VAIO TT performance

Does anyone out there own a VAIO TT? I frequently work with relatively graphics-intensive PowerPoint presentations and I wonder if anybody knows how the TT290 performs with graphics-related tasks. Thanks!

 

That's tricky to assess because "graphics-intensive" could mean a lot of things. It'd be easier if you had a specific sample PPT we could try.

I think you'd probably be fine with a TT, but then again I don't know exactly what kind of graphics you're doing.

 

I guess I was a bit vague... sorry. By "graphics-intensive" I mean creating diagrams and graphics, cropping, adjusting colors in photos, and then inserting them into PowerPoint presentations, creating animations in the slides and finally, presenting the presentations. I don't use PhotoShop or any heavy-duty graphics program. Hope this information helps - thanks.

 

I think you'll be fine -- obviously the best thing to do would to go to a Sony store, if you can, & stick in a USB key with a PPT on it to see wht it's like for yourself -- but sounds like you're not doing anythng too crazy. I just opened up a presentation that's heavy on graphics, ie slides with 20 gifs/jpgs on them, and it doesn't feel slow at all.

3D graphics is where the TT might fall short, depending on what you're doing, but it sounds like you're talking 2D.

 

That's great feedback, thanks. I assume you have a TT290, right? If yes, what's your opinion of it? And what OS are you running on it?

 

I have a TT180C (same thing, 1.2ghz CPu instead of 1.4ghz) with a 160gb 5400rpm hard drive (no SSD).

You should check out the TT thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=344005&page=89

but basically, I've been very happy with it. Great build quality, runs relatively cool & silent. I can carry it around everywhere & not have to think twice about the weight or abour how much battery life I have left. I've adjusted easily to the keyboard & screen, and find them both comfortable now (though I do hold it closer to my face than I did with my last laptop).

I'm running Vista Business 32-bit, I've barely done any tweaking to it and it's generally pretty quick & responsive. I hook it up to the dock & it runs my 24" 1920x1200 screen well enough that I'm reconsidering my need for a desktop. I think anyone would be happy with this machine for web browsing & office productivity stuff.

Two caveats:
- the only thing that seems to slow this machine down from time to time is disk activity (not often, but sometimes, the disk is tied up doing some Vista-related crap and the TT feels sluggish for a couple of seconds), so if you can afford the SSD I think it'd be money well spent (I plan on upgrading to one down the line)
- I don't do anything super-demanding -- haven't tried photoshop, haven't tried games, haven't run any vmware virtual machines, etc., so I can't speak to that. For MS Office, web browsing, reading PDFs, playing AVIs, it's been great.

 

I tested my TT with GIMP (a graphic program) against my 3.0 GHz single core desktop. TT is a bit slower in certain operations but not noticable. Post processing photos is almost the same as my desktop. These are my real world observations.

 

Thanks for your response, you gave me exactly the information I wanted. It seems that the TT will work for me so now it's final decision time.

 

Thanks T-Man, this what I needed to hear.