Sony VAIO VGN-TZ210E/P

Customer Reviews:

excellent computer [Posted on 2008-05-30]
very compact and stylish, i carry it everywhere. high performance, bright screen, very reliable, quiet. it is my main computer right now; i have no complaint.

Powerful mobile workhose [Posted on 2008-06-06]
This is the ideal ultraportable with full range features and strong performance. The TZ is my third Sony ultraportable spanning 6 years (TR, TX, and now TZ) and by far the best that Sony has produced to date. After a deplorable experience with my TX series machine that was an absolute lemon, I researched my options and concluded that the only complete ultraportable on the market that had all I wanted was to go back to Sony.

Due to concerns about performance under the Vista OS, I made sure to get the 7700 processor (best one offered) and 2 GB RAM with the largest HDD offered. The machine runs Office 2007 with ease and performs very well for my use as a consultant. The keyboard is quite comfortable but keep in mind I am a long time user of smaller keyboards. Touch pad and fingerprint sensor are good size and placed smartly. The screen is as crisp as any notebook I have seen. Despite feeling a bit too thin when opening the laptop, it has held up well so far with a bit of extra care. Battery life is phenomenal -- I can go nearly all day on mid-range brightness and closing the lid when I am not using it.

The WWAN via Sprint works perfectly as does the standard 802.11 wireless. Be advised that Sony and Sprint have made use of wireless much harder than needed as you cannot have WWAN and 802.11 sessions active at the same time. So, you cannot use the Sprint WWAN for internet and a wireless network to connect to peripherals (print, scan, mass storage). I am sure there is a way around this though have not had time to study it.

Finally, I love Amazon and nearly always find the best prices here, but they missed the boat on these machines. Sony offers a custom built version of this machine (the TZ270) for $300 less and it is an even bigger savings on the flash memory machines. If only someone at Amazon paid attention and adjusted pricing, they might have got my business too.

A great computer, but only after a day of bloatware removal [Posted on 2008-06-13]
It's a masterpiece, working as fast as any laptop with a twice-as-fast processor. But that is after a day I spent removing the bloatwares which had taken me almost a day before to identify. It would be nice if Sony spares its consumers this waste of time. However, I don't think this should affect the rating of the laptop itself. I would recommend it to anybody who needs a computing travel mate.

A laptop for travellers and pilots [Posted on 2008-06-23]
The Sony Vaio VGN-TZ295N/XC is light and compact. I keep all my flight-planning software as well as aviation charts on it for VFR and IFR flight and they're readily available in flight. The std battery lasts several hours if the display brightness is turned down. The keyboard is finicky and I'd prefer a pointing stick to the touchpad, but the unit is otherwise very well-made and capable. Good wireless capability, useful I/Os. I would have liked a higher output resolution capability but it is adequate. The supplied optical drive is bulky, so it's a good thing that it's external only. I would have liked a CF card socket to complement the SD slot but it's a Sony and they had to add the memory stick slot. I would recommend it, but it is quite expensive, unfortunately. Besides aviation, it is useful for editing my Nikon D300 DSLR RAW files on the road, as the LED-lit display is very good, even though the resolution is not very high for this purpose. I've had it less than a month and have not yet tried out the Sprint wireless or the video-conferencing capability. It would have been nice to have had a choice of high-speed wireless network providers.

I got frustrated at the beginning, but love it now! [Posted on 2008-07-18]
I bought this TZ250N/P from Amazon on April 3rd, when the price was $2099. I don't need to comment on how stylish this laptop is, because sony TZ is famous for its good looking. The first time I turned on the computer, I felt like my nightmare began. I spent $2099, but it ran so slowly... Even simply surfing the web made this laptop really hot. Obviously, the Windows Vista with so many Sony's "junk" softwares overwhelmed this computer. Since a recovery disc with Window XP service pack 2 came with this order, I decided to downgrade this laptop from Vista to XP.

I tried to burn a Vista recovery disc before downgrading the OS from Vista to XP. However, an error message poped out and prevented me burning a recovery disc. I downgraded to XP anyway and felt much more happy with it since it ran much faster! I used my laptop in XP environment for 3 months and was happy with it.

However, this is not the end of the story. I was happy, but not satisfied with the XP environment. Somehow, the bluetooth has no driver in XP. Also, the performance of this laptop was ok in XP, but not as fast as I expected. My previous lap top was IBM 41 and I felt they have similar performance. This is not good news because TZ250N/P is definitely better equipped than IBM 41X.

Therefore, I went to Sonystyle store to ask them whether I can upgrade my laptop to Vista again. They told me that since I didn't burn a recovery disc before downgrading to XP, I have to call Sony and order a Vista recovery disc. Fortunately, the Sony factory Vista recovery disc including tax and shipping fee is only about $40. Therefore, I ordered one.

I am so glad that I ordered this Vista recovery disc from Sony! With this recovery disc, I can choose not to install all the junk Sony softwares!! Therefore, I don't need to spend time uninstalling these problematic softwares. Moreover, I can use the recovery disk to do partition before installing the Vista OS. Therefore, I can save all my data in partition D, and the OS in partition C. The advantage is that in the future, I can simply restore my OS without affeting my data on partition D.

Now, I am so satisfied with my computer. After installing necessary softwares (such as MS office and Norton Internet Security), I can use the system back up (Vista Home and Vista Home Premium do not have this function. That's why I like Vista Business) to back up all the conditions in my disc C. In the future, if my laptop got sick again, I can simply restore the disc C back to the perfect condition again!

My laptop is very stable now. Obviously, it works pretty well even in the Vista OS, as long as the sony junk softwares are not installed. I love the keyboard, love the look, love the speed, and the battery life now. It IS much better than my IBM X41 now. Althought I spend extra fortish dollars for the Vista recovery disc, I think it worth it! It makes the performance of my laptop so much better!

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