SZ battery life // TZ performance

OK so I'm deciding between these 2 laptops and I can't make sense out of all the contradictory information, so I'm asking you guys for your comments since these are the main respective drawbacks of the 2:

> For the SZ7 owners (or informed people ), could you post how long does your standard battery last (if possible with wi-fi on and reduced brightness)? For those of you who have the extended battery how much can you get?
(That would be great if you could describe your SZ specs, OS, HD, processor, RAM...)

> For the TZ2 owners/those in the know, have you noticed any difficulties running these apps:
- PowerPoint / heavy Excel spreadsheets (and Office in general)
- DVD watching
- Photoshop
(And again could you precise your TZ specs?)


Thanks A WHOLE BUNCH!

CR

 

TZ195 owner here (2GB RAM, SSD). No problems whatsoever running any of those apps.

 

I have a Vaio TZ150. 2 GB RAM, 100 GB HDD, and 1.06 GHz processor.

I have absolutely no problems with Microsoft Office, DVDs, or Photoshop. I regularly use Adobe Photoshop CS3 for graphic design, and it works smoothly, quickly, and perfectly on my TZ. No problems at all.

Watching DVDs is a PLEASURE on my TZ. The screen is so bright and sharp. Movies look absolutely gorgeous.

I'm a university student, and I use Word and Excel ALL of the time. This is why I purchased a TZ. It's small and light, which is perfect since I'm constantly on the go, and I can take out my TZ and start working in Word and Excel right away, wherever I am.

 

Thanks for your answers. Looks like the TZ's not so sluggish after all.
Do you both run Vista or did you stick to XP? (Gazelle, I'm a student as well, reason why I'm looking into these 2 laptops)

 

The TZ is not that sluggish with 2GB or more of RAM if you're running Vista. The HDD is its weak point though. Once your app is loaded into RAM its fast.

 

I'm using Windows Vista Business.

As long as you perform at least a semi-clean installation on the TZ, and have 2 GB of RAM, the TZ runs great. It's even faster with the solid state drive. However, I'm using a hard disc drive and the TZ is still very zippy, and can handle everything that I need to do - opening multiple web browsers, Microsoft office, Adobe Photoshop CS3, DVDs, etc.

 

Agreed. I'm running Vista and Office, and being in finance I do a lot of Excel and Word work, occasionally some Powerpoint presentations. Once I scraped off some of the bloatware, Vista was more than sufficient, especially with 2GB RAM. I plan to upgrade to an SSD once they dip in price, but only because I like my cars and computers fast and light as possible.

 

i own an sz, i get about 3 hours and maybe 30 min with brightness in the 3rd level, wifi on and running some word processing. In stamina mode however, i get to about 4 hrs and 50 min or close to 5 hours. However i own an sz680 with a merom processor (t7500) so with penryn you'll probably get more battery. hope that helps.

sz6, t7500, 2gb ram, 200gb 7200 rpm, vista business

 

Hm..nobody actually replied to the quesiton about the real life battery time?

 

what i posted is real life battery life time. I go to school with this and it lasts that long. im on the internet with brightness set to 3 and typing down notes and things like that. seems pretty realistic to me.

 

sorry ricardo, seems like i did not reload page to see your post.

now we have to wait for TZ real life battery life and we have all data

 

Thank you all. Please feel free to continue to add your comments! The more the better.

ricardo, this is exactly what I'm going to use the laptop for, long hours of note-taking w/ wireless on (if allowed by battery life).
Is the duration you get on stamina mode still with wi-fi on and the same battery? Pretty good.

Also, by how much do you think the Penryn processor will improve battery life?

 

yeah, I use the same settings with stamina mode and get about 4:30 to 5 hours (using power saver as well, which doesnt affect my performance at all either way). as for penryn, im not too sure on that one, i guess you could get 30 min or more? thats just an assumption.

 

hey ricardo, noticed you have 7200rpm HDD installed? i guess you did that on your own, since I dont think there are any models with 7200rpm by default?

Anyhow..do you perhaps know how much more battery life would it be there with the 5400 or 4200 HDD?

 

I think you'll get a little more with 4200 hdd than the 5400, I cant be very specific but i dont think its a significant amount. The 4200 is a little slow in my opinion anyway. and to sacrifice performance over a very small amount of increased battery life, its not worth it in my opinion.

 

Humm, billy, I think ricardo has an SZ, which now offers a 200GB 7200rpm hard drive option.

 

Penryn is supposed to slightly increase battery life. This has appeared to be the case with some notebooks but based on what i have read this has not appeared to be the case for the SZ7 models. In fact Sony give the premium SZ6 models an estimated up to 6 hours of battery life in stamina mode and they give the SZ7 models up to 5 hours 30 minutes battery life.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=225794

 

ohh there, thanks for clarifying, didnt know that haha.

 

Thanks for the link... So apparently the SZ6 lasts longer than the SZ7, which is quite surprising. I going to bump that thread up because that troubles me a lot.

 

Really, the SZ has this battery life? 5 hours is what I took with the TZ with the standard battery...So in stamina mode the battery of the SZ is equal of the TZ?

 

I can easily get 6 hours of battery life with my Vaio TZ150. Sony's estimates for the battery life was about 7.5 hours, which cannot be done unless you turn on your TZ and do nothing with it.