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Sony's Flash-Based Notebook Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hefty-price-for-loss-of-capability dept.

Lucas123 writes "Computerworld's Rich Ericson reviewed Sony's first all flash-based laptop, which carries a whopping $3,200 price tag. Ericson says the laptop runs incredibly fast, with an average data transfer rate of 33.6MB/sec and great battery life. But, the laptop is also limited to certain uses. While lending itself to travel, the small capacity of its hard drive doesn't make it a real competitor for a main PC workhorse. 'While there's a lot to like [about the VAIO TZ191N notebook], there's only very limited uses for which I'd recommend this system. The best features — its size and the flash drive — are also its biggest limitations.'"

4 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. eee pc by pimpimpim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sorry people, but I'll go for the EEE pc. It will be the first PC I'll buy in 7 years, I've been waiting for it all that time :) It delivers a small, lightweight, laptop with limited capabilities, but still all the features you'd like a computer to have. Also, it is DEAD CHEAP. I recently looked at a site selling subnotebooks from Japan, all where going for 1200 dollars or more. Why would anyone buy those? Normally these machines were limited to upper-management people, but finally any normal person can also buy them, with an EEE and they WILL!!! Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, but if sony would have sold a 300 PC with the specs of an EEE, I would have bought it from them. Knowing Sony, they would have screwed it up badly anyway, using some strange sony-only form-factor (memory stick?). Asus was just the first to come with the right mix, and I hope many will follow.

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    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
  2. I've had one for a couple months now. by Pike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bought one (new on ebay for $2800) to replace a Toshiba that cost me $900 in 2002, and it's great. It works for me because I don't play high end video games, and is very snappy and VERY light.

    • I love that I can stick it in my little backpack and hardly feel it.
    • With wifi on I can get 6 hours of battery life pretty easily, more with it off.
    • The screen quality is the best I have ever seen.
    • You can burn bootable recovery DVDs and wipe the 9GB recovery partition. With MS Office and OpenOffice installed and a couple GB of music, I have 13GB free.
    • Pop it onto the docking station and I have access to an external HD - no need to carry ALL my photos with me everywhere I go.
    • The keyboard is a little small but surprisingly not bad. It didn't take me long to find that I prefer hitting Fn-Left/RightArrow for Home/End and Fn-Up/DownArrow for PageUp/PageDown - less moving around for my fingers.
    • I don't even know what bootup times are because it just goes into sleep mode whenever I close the lid, takes maybe five seconds to come back up. I think I've done a full reboot maybe four times since the initial "cleanout" (which is the one downside for me - you will spend about a day cleaning up all the garbage and adware that comes preinstalled).

    I do mainly writing, php programming, video/photo editing, web design, and of course email/web. You have no idea what a productivity boon it is to be able to take your laptop everywhere with you, whip it out when you want it without worrying about battery life, then just pop it onto a docking station at night to charge just like a cell phone.

  3. Re:Call me old fashioned... by Mantaar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think the main reason why laptops "grow" is the fact that a lot of people use them as a replacement for a desktop PC. They don't care about its size and they do care about its performance.

    And about the WalMart thingie that's bigger than need be: well, packing the hardware tight together isn't exactly easy or cheap + it's harder to cool those cramped spaces. That might be a reason. But that's just a gues..

    --
    I'm an infovore...
  4. Why go to such extremes? by iamacat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seams that a notebook using a conventional 200GB hard drive with a 16GB flash cache would be pretty much indistinquisable in terms of battery life and performance. Cost and software complexity can be further lowered by using flash with fast read speed but slow writes. The operating system and some applications can then be installed on the flash partition while user data can go on the regular hard drive.

    It seems better to put up with an occasional disk access than not to have an option to store your stuff at all.