Sony VAIO VGN-FW11ZU notebook review

Comments

• I was considering this laptop until I saw it has a 4200rpm harddisk. This will zap performance. Even more frustrating is that they fit 5400rpm drives to the cheaper FW models. Sony have had a habit of doing this for several years and it's frustrating. It's not just with the FW range either. There's no excuse for 4200rpm drives, especially in a laptop this size. My aging Vaio A117S was high end and came with a 4200rpm drive so I'm more savvy this time around.
  
  The graphics card is equivalent to the GF 8600 GT, so it isnt bad. Especially considering Sony tend to put cheap graphics cards even in their expensive models. However this class of graphics card is a couple of years old now and it would be nice if some progress was made. Posted by Anthony, UK
• Just to clarify, by "GF 8600 GT" I meant "GF 8600M GT" of course. I'm just talking about mobile graphics chips. Posted by Anthony, UK
• Thats useful info Anthony. Thanks Posted by Dave, UK
• Recently bought the FW21L and overall I'm really pleased with it. The only real negative is the battery life which isn't brilliant but adequate, check out the price of the extended life battery, extortionate! The screen is fantastic, very bright, amazing colours and the extra width is great. The keybord is a big imrovement over a standard one, I make much fewer typing errors and the mouse pad is nice to use once you get used to it. Most of the packaged software is useful, I don't game on the machine so the graphics card is fine for my use. The speakers are no wherenear as bad as some reviewers would have you believe, ok they don't have loads of bass, but they're pretty loud and are perfectly acceptable for music and movies. The features are generous too with Blu-ray, blue tooth, firewire, HDMI, wirless N and a good quality webcam.The big big plus point is the build quality, light years ahead of anythin other than a Mac. It oozes style and quality and feels very robust despite it's relatively light weight for it's size. Overall it's a winner. Posted by Phil, UK