Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N/B 13.3" Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2 GHz Processor, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD RW Drive, Vista Business)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I wanted to buy a Vista laptop, so I tried a number of diffKensington 72414 PilotMouse Bluetooth Mini Mouse (PC/Mac)

First, there's design. VAIOs have always been stylish. So much in fact that they make a statement. When I go into an office and everyone has those boring black laptops they look at me and get jealous when I pull out the SZ VAIO. For traveling around, you can't get a four pound laptop with a 13.3" widescreen LCD anywhere. You can get a smaller laptop or a much heaver one (6 pounds) that may a bit bulky. But if you want to travel around and not have your laptop crushed on a aircraft due to a reclining seat in front of you--or hurt your eyes from those 10" screens--this is the best form factor.

In terms of performance, I have been working on a 10Mb Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop with a number of picture documents, and Visio, along with Outlook and listening to music on Rhapsody--and this little, powerful machine was not bogged down at all. My previous laptops would have choked. This Intel Duo Core with 2Gb of RAM makes the portable mobile office much more of a reality. 160Gb of storage means desktop power.

Wifi, WWAN (Cingular), Bluetooth--superb. I don't use the WWAN part (nor am I going to pay Cingular $80/month--but maybe this will come down in price) but the Wifi works very well (as it should) and Bluetooth is great with this (get the Kensignton Bluetooth mouse--you will love it with this laptop)

In terms of battery life, this part is maybe not a full five stars. I am getting three hours, here and there, on a standard battery. You really must order the extended life battery. But the other laptops that I tried didn't do any better.

As far as anyone writing that Windows Vista is unstable, I did experience some very unstable situations with the following software: Corel Paint Shop Pro X (version XI fixed the problems) and most importantly DO NOT install Paperport 11 or any version before that. IT WILL RUIN VISTA. Make sure the software you installed was made for Vista or is Vista-certified or Google the name of the software and Vista before you install. Without the bugs introduced by the above software, you will have a fantastic computing experience that will blow away XP and get you into Mac experience territory.

If there is any gripe (and Sony, you should be reading this) is that the AC adapter is bordering on being brick-like. In the past, Sony laptops always used to have the slim adapters and this was a perfectly light package to travel with. Now they sell the super-slim "stick" adapters aftermarket (but you can't get them yet--backordered for a month or two) or you lug the brick around. This is similar to Mercedes selling a super-slicked car and bald tires, not Pirellis. You are buying a high class device here, so Sony should make the nice accessories standard.

Taking the Mercedes analogy further, imagine if you bought the car and you had to peel off all the Coke and Pepsi and Samsonite and whatever other advertising stickers. You opened the hood of the car and there are samples of oil and air filers and other stuff you have to remove before the car can run--and it takes you an hour. No, Mercedes automobiles are sleek and minimalist. The problem is with the PC industry in general. They want us to use all this junk and instead they give us a frustrating time of having to remove the software and stickers and peel away and get oils and varnishes just to get the clean, streamlined look that should come out of the box. Everyone is guilty, and Sony is not better or worse, but as "elite" equipment they should know better. They should give you the option to selectively install at the beginning since some of the software is really very nice (Paint Shop Pro XI) and others (AOL, Norton Internet Security--I use other antivirus, firewall software that is more efficient, battery conservative and faster). But hey, it took me a total of 30-45 minutes to get the software I didn't want out of the system--while I was doing other stuff.

But getting back to likes, this space-age looking equipment is really worth the extra bucks. Get it, clean it, customize it and avoid software that will wreck Vista.

All in all, however, I am very happy with the laptop and would definitely recommend.

I bought this Sony Notebook on Amazon.com after lot of online study of different makes and models. The specifications for Sony VGN-SZ430 N/B appeared great on paper / online. Amazon delivered it on time. But I am totally disappointed by ony after using it for about a month. Following are main drawbacks:

1. The laptop becomes hot very quickly and you can not keep it in your lap for long.

2. It is very slow though it boasts a Dual Core 2 Intel processor T7200. I think it is due to lots of pre-installed programs on trial basis (for 60 days)

3. The Windows Vista Business, pre-installed on the laptop crashes often. I would say it is an unstable operating system.

4. The battery life is just about 1.5 hours.

5. The built-in-camera picture quality is poor.

6. The cooling fan is very noisy. I have owned other laptops with practicaly no noise.

7. The customer support is poor. It takes about 40 minutes of waiting to reach a level 2 support

I am on my third laptop, where the first two were Dell machines. Each a very good machine and a capable replacement of a desktop machine. However, this time I was looking for something as powerful and light weight. After doing plenty of research SZ430N came up as a winner in my eyes. Simple examination of pictures and spec can give me plenty of good information but there is nothing like seeing and touching the product. Hence, I was a bit nervous when clicking on the "buy" button for an item over $2K. However, once it arrived and I started to use it, all of my prior concerns went away. This machine is absolutely perfect. A nice and crisp screen gives ample working area. The dual processor is fast and responsive. The fan is quiet. The keyboard is large and feels very comfortable to wright. Most importantly it is only 4lbs :D

To be clear, I don't play games but do use it for work that is, programming, presentations, and editing text files. This must be very boring job for this machine, and I am sure that it can do much much more.

