Sony - VGN-SZ4XWN/C

A very nice laptop, but at a high price.

By: david.kirkby October 27, 2007

Review:

There’s not a lot of point in me listing every single specification of the laptop, as you can get that from the Sony site, but briefly:

CPU Core2 Duo Processor T7200 2.00 GHz.
2 GB RAM with 533 MHz FSB
120 GB disk (7200 rpm).
13.3” screen
DVD+/-RW DL/RAM
Windows Vista Business
Fingerprint reader
Light weight 1.69 kg – carbon fibre body. 

It’s a high-end laptop, with a price to match – at the time I bought it, the machine was 1699 pounds in the UK – around $3400 USD. 

A fairly rare feature on this machine, and one which needs explanation, is a switch on the front panel marked STAMINA/SPEED. There is a relatively slow integrated chipset, which uses little power which is used in the STAMINA position. I personally find this adequate for all my needs, but then I never play games on it. If switched to the SPEED position, then a higher performance, but higher power consumption NVIDA GeForce Go 7400 graphics chipset is used. The only problem, that is not so obvious from reading the specification, is that you need to reboot the machine in order for the effect of the change to be implemented. 

I upgraded this to Vista Ultimate, but then found certain things like the camera would not work. I was not over impressed with Sony’s support at this point, basically telling me Vista Ultimate was not supported. 

An irritating ‘feature’ is all the rubbish and trial applications included. The only one which was worth the disk space is Adobe Acrobat Professional, which allows one to make PDF files. 

Also irritating is the fact the machine starts up the Sony rubbish. However, whilst I can’t recall how to stop this, there is information on the web about how to do it. 

It comes with a 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s card allowing internet access on the move, without needing a WiFi access point. But much to my horror, this card has to plug in the laptop – I don’t know why Sony did not build it in. You get a one month trial of the service, which I have not personally used. 

I have Debian Linux on this too, which works well – including the WiFi. In fact, sometimes I consider deleting Windows completely and just using Linux on it. I’ve also considered using Sun’s Solaris operating system. I personally feel that Solaris is the best operating system ever produced. In fact, my main computer is a Sun Blade 2000, which has 2 x 1.2 GHz SPARC processors and 8 GB of RAM. 

One thing I would certainly do before buying any laptop in the UK is to check what John Lewis sell. Apart from matching anybody else’s price (but not online prices), they offer a 2 year extended warranty for no charge on laptops. John Lewis simply offer better customer support than any retailer I know. 

Dr. David Kirkby