connect(or install) the laptop to docking station.
I expected it will go on the docking station with nice easy one click.
but in reality I need to try to find the right place to install moving the laptop in all directions. Maybe I will learn how to do it nicely. But I think this has worsened comparing my previous R505EL.

As always, sony has bad battery life and pre-installed junk programs that I will never gonna use yet still hard to remove because of the slightest hope that I might use it someday.( and still pretty sure that I will never use it.)

 

I came from a 10.4" subnotebook and the jump to 13.3" is quite remarkable... but basically this is the smallest notebook I could find with a regular 2.5" hard disk, Core Duo and accelerated graphics.

At least it (the SZ160) weighs exactly the same as my 10.4" model!

 

Hello,

I have had the SZ1XP (UK Version of the 160) for about a week now. I bought it without seeing one first and am still debating whether or not to keep it.

My biggest annoyance is the DVD drive noise mentioned elsewhere in this forum. (I have also attached an MP3 recording.)
1. TX makes sounds when start up?
2. How to get rid of starting ODD sound? (du didi du)(?)
3. Question on SZ160..

The drive in question is a Matsu****a UJ-832S 9.5mm. Unfortunately I did not find these threads until after I encountered the problem. It simply never occurred to me that a drive would make any other sound than the disc spinning up, the Sony DW-D56A drive in my VAIO A317M has no such issues.

This is certainly something that I will have to check for any future purchases as it completely spoils the otherwise very quite nature of the machine.

 

I clicked the dvd drive beep and it changed my msn messenger message. http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1629&d=1142616136

 

and now messenger doesn't work...

 

Uninstall messenger, and then reinstall it again. (V7.5)

 

ok thanks. I checked add/remove programs and didn't see anything different..

 

messenger7.5 won't uninstall. how do i save the error messages?

 

did you uninstall it first? Should be in the add/remove control panel

 

I hope Sony will release an updated BIOS which allows SZ to run memory at 667. For now, even u have DDR2-667, SZ will run it @533. Other than this, evrything is just fine.

 

Why would they do that? Doesn't any board with Core Duo procs. run at 667 natively?

 

I bought my SZ-160 a week ago and had been quite happy with it so far. However, they make the system fonts very small, about 80% of the real size, making it quite hard on the eyes. I suppose this was done to accommodate the wide screen.

I vaguely recall being able to change system font size on my older Vaio PCG-SR7K notebook that ran on W2K (which died after 6 years of good service), but have not found the right knob to tweek with the XP on this notebook yet. Can someone point me to it?

Thanks,

trazom

 

I am not sure about urs. But my VGN-SZ18GP's tech spec explicitly mentions that SZ's memory bus is 533MHz. And they don't lie, I checked using CPU-Z and voila, the RAM is really running at 533MHz even though my RAM is Corsair DDR2-667. Note: you may have known that cpu's system bus is different from memory bus. Yonah internally and natively works at 667MH, but for SZ, the CPU communicates with the RAM @533MHZ. This is what I meant.

Here is the link: http://vaio-online.sony.com/prod_info/vgn-sz18gp_c/specifications.html

 

Where in CPU Z does it tell you at which speed your RAM is working? I get different numbers in the different tabs so I am not sure which is the correct one. The First Tab, "CPU" tells me Bus Speed of 665 MHz. The "Memory" tab tells me my Frequency is at 266 MHz and the "SPD" tab gives me three different columns, one for 200MHz, one for 266MHz and one for 333MHz....

Oh this is on an FE btw, but I also put in Corsair RAM and was wondering why its not faster.

 

Here is the output under the "Memory" tab. it looks like mine is also running at 533...bummer

Memory
DRAM Type DDR2-SDRAM
DRAM Size 2048 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 266.0 MHz
FSB RAM 5:8
CAS# Latency 4.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 4 clocks
RAS# Precharge 4 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 12 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 Corsair DDR2-SDRAM PC5300 - 1024 MBytes
Module 1 Corsair DDR2-SDRAM PC5300 - 1024 MBytes

 

U r on the right track. Multiply the DRAM Frequency by 2 and u get the RAM speed. Urs is exactly the same as mine on my SZ. I know, what a bummer, right?

We can only hope Sony will release an updated BIOS to allow the RAM running in sync with Yonah's bus @667, or wait for some genius to come out with a Memory Tweaker Utility that allows us to change it manually. I prefer the first option though.

 

That's why I bought 533 RAM...

Javier

 

I did spyware and a NAV and got nothing unusual. Maybe spyware... Messenger just said something about sound how it was changed to that file and it was a zip, that all I know. Afterwards I was like, the poster only had one post so it was possible that it was something bad...

