Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-TX650P/B 11.1" Laptop (Intel Pentium M Processor 753, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+R Dbl Layer/DVD+/-RW Drive)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I just bought a TX690, which I believe is the same as this model except with a blue cover and a half a gig more RAM.

Light, thrifty with the juice, and just as powerful as some of its larger cousins, I am very happy with this purchase overall. I can see no reason to go back to a bigger notebook for any reason. It fits in a backpack with the rest of my gear; no need for a separate laptop bag.

The connectivity is superb, and once you get the hang of it, the VAIO connections manager software makes it incredibly easy to switch from one internet connection to another.

The Cingular EDGE feature is extraordinary. You can pluck broadband out of the sky across wide stretches of the USA--no more searching for Starbucks or other hotspots. And if the EDGE network doesn't reach where you are, the Bluetooth feature makes it easy to do dial up via your mobile phone.

Just a couple of gripes that bust my rating from a 5 to a 4.

Sony has integrated the EDGE system into the software, so you can't switch telcos. And with the most common plan at $80 a month, it's a bit pricy.

The screen is exceptional for its size, and the keyboard works as well as can be expected in such a small space. But Sony could have improved the array of outside controls. There's a set of buttons above the keyboard which is supposed to let you operate the machine as a dumb-terminal personal DVD player without booting up the whole system, but it's never worked 100% properly for me. The touch-pad is, if you'll pardon the expression, touchy. And the volume and mute buttons are fiddly.

The tight packing of so many components does cause a little interference in the built-in speaker--this disappears when connected to external speakers, but it kind of makes it useless as a personal DVD.

That said, if you really want a full functioned office that you can operate from anywhere, you can't go past the new TX series.

I almost bought this computer, but decided to go to Best Buy to actually see it. I am very glad I did: the Best Buy's floor sample had many glass cracks on the LCD panel. I wondered why, and the answer is actually simple: the screen is made very thin and while the "polycarbonate" cover touted by Sony is strong in terms that the cover itself does not break, at the same time it is very flexible and unfortunately the glass inside the screen is not flexible, so the LCD glass cracks when the screen is bent a little.

So, I imagine the glass would often break if you put your computer inside a bag with something else that could bend-in the cover or if you drop it or you are not handling this thing like a baby. None of the other computers I saw in Best Buy had the cracks on LCD panels. So, if you ever decide to buy it, I would highly recommend buying an accidental damage protection, which adds $300-$500 to the price depending on where you buy it.

I also looked at Portege R200 from Toshiba. The battery life of this computer is not as impressive as Sony's and it lacks the optical drive. On the plus side it weights the same and has a much better protection of its Polysilicon screen - it does not bend and the Polysilicon screens are known to outlast the regular screens by many years. Sony might also use polysilicon screens, but unlike Toshiba they refuse to tell which components they use, which is unfortunate because you don't really know what you are buying and how long will it last. One of the reasons I looked at Sony's TX is that it might use the polysilicon screen from Toshiba, based on Toshiba's announcement of mass production of LED powered 11.1 screens with the same resolution as in TX. That screen would work very well if not the critical design flaw with the screen cover that bends easily.

The Portege's hard drive also seems to be very well protected: they used a smart sensor that detects abrupt laptop movements and parks the hard drive's head to avoid damage to the disk. Not only that, it is also installed in a shock absorbing material. The hard disk and the screen are the two components that break sooner or later 99% of the time and Toshiba wins the durability test against Sony hands down. So, regretfully, while Sony's TX looks great, I just can't waste my time and money on something that would break in a few months.

As far as the WAN option goes, the Cingular's web site sells the PCMCIA cards for free when you sign up, so having the WAN option built-in does not make much of a difference pricewise.

I recently purchased this from Amazon. They offered an OK price, but also gave a $150 rebate, so the net price was about $60 less than any other vendor (online or brick-and-mortar). Filling out the rebate form on-line was easy.

I purchased it to replace a Fujitsu p1120 sub-sub-notebook. The LCD on the Fujitsu died just outside of the 1-year warranty. I expect the Sony LCD will last longer, given the quality I usually find in Sony products. The Sony is much faster (as one would expect comparing a Pentium M 1.2 GHz processor to a Transmeta 0.8 GHz processor), and has a much nicer screen. It comes with the usual Windows/MS junk such as MS Works, MS Office Evaluation Copy, etc. I deleted these to make room for OpenOffice for Windows and Cygwin.

