Sony Vaio GR414 - The Road Warrior (Sony Vaio PCG GR414SK)

Member Name: lordted

Product:	Sony Vaio PCG GR414SK
Date:	28/01/04 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Features, Build quality, Stylish looks

Disadvantages: Some fiddly featurs, Not much else!

I have been using this Sony as my primary computer for over a year now and it is the best laptop that I have ever had. Granted, it was really only in the last two years that laptop users could have enough power, features and storage to not feel like the poor relation to the desktop PC (and I have not used any other laptops in the last 2 years so keep this in mind) but I am pretty pleased with it. Let me explain why.

In the last 15 months, this Vaio has been in use almost every single day. It gets slung in the back of my car for the commute to work, it has been knocked off my desk twice, done 5 return trips to the US and been used for everything that I can throw at it - and only once been found wanting.

Let's get that dark day out of the way straight off the bat - it would have made 6 trips to the US, but literally the day before I was due to fly out it hung. This was the only time that it has ever hung, which is no mean task in itself, but when I restarted it the hard disk made a sound like a distant swarm of sex starved click beetles, which then became a really ugly grinding sound...

The hard disk had died after 8 months - it was fixed under warranty. The techie told me that the industry statistic for laptop mortality rates in the UK is 30% in the first year. That isn't 3 out of 10 laptops need a little trip to the workshop - they don't survive to their first birthday! So, given the abuse that I have hurled at it, I would say the Vaio is pretty tough.

And pretty. It is a very stylish unit, which is fairly shallow to even comment on, but we're being thorough here. The muted metallic effect of the casing, quality feel of all the exterior parts, and the very cool Vaio symbol impressed onto the back of the screen casing... if you are going to take your computer with you everywhere, you don't want it showing you up now, do you?

The keyboard is excellent, with a very positive feel, but not too "clicky&
quot; which some other brands seem to have (though I have only observed them being used by friends and colleagues).

The mouse is a touchpad style (which I prefer to the "nipple" style mouse controls found on some laptops) which works so well out of the box that I have never used any of the numerous tweaks that come with the mouse utility software - you can alter speed, sensitivity, etc. - which is pretty vital as in a Windows environment, if you aren't happy with the mouse, you might as well call it a day. One small annoyance for me is that on the front edge of the laptop is an additional mouse related facility - a built in mouse wheel. Now, I don't know about you but I don't find that very useful, but maybe that's just me. What I don't like about it is that if I accidentally touch it, a mouse wheel applet opens up on screen (which apparently can do lots of useful things that I don't need) and I can not work out how to stop it from doing it! It switches you from the application that you are in (Word for example) so you continue to type for a while before you notice that nothing is happening...

The screen is superb, going up to resolutions so high that you need a magnifying glass to read the desktop icons. I know that is not particularly scientific but I am trying to relate what it feels like to use in person, if you are bothered about 1600x1200 pixels and 16 million colours, then by all means check out the highly informative Sony website for the tech specs. Suffice to say, it is crystal clear, easy on the eye, and easy to keep clean (these things always attract a lot of dust but you can use pretty much anything - tissue, shirt sleeve, etc. - and it wipes right off).

But I digress. Using MS Office and Windows XP runs very smoothly, no real lag loading large files and applications, either over a network or standalone.

Battery life is fine for my use, usually good for 2.5 hours when fully charged. Pe
ople I know who have the same model tell me it is perfect for playing a DVD film on - just right for those tedious Leeds - London train journeys. My only grumble is that if you are running on battery power but know you are only going to need it a short while, you can't seem to override the default screen brightness powersave mode. The usually excellent screen dims down so much that it is difficult to use without decent electric light around you (and if it is outdoors with some sunshine, forget it).

The Vaio comes with an external 3.5" floppy which I have never used, this being the 21st century, so all files are loaded and saved via the CD writer, which doubles up as a DVD player.

This might be where most laptops stop. Now it is time for Mr Sony to take it to the next level.

There are a couple of features that influenced some of my other purchasing decisions. First off, the Vaio comes with a built in Memory Stick slot. The Memory Stick is Sony's take on smart media, used in MP3 players, digital cameras and some digital camcorders.

I bought a Sony digial camera and a couple of 64MB Memory Sticks. No messing about with cables here - take a load of photographs on the digital camera, pop out the memory stick and whack it into the Vaio, copy it straight off the 'Stick which appears as drive E:, and the pictures are up on the screen, ready for editing, burning to CD or discarding. Could not be simpler.

Next up, I bought a Sony digital camcorder, because after looking around all of the sockets that the Vaio has, I found a Firewire connection. This socket will connect to the Sony digital camcorder and allow you to control the camcorder from the Vaio using some simple software that comes with the laptop. Having taken 30 minutes of video, just plug the wires in and set the Vaio to 'autocapture' mode. You go and have a cup of tea while it pulls copies of all the video onto the laptop, even splitting it up in
to separate scenes because it can tell where one scene starts and stops.

Using a video editing suite (Ulead VideoStudio 7 - very good by the way, even an idiot like me can do fancy things with it) the Vaio turns into a portable studio! Once editing is finished, I can just pump the finished product back to a new tape in the camcorder for posterity.

The playback of video files on the Vaio itself is very good too - people that I have shown it too are always impressed by the quality. Still images are even better, because you can connect the Vaio to your TV with a S-VHS cable supplied with it. Watching all your photo's on a big screen in the comfort of your lounge is excellent.

The Sony Vaio is a superb multimedia all rounder. Just in terms of what it does as a reliable work horse is great, but when you discover all the other possibilities built into it, I don't think you could get a better setup this side of a portable Apple Mac.

Like their slogan says - Go Create.

Summary: