My overall impression is that Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B Laptop is a good value laptop.
1. Spec.
Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B Laptop has 2.4GHz C2D P8600 processor, which is fast enough for most tasks you can have today, even for some scientific computations (I use matlab to do simulations). Memory is ample, 4GB. Although with 64bit Vista, the system will start up with about 1.3GB memory used, you still have enough left. Hard disk is 7200rpm 320GB, fast, VERY quiet and large. The best part of this computer is the blu-ray rom and FULL HD 1080p LCD! I like that. The blu-ray rom have two laser diodes, one for blu-ray reading, one for normal DVD/CD reading and writing. The full HD 1920×1080 LCD is amazing! Everything is crisp clear! For small font, you can easily change the DPI setting to make it large and clear without running in lower resolutions. I think the LCD is a little bit TOO bright, I have to run at 50% brightness to make my eyes comfortable. The graphics card is ATI 3650 with 512MB graphics memory. I can run Battlefield 2 with Project Reality mode in medium settings without problem. 3 USB ports are enough however they are all crowded on the right side of the laptop, which is very odd. Bluetooth and wireless works very well. HDMI connection is also quite convenient: you only need one cable to send both video and audio to your HDTV. I use a Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV, and the movie experience is fantastic! It has a build in SD card reader and sony memory stick slot. Overall, the spec is very good, I will give it 5/5.
2. Building quality
Well, at this price, you should not expect every details are built perfectly. Actually I found the plastic used in this laptop is quite cheap-feeling (all the outer shell of the computer is plastic except the small cover over the speakers which is metal). The black outer cover is rough and feels easy to crack. Not as good as my thinkpad’s rubbery shell (Dell also have the similar rubbery shell in the XPS laptop line). As many people have said, the hinge connecting the display to the main body doesn’t look very tough. The keyboard feels just fair. Not as good as a thinkpad, again, this is a value notebook, not a business class. The keyboard of my laptop has right side lower than the left side. Not a problem for use but you can see the building quality here. The touch pad’s buttons are really hard to use. It is a little bit recessed into the main body. I think it is designed so as users won’t accidentally click on it. But it is really hard to find it when are looking at the screen. And the buttons are hard to push: feels like 2lb push. Overall, the computer is not built as good as thinkpad, I will give it 3/5.
3. Software
Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B Laptop comes with Vista Home Premium 64bit. It takes a lot of memory to run this OS. There are also a lot of trial software which are useless (to me at least). So the first thing I got this computer is to remove all those useless software. Sony has some "computer tune up" software which will clean the disk and registry to keep your computer fast. I haven’t use it a lot but I think this is quite useful. It is true that you can download this kind of things over the internet, but this one comes from sony, which makes me feel safer to let it modify and clean windows registry. WinDVD for Blu-ray movie is pretty good. Comparing the PowerDVD, the UI of WinDVD is a little bit too simple. But WinDVD can play HD movie with less CPU usage. That means, less consumption of power, which is good when you run on battery to watch HD movie. So overall, software is pretty good, I give it 4/5.
4. Blu-ray playback experience
The major reason I bought Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B Laptop is for the blu-ray movie playback capability. Besides the blu-ray rom, this machine has a full HD 1920×1080 display itself and it has HDMI to easily connect to HDTVs. So you have a mobile blu-ray player at home, almost! I said almost because the sound is not HD quality, which is a not too small drawback. The sound chip of the computer is Realtek HD audio, which is supposed to have the capability to support 5.1 speakers. But because of the OS is Vista (again it’s vista’s fault), there is no Realtek driver for windows vista to support 5.1 speakers. The only option you have is stereo two speakers. If you use the TV’s two small speakers to play the sound, it is ok but if you connect the signal to 5.1 speakers, only the front left and right speakers have sound. The middle one (which should be the major one) and all rear surround speakers are muted. Sounds like a huge disappointment. However I think this is only the driver issue. Maybe (only maybe) in the near future, there will be some Realtek HD driver for vista to support 5.1 speakers. And then this issue will be gone. So for HD playback I give it 3/5.
So overall, you can’t expect Sony VAIO VGN-FW373J/B Laptop to be perfect to every detail. But you know the spec is good enough for the price.Laptop Reviews Sony Laptops
Hello,
Quick question.. I just purchased this one today and wanted to know if both the HDMI and VGA connections can be used for output? I bought this assuming I can do a triple monitor setup but have found no comments on this. Help?