Well after most of the wekend messing witht he machine off and on, I think I am keeping it.
Initially I did not like the way the AC plug plugs in. The connection in the laptop seems kinda week. The paint seems to be kind of cheap and will wear fast I can tell.
Overall these are minor issues. I was initially going for a "light and thin". For the price/specs it was hard to pass this up and get a thing and light that was only 1-2lbs lighters and smaller screen with less power. This 15.4 is really light and thin for its size, only 6.1 lbs and very thin.
The screen is exremely nice and BRIGHT, probably the brightest screen I have ever seen on a laptop. Much brighter then my xps2.
I can not for the life of me get everything to work after fresh installing XP Pro. The fn doesnt work for screen controls and sound. The modem is not known and mass stroage controller devices. I did find a program called Sony Launcher. I instaleld this and it fixed my initial problem of the recover dvd saying unkown language ona fresh load. But even when you choose the sony libraries and device drivers not everything works still.
I figured out a low, down dirty trick. I booted off the restore dvd and did a c drive restore. I let it go all the way till about 80% then it asked for dvd 2. I then just rebooted the machine. At this point i had a feeling it went to dvd 2 just for applications. I was right. It had the OS with all the imprtant sony stuff for functionality and the drivers. So it was essentially a fresh load. At this point I just used my XP Pro Corp disc form work and did an upgrade to make it pro. I hate doing upgrades and prefer fresh installs, but at this point it seems to be working fine.
I am not going ot run 3dmark05 on it, but I tested COD2 on it with all the graphics levels turned down and dx7 initiated and it runs GREAT at 1280x800 in 16:10 WS aspect. So i could honestly say this machine is a great low end all around machine with moderate gaming capabilities.
p4 m 1.86
512mb ram
6400 go with 128mb dedicated ram (not turbo cache)
100gb hd
This is stock main sepcs adding 2gb ram next week. This machine can NOT be beat at the $1099 price I paid at Best Buy. I will add more details and pictures when I get time.
Initially I did not like the way the AC plug plugs in. The connection in the laptop seems kinda week. The paint seems to be kind of cheap and will wear fast I can tell.
Overall these are minor issues. I was initially going for a "light and thin". For the price/specs it was hard to pass this up and get a thing and light that was only 1-2lbs lighters and smaller screen with less power. This 15.4 is really light and thin for its size, only 6.1 lbs and very thin.
The screen is exremely nice and BRIGHT, probably the brightest screen I have ever seen on a laptop. Much brighter then my xps2.
I can not for the life of me get everything to work after fresh installing XP Pro. The fn doesnt work for screen controls and sound. The modem is not known and mass stroage controller devices. I did find a program called Sony Launcher. I instaleld this and it fixed my initial problem of the recover dvd saying unkown language ona fresh load. But even when you choose the sony libraries and device drivers not everything works still.
I figured out a low, down dirty trick. I booted off the restore dvd and did a c drive restore. I let it go all the way till about 80% then it asked for dvd 2. I then just rebooted the machine. At this point i had a feeling it went to dvd 2 just for applications. I was right. It had the OS with all the imprtant sony stuff for functionality and the drivers. So it was essentially a fresh load. At this point I just used my XP Pro Corp disc form work and did an upgrade to make it pro. I hate doing upgrades and prefer fresh installs, but at this point it seems to be working fine.
I am not going ot run 3dmark05 on it, but I tested COD2 on it with all the graphics levels turned down and dx7 initiated and it runs GREAT at 1280x800 in 16:10 WS aspect. So i could honestly say this machine is a great low end all around machine with moderate gaming capabilities.
p4 m 1.86
512mb ram
6400 go with 128mb dedicated ram (not turbo cache)
100gb hd
This is stock main sepcs adding 2gb ram next week. This machine can NOT be beat at the $1099 price I paid at Best Buy. I will add more details and pictures when I get time.
So don't call there :O)
