Personal

View Craig Eisler's profile on LinkedIn

Welcome to my personal blog. This is full of my opinions. Not Microsoft's or MacBU's opinions - mine. And remember, this is the internet, so I probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

Favorite Reads

Categories

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

« July 9, 2005 | Main | July 15, 2005 »

July 12, 2005

Sony T-T370P laptop reviewed


I just got my new Sony T-370P laptop tonight. I had the predecessor to this laptop - the TR series. I got it in March of 2004, and what is impressive about Moore's law is that it is already discontinued. I loved my Sony TR - the xbrite screen kicks some serious a**, and the form factor ROCKS for constant travel (even when the person in front of you tips their seat all the way back, you can still use it). I had an extended battery on the thing, and so I could do 4-5 hours of DVD playback - enough to cover me coast to coast no matter what.

So why upgrade? Well, aside from the fact that it had had the holy snot beaten out of it over the past 15 months, the new one looked very appealing.
  1. 60gb harddrive vs 40gb - I was out of disk space constantly on my TR as I like to keep a bunch of my boys' photos on it, plus I have a truckload of software
  2. 1.2ghz processor vs 1.0ghz - hey, 20% faster is 20% faster. Centrino processors are too darned slow no matter how you slice it. What we really need is a low power, low cost, dual core 4.0ghz extreme edition P4. But since that doesn't appear on the Intel roadmap (dammit!), I'll live with my 20% improvement.
  3. Built in bluetooth - don't have to carry the darned bluetooth USB dongle any more!
  4. 802.11G vs 802.11b - 5 times faster access to the network. While 54mbps on wireless is nowhere near as fast as 54mbps on wireline, it is still 5 times faster than 11mbps on wireless - and so copying all those pictures is way faster.
    5. >Built in GPRS+EDGE network for when no wifi is available - of course, you have to pay $50 a month to Cingular to get it, but that isn't a bad deal at all if you want to be always online.
  5. DVD+R dual layer burner vs CD burner - well heck, might as well be able to burn 8.5gb DVDs if you are going to have a media drive.
  6. 3.1 vs 3.5 pounds. That is 0.4 pounds lighter for the same battery life - why, that's over 10% lighter. Since my ideal travel scenario is teleporting with luggage floating in a zero gravity field, 10% lighter is at least a step in the right direction.
  7. Usabilty improvements. both USB ports are on the same side now, and the DVD/CD drive is on the side instead of the front so you can't eject by accident nearly as easily

So in short, my T-370P from Sony kicks butt. If you travel a lot, need long battery life, decent performance, and light weight, you will be hard pressed to do a better.

Posted by Craig at 10:52 PM |

Comments