November 7th, 2007

  

After a much anticipated wait I have finally got my Sony Vaio TZ195 laptop. It is classed as an “ultraport” notebook and from the size you will be quite surprised at how much they have packed into this baby. It has 2 GB of RAM, a 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, a 48GB Solid State Drive (SSD) which is much more faster than traditional notebook hard drives, Dual Layer DVD burner, Biometric finger print sensor, and a 12.1″ screen which is LED back lit making it only 4mm thick! Other than the usual USB ports (2 of them) and video out they included a gigabit network card, firewire, and 2 card readers (one for memory stick and the other for SD cards).

Sony has always been innovative and is one to adopt new technologies into their products. Firstly, the use of SSD drives in laptops has helped increase performance while reducing power consumption in notebooks, which in turn helps prolong the battery life. Next they have introduced the Draft N wireless standard, although not officially an industry standard, boosts the wirelss network performance up to five times faster. In addition to that they have integrated a Wide Area Network (WAN) card so if you’re not around a wireless hotspot you can still access the internet if your area supports it. The LED backlit LCD screen produces a much brighter, more vibrant image and reduces the thickness of the screen dramatically.

All in all the system is less than 1″ thick when it is closed and is extremely light weighing in less than 2kg with the standard battery! The best part about the laptop has got to be its aesthetics. The piano black gloss finish on the keyboard, the emerald LED backlight power button and the premium carbon fibre casing all complement each other and make this one very sexy laptop.

 

Another cool feature of the laptop is the mini Operating System that it has integrated to run it’s Audio Visual mode. On the front of the notebook, there are a series of media buttons like AV, play, pause, rewind etc. When you press the AV button and the system is powered off, it will launch a Linux based OS and you can play photos, movies, or music through the graphical user interface without needing to boot into Windows. Check out this video of the Vaio TZ.

I’ve always been a fan of Sony’s Vaio line of business notebooks due to their looks and specs. As expected, anything with a Sony label on it comes at a premium price, but it’s definitely worth it! I would definitely recommend this laptop for any road warrior…