Review of PCV-W10 Desktop by Sony

Anonymous Howard writes "Designtechnica has a review of Sony's Vaio PCV-W10 desktop computer. This computer is unique in the sense that not only is the computer built into the back of the monitor, but the keyboard folds up to cover the screen. Once folded up, this thing becomes a Clock/CD Player. Strange..."

Comments

hmm

[nomadic]

So this is meant for people who are ashamed to own a computer?

Oh, wait, this is good. An actual quote from the review:

What I don't want to see happening is Sony start skimping on performance and overcharging the consumer all for the sake of selling a Lifestyle.

So who wants to break the news to him?

PDP-10

[slavemowgli]

You know, when I saw that headline, I immediately read "Review of PDP-10 desktop by Sony". Imagine my surprise... ;)

Between a rock and a hard place

[JonathanF]

From what I've seen (in this review and elsewhere), the Vaio W just fits into a horribly awkward spot in the market that will only suit a few people. If you just need a compact all-in-one computer, then Apple and Gateway undercut the price by a few hundred. Both Apple and Gateway also have AIO units that will be considerably better for both DVDs and some light gaming (especially with the 17" iMac's GeForce 4 MX).

The W is only for people who REALLY need to save space, or else appreciate the features of the keyboard-up clock and CD player.

Transformations

[Salsaman]

Once folded up, this thing becomes a Clock/CD Player. Strange...

Remember though, Sony is originally a Japanese company. I predict their next model will fold up into a giant walking robot with rocket launchers for arms.

vaiouch!

[rnd()]

I had a vaio laptop a few years ago (pentium iii 450 version) and there were a few things about it that made me decide to avoid vaio products in the future:

1. Proprietary drivers: Since I already owned a copy of Win2k from my last machine, I ordered the Vaio with 98 and planned to upgrade. No such luck. Sony wouldn't give me access to the drivers. I finally found someone who had the drivers but there was some kind of BIOS lock-out preventing me from installing them. It would have been worthwhile to pay the stupid $150 extra for the win2k machine in the first place.

2. Proprietary Drivers: Sony finally did release the drivers w/o the bios lockout, but it was about a year after I first got the laptop.

3. SLOW! The thing was designed to look nice rather than to perform. It had one of the slowest laptop hard drives I've ever experienced.

VAIO systems appear to be designed to look nice (which they do). They're not really performance machines, and Sony has some funny policies regarding releasing drivers, etc. Buyer beware.

16x9 screen sucks for a computer

[nut]

I bought a Sony VAIO PCG-C1VE (PCG-C1VN in the states) a couple of years ago, and I would now advise people never to get a PC with a 16x9 form factor screen.
The screen is only 8 inches so the only really useable resolution is 1024x480. An awful lot of applications don't fit on this from top to bottom, and using a text editor, IDE or even surfing the web is very frustrating because you can view so few lines of text at a time. (Very painful if you're trying to write code!)
Having to continually right click on the taskbar and use the keyboard to move windows up to get at the buttons at the bottom of some app (because your mouse stops at the top of the screen) will very quickly drive you mad.
If you're going to extend the screen on a workstation you probably want to make it taller, not wider.
If the screen was big enough to use at about 1280x768 it might not be so bad. But I still wouldn't consider wide-screen an advantage for anything but watching movies.
I believe it's a 15 inch screen, so I'm really not sure how good it would be.