Prime Notebook Computer Review

The Sony VAIO SZ280P/C is an excellent machine. It’s a bit of a cross between an ultraportable and a thin-and-light notebook. It’s smaller and significantly lighter than most thin-and-lights while, but can easily match or exceed their power and feature set and slightly larger and heavier than most ultraportables, but far more powerful and feature rich. The design is excellent which is a very thin, slightly wedge shaped package with high quality materials. The carbon fiber case is very stylish and strong and pushing on and twisting the screen showed no evidence of distortion. The hinges seem small but sturdy. The poor of the design are all ports are on the side, the battery is a bit loose and rattles, and there’s a small wireless antenna for the WAN card on the right side of the machine.

The VAIO SZ280P/C specs :

Processor : Intel Core Duo Processor T2500 2.0GHz
Operating System : Windows XP Professional w/SP2
Memory : 2GB (Dual Channel) 533Mhz DDR2
Graphics : NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 w 128MB
Hard Drive : 120GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive
Optical Drive : Dual Layer DVD RW
Dimensions : 12.5″ x 1.3″ x 9.3″
Weight : 3.7 lbs

The VAIO SZ280P/C’s processor performance is excellent. It’s no problem to have several significant tasks going on at once. It’s also boots so quickly. The unit generally feels very snappy. And it also nice for playing games.
The Sony VAIO SZ280P/C came with Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 pre-installed. The notebook also comes with more than its share of bloat ware in the form of limited editions, starter editions, trials etc that one must spend several hours uninstalling.

The SZ280P/C’s screen is so bright with no dead pixels on it. The screen is also crisp and clear. Horizontal and vertical viewing angles are very good. The screen has a very high contrast ratio with blacks being very black with little bleeding and whites being very white. The screen resolution is 1280×800.

The keyboard feel firm and sturdy with full size keys. Layout is standard and overall feel is excellent and key travel is a little shallow and the keys are a bit noisier than some. The touchpad also works very well. The fingerprint scanner between the right and left mouse buttons works very well too. But in some evirontments, different of hand temperature, and some hand soaps could make the fingerprint didn’t work. Wait a few hours and try again.

The speakers are crisp and clear. It also loud in a quiet environment. But there’s no real bass. For more sound quality, an external speakers or headphone are recommended.
The Input and Ouput ports on SZ280P/C are the Optical drive, express card slot, two USB 2.0 ports, and under a little cover, modem and LAN ports, a memory stick reader, a type 1 pc-card slot, vga out, fire wire, and headphone and microphone jacks,. There’s also a built in Webcam and microphone above the screen which is work fine.

The design and management of thermal at this notebook are effective. There are separate heat sinks and heat pipes for both the CPU and GPU, but they share a single fan. There are no hotspots on the palm rest or keyboard, even under heavy load. And the bottom is only warm not hot. But it’s noise. The fan runs pretty much constantly. In performance mode under heavy load, the fan is very noisy and gets pretty annoying. There’s programmable buttons on the keyboard had a default of reducing fan speed/noise. The optical drive is about average, being very quiet at lower speeds and getting louder at higher speeds.

This notebook also come with some wireless like 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, and a Cingular Wireless WAN card. The WiFi card exhibited excellent signal strength on 802.11g products. But there’s no infrared port on it.
The battery is 6-cell with 4 hours life time in stamina mode with most devices disabled and the screen relatively dim. There is also an extended 9 cell battery that should offer about 50% more battery life.

The VAIO SZ280P/C is a thin and light in an ultra portable notebook. The poor of this notebook are the fan that to noise, Poorly integrated utilities for supporting and using the machines many features and the features. But this machine have a great performance with an amazing screen, dual graphics cards and fingerprint scanner and TPM module. It also have built in Wireless WAN card and Dual Layer DVD Combo drive. This is an excellent notebook for who like tarveling and need a laptop with a lot of power and features in an elegant, compact and light package.