Regarding recovery disks, they can be made easily by following the instructions that appear after you first log in. It is true that 6 GB of disk space is devoted to a Windows Recovery Partition. This partition can probably be deleted after making recovery disks, but this would likely require a re-install of Windows. I have not done this. I did shrink the Windows partition using Knoppix and installed Fedora Core 4. It works well with Linux, including screen, touchpad, sound, and wireless. I am told power management works under Linux, but haven't yet tried it.

I do not believe the screen is as fragile as some reviewers fear. A co-worker has 2 of these (for herself and her husband) and says she and her kids have treated it quite roughly without any screen damage. Moreover, I went down to the local CompUSA and saw the screen on one of their demo models torqued significantly without damage to it.

I am so far happy with this notebook. If I had not yet purchased this notebook, I would also look at the Panasonic Toughbooks.

I've got it for 3 months. It is a great ultraportable, yes... But it is SLOW man, slow... I actually added 1 GB RAM more, but it is still slow... Imagine that you have a comp. with 1.5 GB RAM and Pentium 4; you can expect a "normal" performance at least, right? I used SiSoft Sandra to understand the reason, and here it is: integrated video eats the system memory!!! And there is nothing to do except using an external graphics adapter (I have no idea how to do that). decreasing the resolution might work, but then the screen gets muddy. You cannot increase the refresh rate, only available rate is 60 Hz, by the way. so, actually, the only resolution you satisy is the highest one with 60 Hz, and there is nothing to do with that built-in video chip...

Another thing: If you cannot use the Cingular, then antenna is useless, and it is impossible to remove it. then it becomes something annoying...

I've had my TX-650 for about 3 weeks. The first thing I did was put a 1GB RAM card in to boost the total RAM to 1.5GB. It's easy to do yourself and for less than $100 is worth in in better performance.

Overall I have been pretty happy with the device. The screen is very nice, the size and weight are just perfect. The keyboard is as good as you are going to get in a ultraportable. The battery life is superb. I have had occasion to use the wireless LAN a lot and the reception is excellent. I also subscribed to the Cingular EDGE WWAN plan and the speed is poor but better than nothing if you are stuck without a WLAN nearby.

I'm not happy with the lack of restore disks and the fact that a fairly large part of the HD is taken up by restore files and thus unusable.

I've also had intermittent problems with the sleep/hibernate feature causing lock-ups.

Another negative is the fan noise. Expect the fan to run at least 50% of the time if you use it for longer than 10 minutes.

Overall a great little notebook and I would buy it again.

Note that there is a TX310 for $300 less if you can do with switching a DVDRW for a CDRW/DVD player. I would have purchased the TX310 myself but I was on a tight timeframe and none were in stock.

Now to the review ...

There is a lot to like about this TX line if you want ultraportable - mainly great screen, weight, and battery life.

I bought this for my wife who was very specific about what she wanted, which narrowed it to two choices as of 2/1/2006, Sony TX and Averatec 1000.

She preferred the Sony, and I understand why, but I would never pay the premium this one commands - the Averatec is 90% the same laptop at 50% of the price ... you basically loose

- battery life (3.5 versus 5.5 hours)

- a tiny bit of screen size (10.6 versus 11.1)

- screen quality (though the Averatec is very good, but the Sony is excellent)

- some weight (2.7 versus 3.4 lbs).

- DVD burner (who cares - my desktop has one, and this is a $25-50 feature these days)

- Bluetooth and Edge - I can add Bluetooth for $100 and use my phone as the modem, so decide if this is important to you.

Since I almost always plug into a wall and the other differences were so small, I felt I was paying $150 per ounce or $200 per 0.1 inches ...

I also slightly preferred the Averatec keyboard, though it was not a decision point.

I also thought the Averatec seemed a little sturdier, though this is highly subjective.

Also, note that I read one review (before buying) that said the Averatec had worse speakers - I listened to both side by side and disagree - they both have very little volume and while the Sony was MAYBE a little clearer, the Averatec was a little louder which I would judge more important, given how weak the volume of both were ... I don't actually care about this since I would typically use headphones if watching a DVD, but if you care then check it out and decide for yourself.

As it typical with Sony it is way overpriced. It certainly represents quality, but definitely not quality-value (e.g. it is rolls royce, not mercedes). I calculate that the extra features of the Sony are worth ~$200.

The TX line also appears easy to break, sticks you with Cingular for the highly touted EDGE connectivity (I like Cingular, but why no choice in GSM data services - more to the point, if you are going to force Cingular then why not negotiate special pricing for your users).

