Sony Vaio A-290

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Dear friends:
I have already three weeks with my Vaio A290, here are some sumarized
findings:

DISPLAY: Excellent, I would say one of the best display available,
extremely bright. I have a Vaio GR-370 and even a K23 in my office,
and both pale before the A290.
SCREEN SIZE and PORTABILITY : I realized that this huge 17" is too
much for me, even, believe me..it is not so heavy, around 8 po. and is
quite thin taking into account what you are getting.
PERFORMANCE: It is ok but not outstanding, I guess is due to the HD
which is rather slow, even with its huge Cache Size (2Gb-L2) and 1 GB
of RAM, I notice an annoying erratic behavior of the pad when dealing
with image over 4 MP or some huge clips. (Sometimes the cursor freezes
until the HD light stop to blink). That really disturb me.
FEATURES: Gezz..who needs more? 7 USB 2.0 (counting the dock station),
firewire, A/V in/out, Ethernet 10/100/1000, etc, etc.
DOCK STATION: The Vaio A290 comes with a DS, where you have everything
but increase the size and turn it a little less than portable. A very
important thing is that this port replicator is VERY easily detached
if placed in a non-so-horizontal surface...almost forget your lap. (I
use a thin playwood table when I need to move it).
SOUND: The built-in speaker are not so good (they will never learn),
the pair which comes with the package are VERY good, with a good FR
and S2N ratio.
SOFTWARES: So-so. Gigapocket which is the Sony capture software is ok,
but could be better. The classical Sony softwares, Sonicstage,
Smartcaptures, etc, others are sharewares and personally I disliked.
Work 2004 is shareware. It comes with Norton Security and Antivirus
2004.

CONCLUSION: I give to this machine a very good 4.4 in a scale 1 to 5,
because its sluggish HD, erratic touch pad behavior, and insecure dock
station. Anyway even, that THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL AND RECOMMENDED
DESKTOP REPLACEMENT.

Mich