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    Sony N-150 brief review

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by imrichard, Jan 12, 2007.

  1. imrichard

    imrichard Notebook Guru

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    Few things on that new white baby N-150 in our houshold...

    Size:
    Being a SZ premium user for almost a year I'm a little bit spoiled, but N is a big and heavy laptop. It feels massive compared to similar screen sized 15" powerbook g4. It "feels" however much less fragile than the tiny SZ.

    Screen:
    Very nice, not much light bleeding around, a bit worse from top angle than SZ premium though.

    Keyboard:
    Feels much better than SZ keyboard, which felt a little be unussual when it arrived last year. No space bar problem.

    Fan:
    The thing is significantly quieter than SZ. I can hardly hear any noise from the N.

    Battery:
    Will test later, but I'm not expecting anything more than 3hrs.

    Install:
    I did very same semi-clean install described elswhere here, to get rid of hidden partition, norton and other bloatware. The minor difference to the procedure decribed by BlackG35 was when booting back to win for the first time you won't find "Alaunch Combo" in startup. So when "System preparation tool" pops up you have to very quickly tick "Don't regenerate security identifiers" option and press reseal. Otherwise installer pops up asking you to insert DVD 1 and you are screwed.

    As discussed here, 2 USB ports are located on the right side close to user's right hand so any USB stick and mouse work are pain!!! What a stupid design er flaw. No bluetooth and no mic makes thing even worse unless you are left handed. Expresscard 34 slot seems to be pretty useless. I wasn't able to find any BT adapter for the 34 slot, which would solve the whole problem.

    Overall, for the $950 it is a very nice home laptop. Just wish it has BT and it's a deal.
     
    imrichard, Jan 12, 2007
    #1
  2. Andrew Baxter

    Andrew Baxter -

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    I agree the price is pretty decent for this Sony. The two usb ports is very weak for the size. There's way too much bloatware installed as well. I actually did achieve 3 hours with the N130, not as bad as I thought.

    thanks for the short review!
     
    Andrew Baxter, Jan 12, 2007
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  3. imrichard

    imrichard Notebook Guru

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    3 hrs is pretty ok for that screen size!
    btw i've just found this:
    http://www.newtonperipherals.com/Mogo_Products.htm

    mogo dapter looks nice but it's $50. they also sell that weird looking mouse for express card 54. maybe they will make a 34 version in future too...
     
    imrichard, Jan 12, 2007
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  4. imrichard

    imrichard Notebook Guru

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    try semi-clean install. almost all that bloatware like AOL and Norton is on DVD2. doing semi-clean you don't even need the 2nd DVD. the only thing i had to uninstall manually after semi-clean was napster.
     
    imrichard, Jan 12, 2007
    #4