Sony Vaio PCG-Z600RE

So to the final crucial area of any notebook's performance: battery life. We weren't expecting any miracles, but you should get around 90 minutes with careful usage. In the rundown test - which forces the PC to continually write to the hard disk, with no power management switched on - the Vaio only lasted for 44 minutes.

At £1,959, the Z600RE seems expensive, but its price holds up well when compared with other subnotebooks; many of these charge extra for the port replicator and CD-ROM drive, and few offer an XGA screen and 12Gb hard disk. It can't quite topple the A-Listed Acer TravelMate 342T (reviewed issue 65, p157), which almost matches the Vaio spec for spec but costs £500 less.

Where Sony can't match the corporate OEMs is in the warranty stakes, as it only offers a one-year, on-site warranty as standard, compared to the three-year, next-business-day, on-site warranty provided with the Dell Latitude LS H400ST (reviewed issue 67, p156). Despite this, the PCG-Z600RE shows that Sony has the skills to become equally big in the corporate market.

Author: Tim Danton