Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31XN

Netbook killer!

The ultra-portable Sony VAIO VGN-TZ31XN notebook delivers the power of a larger PC in an elegant 11.1" form factor. Advantages: Small, light, long battery life (6 hours!). Durable: Full top and bottom carbon fibre construction. Power-saving LED illumination gives long battery life.

My experiences:
I recently bought one myself and I'm totally lyrical about it! I use it everywhere now. At home / in the train. I travel by train everyday (2 hours back and forth), and now I can use a mouse next to it on the drop down table from the seat in front. It's that small. Or watch a 2 hours DVD movie. I had been watching the "Netbooks" hype, and I looked into these tiny machines, promising ultimate portability without sacrificing performance. Sadly I found out that most of these cheap netbooks do not live up to their promises. The most important thing I missed with these netbooks was a DVD drive / Writer.

That's where the Vaio TZ range steps in.

I wanted both maximum portability and maximum speed, so I was looking for something in between a Pocket PC and a Laptop. With the Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31XN I finally found it!

Tough and Durable
The luxurious looking TZ-Series is more than strong enough to take the rough and tumble of life on the road. Full top and bottom carbon fibre construction , protects the notebook from knocks and shocks while the unique battery hinge design ensures excellent durability.

Any tech-savy person can immediately see the benefits of this machine over a "netbook" machine; sure the price is a lot more, but this really is a case of you get what you pay for.

The Core 2 Duo based processor at 1.2 Ghz is considerably faster than the atom based netbooks, despite the atoms clock speed advantage, and dual core means multi-tasking is not a problem.
With 2 GB of Ram the performance is spectacular for such a small machine.
100 GB of free hard disk space means plenty of room for your files, and the DVD writer is a surprising and very welcome addition on such a small machine.

Initially I thought: wouldn't Vista Business Edition make it too slow? But after some days I decided not to downgrade with the included Windows XP Professional downgrade CD, and leave Vista on it, since it was fast enough (and I'm very speed-conscious..).

For the security conscious: it includes a finger print reader as an alternative to passwords - something typically seen on business laptops.

The battery life - I don't know quite how to say this, my last laptop achieved maybe 2-2.5 hours on a full charge. The Vaio TZ, on a full charge, will go for 5 hours or more! And that's with a reasonable screen brightness and actually using it!

The builtin DVD drive uses very little energy too. I can watch a 2 hour movie in bed, and the battery is still not empty by far! The sound from the speakers is reasonable, entirely what you would expect from 2 flat speakers at the top of the keyboard near the display. Good enough at least when you're watching a movie.

Finally - The screen - although just 11.1 inches, but with an incredible resolution of 1366x768, (yes thats 720 HD on an 11 inch screen!) is truly amazing! Its so bright, and very crisp, probably the best LCD I've ever seen!

So to wrap up: the Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31XN is an awesome device, I wholeheartedly recommend a purchase. When you are able to pick one of these up and if you want portability you really can't do any better!