It has the typical crappy Sony graphics (which practically defines Sony Computer in my mind). Why does Sony think no users play games even though half of game players are solid income educated people between 25 and 45 years old ...?! The Averatec was no better on this score, but for >$1000 less I'm more forgiving.

The part I REALLY find hard to accept are little issues such as (1) does not ship it with recovery disks, which I expect in the $1150 Averatec but not the similar $2200 Sony, and (2) Sony loads it with a ton of crap software (AOL, Netscape, ...) that I have to go through and remove, which they give you no quick and easy way to do. I spent the first 4 hours cleaning up the machine and making recovery disks ... This is not what the user experience for a premium priced manufactuer should be like!

Because it is easy to break, I am trying to buy the Sony extended service plan (my retailer only sold their own plan for twice as much). So far I have not found a way to purchase the plan through Sony after the fact, but I am told they will mail me an invite to do so ...

I stopped buying Sony about 12 years ago because I thought their marketing people had screwed up a great company with overhyped overpriced products - this laptop exactly meets my expectations for Sony.

Good luck!

It took me 2 months before deciding if i really wanted to get this. And at the end, i decided to go for it.
I went throught lots of reviews and most were very good except for a couple including the complaint about the screen and the noise/heat. As for the screen, so far, i've had it for 2 weeks and I've been moving from place to the other putting the laptop at the edge of my suit cases and it's still in perfect condition. However, the noise is really annoying and the heat is acceptable but still there. However, overall, I am still really impressed and don't regret at all buying it. The battery life and lightweight is WONDERFULL. seriously. it's like holding a small book in your hand. comparing to my old notebook this is amazing. and without the optical drive, the noise isn't as bad. I'm a student and I tend to carry my laptop with me a lot to school. So the lightweight, batterylife, and okay speed/processor was my main concern and this new buy did it all. I've like sony for a while, whether with cameras or computers and that's why I went for this (I think they are very user friendly) however there is a similar DELL one for about 400$ less and I would think your better off checking that one out too before going ahead and getting this another reason I also went for this one was that you can operate the DVD player without having to boot up the whole system which I think is really practical, esp when on long trips and wanting to watch something without having to waste all the battery.

I am a sad, disappointed owner of a Vaio Notebook (VGN-TX650P). It worked great for the first 3 months... and then, the nightmares began... initially, it would stop booting about every fifth time. As time progressed, it got worse and worse... every attempt to deal with Sony "Customer Service" was a fruitless effort in futility... They were rude and completely not interested in actually helping... I was told time and again that I would have to send them the computer and should expect a minimum $700 fee for diagnosing the problem and maybe fixing it... as I started to google VAIO computers, I discovered whole chat rooms and websites for people who were struggling with Sony customer service... i saw countless other people recount the same problems I was having... yet, the Sony techs would say, "We've never heard of problems like yours..." In the end, my VAIO has simply crashed and is no longer booting at all... I am now $2300 poorer with nothing but a plastic box and a long headache to show for it... don't believe me? Google "VAIO WON'T BOOT" or something like that and see the hundreds of people out there with problems... there's even talk about a class action lawsuit against VAIO... I don't know anything about it but you can see it in the posts... My personal opinion: STAY AWAY FROM VAIO!!!

I have had my TX for 2 months and had the pleasure to travel with it. Battery life is excellent. I did add 1 gig of ram. Dragon Naturally speaking works well desopite the low power processor. The Cingular connection works but after using a broadband connection, it just a little bettter than dial up, but you do have a much expanded area of internet connectivity. The fan is a bit noisey. The bluetooth works well with my Dell Axim.
If you want to watch a movie on a plane, the volume is better in the windows mode than the AV mode. Over a very delightfull travel companion.

I bought the TX670P (not TX650P) for my wife as her birthday present last month, as she said she wanted to be able to carry her computer in whatever bag she was carrying that day.

At first, she said things like "I didn't want something this expensive." But, now she says stuff like "I don't like you touching my computer."

We went on a 15 day vacation to New Zealand, and used it pretty much for 1/2 hour to 1 hour daily for photo transfers and web reservations. We only had to charge it three times during this trip. We have a sony camera and two sony-ericsson cellphones with expandable memory. So, the memory-stick slot is a blessing! We took all of 15 minutes to cut 3 music CDs from my wife's phone, so we could have some music in the rental car.

With the 1 GB system memory, you don't experience any slowness, as long as you don't like to load useless programs in memory.

I'm now contemplating trading in my powerhouse 15.5 inch IBM notebook for a TX770P, as my shoulders have, strangley enough, started hurting from lugging its weight. :-)