an amazing laptop! (Sony Vaio AR51SU)

Name: punk_rocker

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Product:	Sony Vaio AR51SU
Date:	02/06/08 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: features

Disadvantages: price

This laptop is pretty much customised for all your media uses. This is one of the reasons it comes with windows vista ultimate installed on it. This means you get a lot more software pre installed and also some other features only available to vista ultimate.
Vaio music box is a program that comes with this laptop and is great for listening to music and organising all your tracks on.
There is also windows media player pre installed and a lot of video software like: roxio easy media creator 9, Sony click to DVD, windvd and Sony sonic stage mastering studio 2.4. This laptop also comes with a couple of Photoshop programs too, these are great for editing all your photos on and usually cost over £100 to buy, so as you can see all of these programs added up defiantly come to more than the actual laptop price in itself.

This laptop is also fantastic for playing games on, its NVIDIA geforce 8600M GT graphics processor is more than up to date so this laptop can handle any games including the newest and even the future games too.
The installed ram on this laptop is great, it has a massive 2gb which is the main reason this laptop runs so fast, also its intel core 2 duo T7700 which is one of the newest processors makes this laptop run so fast. Another thing to note is that this processor runs at speeds like 2.4 Ghz, this is really good and I have never seen another laptop that's runs at these speeds, and all of this makes this laptop absolutely fantastic when it comes to running demanding software and programs.

And if the 2 gb isn't enough for you (although I cant see this amount ever not being big enough for you), then you can easily upgrade your ram to 4gb. This will just make everything even faster than it already is, so if you so really need your laptop to be a bit faster then you have got this option at a later date. This is really good because what tends to happen is that as your laptop gets older, and your add more programs and files, it eventually gets slower and slower, this is just something that happens, so having this extra 2gb of ram available to be installed into the laptop means that if it does start to run slower than you want it to, then you can easily have extra ram installed. A bad thing about this option though, is that it can be costly to do, especially if you cant do it your self and you might have to pay a computer technician to do the work for you.
Also a bit of a glitch is that it could, and I do say could, void the warranty, now I am unsure about the warranty of this specific laptop however it usually goes, if you alter any setting of the laptop by unscrewing things inside of it, then usually the warranty goes, as if it no longer works it could be your fault. So this is something to think about and look into before you start altering things inside the laptop.

So we've talked about the ram, so now I think its time to mention the hard drive. Sony thought that one hard drive, just wasn't enough for their customers so they actually added two. Yes two 250 gb hard drives come with this laptop. Which basically means you get a massive 500gb of hard drive space. And I don't really think anyone can argue that 500 gb isn't enough by any means.
This laptop just doesn't stop disappointing us, and an example of this is its great screen.
Its TFT screen, measures 17 inches, this is great for watching movies on, watching video clips on and makes gaming so much better too. This screen is also active matrix, this is being used by so much more laptop manufacturers nowadays as it makes the screen lighter, therefore making the laptop lighter, is makes the image quality so much better than a normal TFT screen and it also makes the response time a lot better, which makes videos look sharper, photos look sharper and game playing look better than ever before.

Another feature built into this screen is the fantastic X-black technology, this gives you better contrast, better quality, but the best thing of all, this gives you wider viewing angles.
In the past, watching movies on laptops has been for only one person and two people positioned very closely to each other. Even then you would have to set your laptop up just right pointing at exactly where your sat to get a good picture and if you moved your body in the slightest your view would be spoilt and the screen would look black and faces look weird colours too.
However, with X-black technology, you can just watch your laptop from pretty much any angle, your whole family could be crowded round watching something on your laptop and they would all have the same view, the best view, so this X-black technology is great when looking for a laptop.
Another thing this laptop has, that I must mention, is a built in card reader, this can read any of SD Memory Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo. This makes transferring pictures and videos off your camera or off your phones a lot easier than having to connect everything by wires and having one built into this laptop means you don't have to go out and spend another £20 on buying a card reader.

Another thing I must mention then is that this laptop also does have a built in webcam at the top of its screen. This is mounted onto a nice little silver section on the top of the screen which instead of looking like an eye sore, actually makes the laptop look in a way better. This camera is an Integrated 1.3 Mega pixel webcam which captures pictures at a very high 1280 x 1024 resolution.
Having an web cam installed means you don't have to go out and buy one for about another £40, it also means you don't have to get home and install It and worry about whether it works or not. It also means you don't have to have wires all over your desk and a huge camera on the top of your desktop.
The best thing about having a webcam built in must be the fact that you don't need you do anything with it, and because its built into your laptop you wont need to take another webcam with you wherever you go, because its built into your laptop and your webcam will always be with you.

This laptop is quit sleek too, its only 3.4 cm high, 41.6 cm wide 30 cm deep and it only weighs 3.9 kg. this might seem a little more than some laptops, however considering this laptop has a 17 inch screen then this is actually a very light weight laptop.
This laptop also has a remote control, this can be used for pausing videos so you can be tucked up in bed watching a movie and want to pause it, usually you would have to get up press pause on your laptop, however with this you just press pause on your remote to pause the video its so good.

Another thing to mention is the laptops DVD re-writer. This is great as it can read blu ray disks and can also write on blu ray disks too.
The read speed of this laptop is: 24x for CD.
8x DVD.
2x blu ray disk.

The write speed of this laptop is: 8x for CD.
8 times for DVD ±R.
2x for DVD -R DL.
4x for DVD +R DL.
2x for BD-R.
1x for BD-R DL.
The re-write speed of the laptop is: 8x for CD.
2.4x for DVD -RW.
4x for DVD +RW.
5x for DVD -RAM.
2x for BD -RE.
1x for DB -RE DL.

The last thing ill mention then is its design, some will love it, others will, well actually everyone should love it. This vaio is black in colour, with a matt black colour and a very nice shiny black surfaced lid, which makes it look amazing whilst closed.
It also has a nice band of silver around the laptop which all the laptop ports and dvd drives are built into.
Altogether, I really like the design of the laptop, and I love the shiny black finish on the top as it just makes the laptop look so much more stylish than any other on the market.
The major snag about this laptop is its price, unfortunately all of this great equipment does come at a price, in my opinion though you cant put a price on this fantastic laptop. However is shops opinion this will cost you around £1700, which will be well out of the price range of a lot of people, however if you do have this much money to spare on a new laptop you defiantly wont regret buying this one, and it will be worth every penny you spend on it.
As I said earlier in the review, all the software that comes already on it must be worth more than the laptop its self, also all the extra features you get with this laptop make it one of the best out their today so if you do want a new laptop, and you can afford it, then I urge you to go out and get one of these fantastic machines.

Summary: an amazing laptop!

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