Prime Notebook Computer Review

The Sony FE550G series is the dual core update of its FS series and looks almost the same. The FE is a main stream 15.4″ notebook that is supposed to appeal to the more style oriented users. The VAIO FE design is aesthetically pleasing. It might be popular with people in the fashion, art and entertainment industry while this is not a typical business notebook because its color composition is very stylish but at the same time still very clean looking. The outer shell seems to be made of some metal composite that feels very solid. The hand rest area and most of the area around the keyboard is made from some material that feels like the plastic that Coke bottles are made from. It is the worst feeling material. The hand rest area is also very easy to get dirty. The battery sits a bit loose and if you shake it around you can hear it rattle.
The FE550G screen is great. It is a 15.4″ WXGA XBRITE glare screen and this is the brightest screen I’ve ever seen on a notebook. The picture is clear and crisp No color distortions, fuzziness near the edges or anywhere else. and there’s no dead pixels. The viewing angles are very good as well. The back of the screen is comfortable. The backlighting is very even and there’s no any area on the screen that is less bright than others. But the brightness switching from plugged to unplugged and back doesn’t work.

Sony VAIO FE550G specs :

Processor : Intel Core Duo Processor T2500 (2 GHz)
Display : 15.4″ WXGA
Memory : 512 MB DDR-SDRAM
Hard Drive : 100 GB Hard Disk Drive (5400 RPM)
Optical Drive : DVD+R Double Layer /DVD+-RW
Graphic : NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400

The speakers is usual. Not very good but not bad either. The bass is non-existent, which makes listening music to painful. If used as a multimedia notebook, external speakers is recommended. The keyboard is good and the placement of the keys is standard. The sound and the response of this keyboard is good for me. And i like the size of the keys. The touchpad is standart with good response and a scroll function on the right side of it. This notebook have 1 Firewire port, 3 USB ports, 1 S-Video and VGA out, and the power port, that located on the right hand side of the notebook. Its also have a slot for pc cards and a slot for a memory card reader supplied by Sony. On the left side you only have the DVD drive and the Ethernet and phone ports. And there’s 4 status LEDs on the front side of the notebook. This notebook also have Intel a/b/g card.
The VAIO FE550G battery is not good enough. Using the notebook to typing and surfing, the battery lifes only 2 hours 20 minutes. Many notebooks now have battery lives of 3.5 hours. And its big and heavy.

The FE550G use Windows Xp for the Operating Systems. It have an invisible partition on the HD that contains all the necessary files and with two DVDs you can make your own backup disks and then delete the restore partition. Unfortunately Sony also installs a lot of useless program such as AOL and MS Office 30 day trial. The Fe550G come with with the T2500 (2GHz Duo). The performance gain over the 1.86GHz Duo is negligible. The 100GB HD has a quoted speed of 5400 RPM. It takes 1 minute 30 seceonds to boot up and 30 seconds to shutdown the natebook. This laptop is definitely faster, you can surf on the internet and rub another program in the same time. The graphics of this notebook look pretty nice. No doubt about it.

This is the results gained from running Super Pi. Sony VAIO FE550G needs time 1 minutes 13 seconds to calculate Pi to 2 million digits. Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi 1 minute 15 seconds. Lenovo ThinkPad T60 1 minute 18 seconds. Sony VAIO FS680 1 minute 53 seconds. And IBM ThinkPad Z60m 1 minute 36 seconds. This notebook is silent. At the lowest spin cycle of the fan, it is just so silent. When you playing games or doing calculations for a few hours, the fan kicks into second gear but the sound is very tolerable. The heat outlets are on the right side of the back and middle of the bottom. The right palm rest area and the right bottom area get warm and makes the palms sweaty. Sony would have used a different material for the palm rest area.

This notebook have a great design with bright, clear, and crisp screen. Its also quiet, not overheating, and still relatively thin and light for its class. And have a fast processor. But The battery life. 2 hours is too low in today’s standards and with plastic hand rest and keyboard area, its make the palms sweat. The FE550G is everything you need of notebook and maybe a litle more. It is really quiet and has a beautiful screen. It doesn’t get scorching hot and on top of that will turn heads wherever you take it. This is certainly not supposed to be a very portable thin and light notebook, but I think the biggest problem of the FE is its short battery life and lack of portability because of it and the large power brick. But I can recommend the Sony VAIO FE550G as a nice and versatile notebook.