Behind the scenes of Sony’s VAIO testing lab

Monday, April 19th, 2010

We were made to sign non-disclosure agreements, told to remove our cameras and phones, and forced to stand in an air chamber whilst air was blown into our every extremity. But then we were in. This is Sony’s top-secret area: the testing lab at its VAIO headquarters, based in Nagano Prefecture in the Japanese mountains, where all the company’s designs for new laptops are put to the test.

Fortunately, not all cameras were banned: as you can already tell, we were accompanied by a camera-toting Sony employee who I persistently annoyed by asking to “take a picture of this”. “Oh, and that”. “And could you take one of those too, please?” I think she may have said something rude about me in Japanese at one point.

(more…)

Toshiba Satellite Pro S500: first look review

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

The first thing to strike you on picking up the Toshiba Satellite Pro S500 is just how very big it is; its 2.5kg weight comes as something of a surprise. It looks more like a laptop with a 17in screen than the 15.6in screen that’s actually inside, and this feeling is emphasised by the fact a numeric keypad is squeezed to the right of the traditional keyboard.

While this does have its benefits, particularly for power users of Excel, it takes a little while to get used to the arrangement; for example, finding the Backspace key when typing quickly. Toshiba compensates for this by making this key, and the right Shift key, nice and large – possibly the biggest hindrance will be the half-width Enter key.

(more…)

Toshiba Tecra A11 and Tecra M11: first-look reviews

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Toshiba splits its laptop branding into two main streams: Satellite and Satellite Pro for home and small business; Tecra for larger businesses. And we got our hands on the two new Tecra models at its 2010 press event: the 14in Tecra M11 and 15.4in Tecra A11.

As can be seen from the photo above, there’s a certain amount of similarity between them (the A11 is on the left, the M11 on the right). They’re black, they’re a little boxy, and they eschew such consumer fripperies as isolated keyboards and, in the M11’s case, a webcam.

(more…)

Poll result: 61% of people listen to music on their laptop’s speakers

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

After being abused and mocked by various colleagues in the PC Pro office, and in particular deputy editor David Fearon, I’m delighted to say that the PC Pro poll has backed up my theory – as detailed in my recent blog, Do you listen to music on your laptop’s speakers?. Turns out the majority of laptop users do precisely that.

To be precise, out of the 303 people who took part in the poll, 72 said they frequently listened, while 112 only listened occasionally.

(more…)

Do you listen to music on your laptop’s speakers?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Surely I can’t be alone in this: when I go abroad, I’ll often listen to music on my laptop’s speakers. Now according to some in the PC Pro office (I’m looking at you Fearon), that makes me a freak of nature of the same sort of scale as Mister Blobby.

Yes, of course, I could listen to any assortment of devices using a pair of earphones, but I prefer not to have things stuck down my ear canals all day. So I open it to all of PC Pro’s readership: one simple question. Do you listen to music on your laptop’s speakers?

Let me know by casting your vote on the PC Pro poll on this very subject (it will take approximately three seconds), which will be live for the rest of this week.

First look: Sony VAIO SR-Series

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

To create a fully featured sub-1.5kg laptop takes a fair dollop of money: the lowest-specced Z-Series costs £1,404 exc VAT. But Sony wanted to have a sub-£1,000 offering that also weighed less than 2kg – which is where the SR-Series fits in.

Two models will be available in the UK, the SR19XN and the SR19VN, and they cost a very reasonable £849 and £999 respectively (more…)

First look: Sony VAIO FW-Series

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

While three out of the four VAIO ranges announced by Sony yesterday are squarely aimed at businesses, the FW-Series has one mission in life: to entertain.

The chief sign of this is its 16.4in screen, with 1,600 x 900 pixels to help make high-definition movies look great (it’s also enough to view two programs side by side with ease).

And, from my brief encounter with the Blu-ray version of Spider-Man 3, they do (more…)

First look: Sony VAIO Z-Series

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

The Z-Series sits near the top of Sony’s VAIO range, aiming to attract executives who want to cut a dash in the boardroom.

And it certainly does make for a fine figure of a laptop. Weighing just under 1.5kg – thanks in part to a carbon fibre chassis – it measures a mere 33mm tall.

The screen is more interesting than most too. (more…)

First look: Sony VAIO BZ-Series

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Aimed at mainstream and, dare we say it, slightly conservative business users, the BZ-Series – which replaces the BX-Series -  doesn’t come with some of the features boasted by the rest of the new VAIO range.

(more…)

Things are getting too quiet

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

After a recent blog comment saying that I was once a Sony fan (but no longer am), I just mysteriously found myself looking at a page on the Sony Style website, admiring the various models in the sexy little TZ range.

One thing struck me – the ‘top of the range’ model comes with a tiny but expensive solid state hard drive. It’s not just Sony – the likes of Dell offer something similar in their ultra-portables. Even the cheap (but not as cheap as it used to be) Eee PC uses a solid state drive.

And what’s wrong with that? They’re mechanically robust, and flash memory is now cleverly produced so that it doesn’t ‘wear out’ as quickly as the 1st generation products did. Plus prices are rapidly tumbling. It’s great, isn’t it?

(more…)