 

It says change/remove, so I get



The feature u are trying to use is on a network resourcre that is unavailable...

Then the path can't be found and then there is no install on messenager.

 

small questions.

How come the Sony site writes that the SZ comes preinstalled with XP Pro, but not with SP2 behind it?
Is there a difference in that?

If you look over to TX series, you see XP Pro with SP2

 

Don't know...but my 160 came with SP2.
I think at this point, SP2 is a given for new XP Pro computers. When the TX series was first released and they composed that text, that may not have been a given at that point in time.

-Mark

 

Ok, I received my SZ1VP yesterday so here are some of my comments:

I'm upgrading from my 7 year old Z505R which according to my brother is getting 'a bit long in the tooth' not that it has any teeth left.

I haven't had time to do battery testing, but it's MUCH better than the 2 mins that my Z505R was getting, so I'm ecstatic for the moment. I'll get to some proper measurements next week. The battery rattles only in the up/down direction, not side to side, so this is easily fixed with some foam. On my version, it's quite snug and even though it does _move_, it doesn't rattle as badly as my 505R.

The things I do like are the weight and form factor and basic hardware specs.

The fan does seem to be a bit louder than I expected, but when I enabled the noise reduction, it _appeared_ to slow down a bit. This was gradual, over a few minutes, not a sharp drop in speed. Overall, it's quiet, but not 'silent'

I don't have an issue with the cover on the ethernet/phone jack, but the port replicator cover on the bottom seems to slide open easily.

Screen bleed is moderately noticeable at the brightest setting, but goes away at 2-3 levels down.

The DVD reader is a frigging PITA. It never stops beeping when there's a disc in there. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but even when I'm not using the drive, if I open Exploder or something, it beeps and spins up the drive. I can handle the beeps when the computer powers on, but beeping when I don't even want to access the drive is annoying. I'm thinking of dismantling it and ripping out the speaker. When the drive spins up, it feels like the computer is going to take off or something. Fortunately, I don't use the drive much. Still, disappointing.

The keyboard is reasonable. There is no flex, and I don't have any problem with the space bar. I _do_ like the fact that pressing 'Fn-up' is still page up (like the 505) since I'm accustomed to that instead of having dedicated page-up/down buttons. The key placement will take some habituation, but it's quite nice. The thing I don't like is the sound it makes. Some keys (Enter and Space) are 'loose' and when you tap them, they rattle a bit before engaging. I don't mind the movement, but the noise sucks. Some people complained that the two bumps on the 'f' and 'j' keys are too small, but they are more than adequate for me. I have sensitive fingers

The palmrests don't tingle at all. My 505 suffers seriously from this problem and it's even worse when my gf is sitting next to me on her Powerbook. If our shoulders touch, it's borderline painful. On the SZ, I don't feel a thing. I realize it depends on the day and the humidity and how sweaty my palms are, but being a new toy, I think I've tested it in the worst case scenario.

The wireless LAN seems very good with my router in terms of signal strength. I don't have any bluetooth accessories though.

Biometric thingy is a neat gadget, but in order to properly swipe my finger, I need to take my hands off the keyboard to position my finger properly to do the swipe. It's usually faster to just type the password.

I have yet to do any serious work on it, we just watched a DIVX on it last night and I installed Riven. As someone mentioned, the audio levels out of the headphone seem to be a bit low.

Overall, the build quality is very good. It doesn't seem to be a very 'rugged' computer, but I'm not about to test those limits. The screen _does_ seem to be extremely solid for being so thin.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. The clean install will have to wait until next week.


Skrunch.

 

I am actually really happy with the design of my SZ120 p/b. OK, the keyboard takes some getting used to, but the overall design is very good. But my real problem is that my 3DMark05 scores were only around 1300. Is there something wrong with my notebook?

 

1300? Can you post your SZ's specs?


Its supposed to be around 1800-2000 with the geforce 7400...

 

maybe u have something running?

 

It is the SZ120 P/B from Circuit City.
CPU: T2400 @ 1.83
1 gb RAM
100 gb Hard Drive
Geforce7400 go

I have no programs running in the background. Also I have checked 3dMark03: 1650

 

What mode do you have the CPU in when you are running 3dmrk05?

If you aren't plugged-in, your system may be falling into power save mode, thus slowing down the CPU and GPU.

If you ARE plugged in, you should check to make sure you don't have any of the power saving features turned on when you are plugged-in.

That is the only think I can think that could be causing your problems. IF you have everything set-up right, you should be seeing at least 1800 in 3dmark05. Overclocked, and with the latest drivers installed, I get better than 2050 in 3dmark05.

 

It is always plugged in and on speed mode. I have disabled every power savings tool and installed all of the new drivers(version 8.3.0.2).