Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO PCV-RX750 Desktop (2.0 GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB DDR RAM, 60 GB hard drive)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great price for a system this feature rich and powerful. While it is not the fastest P4 system on the market is is easily one of the best low cost systems you will find. Sony's build quality is very high, and they include lots of extra features and software. Nothing is free and Sony has done a good job of making the right trade-offs to keep the price down on this system without selling you a bland box you can't use.

CPU: Intel P4 Nortwood 2GHz w/512k L2. A great CPU today, and with more software supporting its SSE2 features, the best investment for tomorrow. Sadly AMD has fallen far behind Intel and won't catch up until mid 2003 (based on their current CPU roadmaps).

Chipset: Sis650 a good chipset, not as fast as Intel's 845 or 850 series, but it cost a lot less.

Memory: The Amazon review has this wrong. This system comes with 256M PC2100 DDR running at 266MHz. Without boring you with a long explanation lets just say that it is not quite as fast as PC800 RDRAM (Rambus) but still much faster than what came on older systems. 256M is plenty for all but the most serious power users. If you want to upgrade later you can for about $50-$100 and a little time.

Grapics: Sis Integrated "Real256" - Not a Nvidia chip (despite what the Amazon review says) this was developed in-house by Sis as a DirectX 7 compliant graphics chip. The latest games coming out now are DirectX 8 (and beyond). They will work fine on this graphics chip, but not at the highest quality settings. The good news is it comes with a AGP slot so in when you want to step up you can buy a new video card. I suggest ATI cards over Nvidia cards for overall quality if you do this. Matrox is also coming out with a good card (their current cards are too slow).

OS: Windows XP, which is far superior to Win98SE or Windows ME. As much as I hate the 'activation' feature, it is the best thing going for most people.

Features: Sony is the best at adding in lots of useful things like, Firewire/I-link ports (for hooking all kinds of stuff like a digital video camera to adding an external DVD-RW drive), built in ethernet, modem, and sound. Also a CDRW and DVD drive. One down side: no USB 2.0 ports.

Software: Comes with Corel WordPerfect Office, PC-Cillin anti-virus software, and Sony's in house video software. Good bundle that comes a lot cheaper than MS Office and Norton Anti-virus.

...

This is a better PC than other Sony's I've reviewed, especially with regard to its value. The specs are good enough as shipped to make 95% of the PC market happy. The other 5% (myself included) would like to have a true gaming-capable machine, having 512 megs of system RAM, 64 megs of video RAM and USB 2.0-ready ports. All of this can be added, but of course that would add significantly (about 40% I reckon) to the price. In addition, there is no monitor included here, so that's another important expense, which along with the above-mentioned items would approximately double the asking price. Nonetheless, it's a quality machine with lots of great features and it's one I'd be happy to have for anything but interactive, Internet gaming.

Although this computer is long obsolete, it's still going strong after 9 years. Unfortunately, XP SP3 and other large programs have slowed it down to the point where I've decided to replace it with a $700 HP Pavilion HPE-410F. I've upgraded it over the years and it has reached the limit of what it can do. So this review is more of a farewell to an old friend - after all, it was discontinued 6 or 7 years ago. Lots of marriages don't last this long.

It came with 256MB of RAM, which I eventually upgraded to the maximum 1GB. The 60GB hard drive seemed to be a staggering amount of storage space at the time that I could never possibly fill. It's still going strong, but I added a 250GB drive a couple of years ago. I also replaced the CD drive with a CD/DVD drive, a USB 2.0 expansion card, a 5-port USB hub, an external sound card with RCA outputs, a $25 USB Bluetooth device, a webcam and a USB wireless keyboard/mouse combo. The DVD drive that came with the machine still works, but not with burned DVDs. All of these upgrades probably cost $400; some I got cheap from eBay or free. Remember those goofy word games on Windows Live Search a few years ago, where you could earn points for free stuff? That's where the wireless keyboard/mouse and webcam came from. The hard drive was a $30 eBay find. So you can upgrade old machines on the cheap.

Added to the original price of $1049, the machine as it now is cost me about $170 per year. For all the service it's given me, I've more than gotten my money's worth.

So goodbye, old friend. I'll miss you.

I purchased a Viao in fall if 1999. I didn't learn until I upgraded the OS to Windows XP that Sony hasn't provided a system update or any other software update for my model since Windows 98. More dismaying, Sony hasn't bothered to notify owners via its support site that there's a BIOS issue when upgrading to XP. Now, I can't turn off my computer and Sony has refused to help me repeatedly. Sony has terrible customer support service.