Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-A190 Laptop (1.70 GHz Pentium M, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW/CD-RW Drive)

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

 

 

Buyers watch out for private sellers
There are a lot of private sellers trying to rip you off .prices look cheap when you send the money you wont get the product or your money back.

Look for the specific items that scammers try to do:

1. Look at the seller's id they look like some what irrelevant. Example (amazon_cheap)(Sony_Amazon)
2. Look at the sellers rating it says just launched because the sellers like to create many e mails as they can.
3. In the sellers comments they will say like "please contact me before buying. Otherwise I won't send you the item".
4. When you send the e mail to them they will say "we are a small company in Romania or UK or Spain trying to evolve to sell outside the country". They will say send money through western union. When I get the money you will get the notebooks with in 2 business days.
5. They will send detailed sellers address where to send the money western union (Spain). I said "I know the address in Spain can I come and pay to that address" he said "I will do only through online" this is cheater.


When you send money through western union you won't get your money back.

Escrow and Amazon secure payment are the trusted payment.

I got an e mail from a seller he said "I will get transaction only through Amazon secure payment. I thought he was good seller. Next e mail he wrote "tell me your complete address I will forward the address to Amazon" I gave him my address .

With in 1 day I got a e mail from "Amazon secure payment" from address looked like it was from Amazon, but when I clicked on reply the to address said "(something@yahoo.com) it was not a e mail from Amazon in that message it said Amazon wants you to make payment through western union. I wrote the email to Amazon they said we will not allow any one to pay through Amazon these are fake e mails trying to rip peoples money.

I purchased a thinkpad last year for work, but when I saw this Vaio I lost it and whipped out the credit card. Was a true impulse buy. The screen is breathtaking: bright and 19xx pixels across. That is a lot of pixels. Watching DVDs on this system is like watching a high end TV. The wide screen gives you a movie image size that's about what you'd get on a 20" conventional TV.

The thinkpad (T30) screen was just barely bright enough, but this screen is so bright I actually turned it down a few notches. You can use it in bright sunlight, which would be impossible with a lot of laptops out there. I now no longer need an external display. The keyboard could of course be better but that applies to most laptops.

Cool tip: go to display settings control panel. Set your desktop resolution to 120DPI to make the font size comfortably large. Change your icon size to 48 pixels. Tweak font and window sizes to your preference and you'll have the crispest looking desktop out there. Even your friends with powerbooks will do a doubletake.

The ONLY reason I gave the laptop 4 stars is because this thing weighs almost 10 pounds! Get a good case and don't drop it!

I purchased this notebook for 1999.98 USD which included the docking station and speakers.

The Centrino CPU auto steps when on battery to less than 700 MHz, but while plugged into it's AC power supply runs at 1700 MHz which is close to the performance of a 2500 MHz Pentium 4.

I love the screen, the resolution and briteness of this screen is far greater than any notebook I have ever seen before. Someone else made a reference to the screen being "HDTV" but going to Sony's web site I could not find reference to HDTV quality graphics anywhere in their product specs for this notebook. Still, it has increadible resolution and fine line capability.

The graphics processor built into this notebook uses the ATI 9700 GPU which isn't bad for a notebook computer, in fact, I believe it is the best you can get right now for anyone notebook and will allow playing 9.0 DirectX games with wonderful graphics. It isn't powerful enough to play DOOM3 without lags on the lowest gameplay resolution, but DOOM3 is an increadibly demanding game for graphics processors and CPU's. Still, this notebook is plenty powerful enough to play most of this years OpenGL games. I have been playing UT 2004 and most of the time the game flows like liquid, but there are occasional lags when things get super busy on the screen, so this notebook isn't a replacement for a PC gaming yet, but it isn't far off for most games.

This baby is heavy, close to eight pounds and the battery life at full screen brightness is only an hour and a half, but I can live with that because I can always turn the screen briteness down when on battery which will allow several more hours of operation. Of course, when on battery it isn't good for gaming with the CPU stepped down to below 700 MHz, but is fast enough for most anything else on battery.

Sony had a problem with previous versions of their notebooks because the keypad lettering could be scratched off in normal use and the plastic housings finish rubbed off through use, something I really disliked, but this version doesn't appear to suffer from the poor design of previous versions. The USB connector is not accessible except at the back of the notebook, something I wish had been moved to either the right or left side of the notebook. Also, this notebook does not have a serial port which is required in my line of work to communicate with devices so that is a very big mistake on Sony's part, but for most people that won't matter.

Sony has improved lots of things with this machine, they moved the CDROM eject button to a place you won't accidentally hit when trying to close the CDROM tray, so they finally figured that out.

All Sony needs to do is increase the clock speed of the CPU another 500 MHz above their current 1.7 GHz offering and you will have the hottest notebook on the market, as is, its a great solid replacement for a home PC used with everything but gaming. However, notebooks will always be behind the capability of any PC when it comes to games because graphic processor manufacturers always lag at least a year behind for their mobile offerings.

Shipped as-is the vgn-a190 is less than a powerhouse of a computer. However, this can be easily corrected.

1. Install two gigs of RAM (go to memoryx.com and check prices, hi-end "gaming" RAM is also a possibility, depending on your budget).

2. Install a Hitachi 7200rpm 80gb (or 100gb) Travelstar 7K100 HDD (check zipzoomfly.com and newegg.com for best prices)

3. Load Windows XP Pro (SP2)

4. Run Opera or Firefox as your browser/email solutions (to avoid viruses

Do these few simple things and your 17" WUXGA VGN-A190 will turn from a mere large work horse into a fire breathing hi-speed beast.

You may also wish to bump up the shared video memory from 64mb to 128mb. This is easily done by entering into the bios set up.

All the best to you!

This is my 3rd Sony Notebook Computer in the last 5 years and is simply the best. The screen is spectacular and the price at Amazon makes it really a bargain ($1699). The speakers and sound is excellent and the features are jam packed in this workhorse. Only thing is no built-in bluetooth but that is easily overcome by buying an inexpensive USB bluettoth adaptor. Great for chart reading and simulations too. A bit big and heavy but what to expect when we want everything right? So thats not a negative but just a case of normality. Would recommend anytime. Very happy with it.