Review: A week with Sony's Vaio TZ Premium subnotebook
This thing is beautiful.
It's the prettiest laptop I have ever seen, excepting only Sony's own X505 ultraportable, the MacBook Air, and stuff you can't buy in America. Sony knows that it looks fantastic and subtly works that angle: it sent a lovely but quite useless leather carrying case with the review model. You know, so I may also report its deliciously-scented blend of emollients and dead cow.
As with all Sony laptops, however, there is the stage after first impressions, when it must be Turned On. It should suffice to say that it barely works until you rid it of pre-installed crapware. This is no joke: Sony offers its trialware-free "fresh start" setup for TZ models alone, and it's surely because as low-powered ultraportables, they are the most badly crippled.
Moving sluggishly on (via a remedial stop in the add/remove programs dialog) the TZ still proves itself a capable, charming and thoroughly lovable little slab. It takes a particularly awkward form factor--11" displays imply a machine too feeble to get anything done, but too large to stash, UMPC-style, in a manpurse--and not only makes the most of it, but makes magic of it. If you were to buy one, you will be in severe danger of falling in love with it and cherishing it long after it becomes obsolete.
(More after the jump...)
Its display is crisp, bright and fits in a lid only a quarter of an inch thick. Unlike some other subnotebooks, it bristles with useful holes: there are two USB ports, a smartcard slot, FireWire 400 port, gigabit ethernet, dial-up modem, DVD Burner (which may be replaced by an extra battery with an extra USB port), VGA-out, 4-in-1 card reader, mic and line-in sockets, and music player controls. They even manage to fit a webcam in that skinny lid.
It also has WWAN (Sprint EVDO Rev. A) on even the lowliest configurations. This coming as standard is laudable, and puts Sony ahead of most competitors.
If the crapware removal is like getting cold feet at the altar, however, other flaws emerge, like misdemeanor convictions and minor venereal diseases uncovered over the course of a honeymoon.
For example, Sony's nice-looking keyboards, as seen on the X505s of yore and Apple's Macbooks, present a learning curve on this ever-so-slightly smaller machine. The trackpad responds slowly to movements, like a cheap bluetooth mouse. Its buttons sit on the lip of the machine, making them just a little harder to stab.
Windows Vista, the fat electron-guzzling turd that it is, is mildly inappropriate for a svelte ultraportable, but that isn't Sony's fault. Downgrade it, and imagine the world-conquering wonder this thing would be with OSX.
The supplied review model is a beefy high-end premium TZ that costs $3,600. By maxing the specs, having both a 64GB SSD and 250GB hard drive, and exchanging the optical drive for a second battery (with an extra USB port to boot, for a total of 3), this is business travelers heaven. If I were to buy one, I'd skip the SSD, take the optical drive and downgrade to the marginally-slower 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. It's more than a thousand dollars cheaper than this 1.33GHz model, and still offers most of the experience.
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I actually am running a hacked osx86 version on a sony TX, and it is the perfect computer for me. The only thing missing is power management (but it runs 5 hours on a charge) and 2 finger scrolling, but I'll live.
I cannot stress enough just how wonderful the phrase "bristles with useful holes" is, whether for the description of a computer or otherwise.
Ross R.
Phi, how difficult was it to get OSX running on the TX? If you could link to the guide you used and offer any extra tips for the Vaio T? series, I'll have a go at it here.
Ross, thank you :-)
How does this compare to the Shrovis-Bishopthorpe Envaliant III?
Ditto on the wondering about the OSX on the TX.
I do love my TX a whole lot though. The smaller keyboard didn't take long to get used to back when I first got it and now I find it faster to type on. The long battery performance is definitely one of the best features also.
I wanted something small, portable, powerful (enough) and durable for field work, travel, studying in cafes and lugging back and forth from school. The TX is exactly what I needed and I imagine the TZ is a new and improved version of this for me to covet.
There is also the added bonus that a sexy laptop is a great nerd-boy attractor for a nerd lovin' girl like myself.
I just got the low-end TZ (after my TX bit the dust), and while the Vista install ran like my grandmother through an ice-cream parlor, I got a free downgrade to XP via Sony, and even without tweaking, it's a dream. It's actually thinner and lighter than the TX, and much, much sharper looking.
I would also love to install OSX if possible, but the only instructions I've found seem to point to a solely Mac install, and I'd really like to keep my XP install (and possibly tri-boot Ubuntu).
Here's a suggestion: if you've already decided to become one of Apple's media PR slaves, don't even bother attempting to review PCs. You're out of your depth.
Interesting comment. This happened last time I gave a Sony laptop a glowing review that included criticisms.
Perhaps it speaks strongly to the fanboy mentality: it doesn't matter how much praise you heap on something. If you ding the right thing, it's time for the random accusations of fraud, corruption, incompetence, etc.
Either that, or we have that rare beast, a Vista-defender upset that I might suggest (No!) that OSX is a better consumer operating system.
If this is true, please respond again so that we may measure and record the shape of your head for posterity.
I wondered myself why no mention was made of Windows XP, but low as my comprehension is, I was still able to pick up that OSX is merely the writer's preference of operating systems!
There was also no mention made of running Linux on the thing, but again that wasn't necessarily the thrust of the article.
I was glad to see a comment addressing running XP on the thing, though there was little doubt it would run it very well if it was "vista capable" at all! ;)
This looks like a UMPC I'd love to try out myself.
I vowed I wouldn't really consider one, however until my trusty dusty Dell B130 bites it so for now I remain a drooling bystander.
Thanks for the review, BBG!
Yeah, as much as I like the idea of a TZ hackintosh, XP is certainly a more reasonable proposition. It didn't come with downgrade disks (I'll check the box, though, to be sure) but you can specify it when you order.
I had to order the disks separately, it was a $10 shipping fee, but man, it's worth it.