Drawbacks. Surprisingly this machine comes with a lot of useless software installed! I am very disappointed. It even came with 4 moves that need to be unlocked for a price!! (Each movie is over a gig.) For this price a company that takes part in production of movies, could afford to put few free moves. Of course the "cancer" AOL software was setup. Other free-trail things are installed as well. For a person who is not very comfortable with uninstalling programs this could be an waste of space and affect overall satisfaction with this very nice product.

This is my fourth Vaio in a row and I really like them. This one is no exception, the design is nice as usual, is is light (4 pounds)and still has a nice 13 inch screen - great computer for travelling and being mobile.
However, even in the battery-conserving Stamina mode I do not get more than 2 hours internet surfing or 1.5 hours DVD out of the new battery. So don't be fooled by the battery specs (2.5 - 4 hours). I also had one dead pixel. The fan is not exceptionally quiet but okay.
Overall I am happy with the purchase.

It's very disappointing to spend so much money on a laptop to find that features have been disabled with no way to enable them. If you're interested in purchasing a new laptop with a Core2Duo for VTX (Intel Virtualization), Sony has this functionality disabled across their entire line with no means of enabling it. Sony does not allow the use of virtualization on any Vaio machine. Their support site's FAQ corroborates this (too bad I didn't check on this before purchasing). I wish they would have allowed a bios option to turn it on, just like almost every other manufacturer out there. The system also comes with no disks and so the OS setup files are all placed on a 5GB partition on the drive. You have to backup this partition or face the risk of losing your copy of Windows Vista in a hard-drive crash. Unfortunately, you do also lose this 5GB of space. I don't understand why they couldn't just supply a recovery DVD. The machine also comes with tons of trial-ware and Sony's proprietary media software. Until you go through and clean things up, the machine runs very slow. It is impossible to do a clean Windows install with that setup partition. You are only allowed to do a full system restore with all the extra software intact.

Despite my complaints, I do give 2 stars for the fact that the machine is very light and stylish. This too, however, is somewhat set back by the fact that you're stuck with a big antenna on the right side that is only used by the very expensive Cingular Wi-Fi service. If you don't end up subscribing to Cingular's service, this antenna just becomes a useless piece of swiveling rubber attached to your notebook (you could you remove it but the hole left behind looks worse).

It's being over two months since I purchased SZ430. Overall I'm satisfied with the notebook. Sleak design, good features and perfect display. For the specifications it should have been a few hundred cheaper tough.

Before buying this laptop I searched the market well. With all cons and pros I ended up buying Toshiba S5057. It was alright but battery was a real joke. Than I made a gift out of it and got this SZ430.

So far I'm satisfied with it. Camera is alright, weight is great, size is optimal. Battery is better than Toshiba S5057 but still low capacity. I would say 2 good hours. Finger print reader is really good and the heat under the laptop didn't really bother me but it does get hot. I would say it is a silent laptop without annoying fan noises.

This is my second Sony laptop. Last one was great, it lasted me good 2 years (which I would call the life span of most laptops), than I have to deal with repairs. I don't know all but it was really a bad experiance to deal with the repairs. 1st, they charge too much, 2nd you cannot depend on them. I got my laptop back after 10 weeks and it wasn't fixed properly. I had a lot of headache, than I just write it off and got a new one (apple, which is an other story for an other time).

Shortly,
Good : Very good specifications, Nice design and quality of material, beutiful display, perfect size
Bad : Price (I think it is overpriced), poor customer service, weak batter life

Sony repair service is not really good, I have a lot to write about that but who is ?

Have a good day,

I love the touch and feel of this little notebook. Brushed Aluminium palm-rest and powder coated Magnesium display back - wow! But don't let the looks fool you - it is an absolute powerhouse. Besides Sony's benchmark 13.3 inch XBRITE LCD display - top notch 4 MB cache dual core processor, 2GB of super fast DDR2 RAM, dual Graphic Processor Unit (GPU), fast 160 GB SATA Hard drive and Built-in-EVERYTHING, was all I needed to know. Works great for me.
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I've had no problems with my computer. Everything is working great! The battery isn't exactly what I expected it to be but to be honest I have never ran out of power when I needed to use it. I don't think the battery of any notebooks live up to the tested length of time. Anyways, I recommend it and good luck on your decision!

not only is sony the worst customer support on the planet, unless you are japanese, they suck at laptops
4 days old my wireless lan has failed and the answer I got from the customer support is to buy a pcmcia wireless adapter or plug in a 10BT cable, if I want to get the wirelss repaired it will take 8 to 10 weeks. it would be better to not buy sony

I purchased this computer in April 2007 it worked fine for about three months and then both USB ports quit. There was no power to either of them. I contacted Sony and we could not get them to work, now be aware there is a one year warranty on hardware original to the computer. They sent me a special box for sending to Sony Service and they provided a shipping label and I packed the box and off it went to Sony for repair so far so good. A few days later I get this e-mail telling me the repairs would cost $279.99 so I contacted them that I had enclosed a copy of the reciept for purchase verification 4/25/2007. Another e-mail from Sony saying there was all of a sudden physical damage and that was not covered under the warranty. I requested photos which they sent. My computer had left my hands in pristine condition and the photos showed broken parts near the USB ports a puncture on the underneath side and scratches on the bottom all of which were not there when the computer left me. I am at my wits end and so frustrated. Why would a company want to ruin their reputation and not honor their warranty?