Review Sony discovered it had a major problem when the first round of netbooks hit the market in late 2007. Having spent years educating well-heeled consumers that small notebooks were expensive, shoppers were hit by a deluge of small, light laptops that did everything they wanted for a fraction of Sony’s traditionally high prices.
Sony’s Vaio X series: weight loss comes at a price
Sony finally caved, and produced the tempting, sub-£500 Mini W, which frankly only makes the admittedly beautiful X series even stranger. At £1200 in its cheapest incarnation, it’s perhaps the most expensive Atom-powered machine available today – an odd contradiction, since spending more money on a laptop normally results in more power. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Toshiba’s 11.6in Satellite T110 makes you appreciate the fuss Intel makes about multi-core processors.
Toshiba’s Satellite T110: very, very glossy
The T110, you see, has a single-core chip, a 1.3GHz Celeron 743, to be precise, which sits on an 800MHz frontside bus and has 1MB of L2 cache. The 743 is one of Intel’s so-called “consumer ultra-low voltage parts” and that – plus the screen size – tells you the T110 is one of the laptops vendors are currently pitching as the kind of machine you want if you want to start creating the content you can view on a netbook.
Think of a compact laptop that’s slightly larger than a typical 10in netbook, but has a faster processor and more memory. It still lacks an optical drive, to keep the weight down, but it’s a machine, some vendors will tell you, that’s a “proper” notebook. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Sony’s Vaio laptops aren’t perhaps best-known for their good value, but with an Intel Core 2 Duo P7450, Nvidia GeForce 230M graphics and a £699 price tag, this latest model seems to buck the trend.
Sony’s VPCCW1S1E: terrible name, terrific looks
Part of the CW series, the VPCCW1S1E might not have the most attractive of names, but it’s not a bad looking piece of kit. We had the red model in for test and if red doesn’t do it for you, it’s also available in white, blue, black and even pink. Tipping our scales at 2.3kg and measuring 4cm thick, it’s neither bulky nor hugely portable. Add the power adapter into the mix and the overall weight rises to 2.7kg.
Overall build quality is good, with a sturdy hinge holding the 14in screen in place, but we were dismayed to hear the battery had a slight rattle when the laptop was first picked up. After closer investigation, it clearly wasn’t in any danger of falling out, but it’s not as snug a fit as we’d like to see, and no one wants their laptop to rattle when carrying it around. When we quizzed Sony about this, it said it hadn’t experienced the problem with any other samples in the series. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Despite its obvious appeal, 3D hasn’t really taken off as far as computers are concerned. However, things seem to be picking up pace of late, and Acer is the latest to get in on the game with what it claims is the world’s first 3D-capable laptop.
Before delving into Acer’s wonderful world of 3D, it’s best we give you a quick overview of the Aspire 5738DZG. It’s a good looking piece of kit that’s built around a 15.6in screen and weighs in at 2.8kg. The usual array of ports are dotted around the chassis, including HDMI and four USB, while the keyboard features a low-profile design and includes a numeric keypad. Windows 7 Home Premium is the operating system of choice, and Acer’s gone for the 64-bit version.
Our review sample was powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P7350, but it later transpired that the Aspire 5738DZG actually comes with a far less-powerful Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 – more on this later. Memory sits at 4GB, while graphics are taken care of by an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570. Other features include 802.11n wireless, Gigabit Ethernet and a multi-format card reader. Thanks to the 500GB hard drive, there are no problems in terms of storage space.
We’ll take a closer look at the laptop’s performance in a moment, but first it’s time to get down and dirty with the 3D side of things. Nvidia’s been making plenty of 3D noise of late with its 3D Vision Kit, which retails for around £115. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Plenty of notebooks supporting Windows 7 multi-touch features have already been announced, but the Aspire 5738PG Touch is one of the earliest to actually hit the shelves. Acer has entered into the spirit of the touch revolution by implementing the technology on-screen as well as on the trackpad, but more on that later.
Acer’s Aspire 5738PG Touch: if it looks big, it’s because it is big
The model we tested was driven by an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor running at 2.53GHz. It was fitted with a 500GB Hitachi hard disk, 4GB of Ram installed as two 2GB SODIMMS, an 8x DVD writer and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 graphics chipset with 510MB of memory. Our immediate impression of the Aspire 5738PG out of the box was of a big and very shiny blue toy. While it is certainly no toy, its size (383x250x26mm) and weight (2.8kg) are unusual in a market currently being swamped by rinky dinky little netbooks.
The unit opens using a shiny sliding catch at the front, which we found tricky to operate, to reveal a large keyboard and an even shinier screen. The keyboard features a full 103 keys and a proper numeric keypad. The key caps are big with good, minimal action, and the wide keys are really wide indeed. Unfortunately, the essential left-hand Ctrl key is still the same size as a normal character key, its width sacrificed to make room for a non-essential Fn key. Read the rest of this entry »
