Item : B001PII4HC Customer Reviews Tiny, feather-light and beautiful by .. John Davis (San Diego, CA) I am an early adopter and gadget freak. I took a long time researching options before deciding on the Sony VAIO VGN-P530H/W Lifestyle PC (1.33 GHz Intel Processor, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive with G-Sensor, Vista Basic) White. I could not be more happy with the purchase. My Expectations Do not expect a gaming PC if you purchase the Lifestyle PC. It is slow. The text is very small. Vista sucks, but it really sucks on an ATOM CPU. So, there are compromises. What you can expect is an amazingly minute PC. It weighs next to nothing. And, its beauty is unparalleled. My Experience When unpacking the Lifestyle PC and getting it up and running I was disappointed that the Quick Start Guide had a "misprint." The guide instructs the purchaser to check supplied items and lists them. "Noise canceling headphones (*on selected models only)" is on the list, but not in the package. I called Sony about this. They told me it was a misprint. I suspect the Sony rep was not well informed and the truth is that the lowest priced Lifestyle PC is not a selected model. In any event, do not expect to find this item in the package. Getting things ready takes awhile, but it is an easy process. The time is a normal Vista install thing. I had to increase the size of the text a bit (60 year-old eyes), but the screen is surprisingly bright and the tiny text is surprisingly clean and clear enough to read without a magnifying glass. For me, the benefits of the 1600 x 768 resolution far outweigh any minor inconvenience caused by having to read minuscule text. My Solutions Speed: The only serious problem I have with the speed of the Lifestyle PC is the time it takes to start up. So, I leave the unit in Sleep mode whenever I store it away in my waist pack. This is accomplished easily by simply closing the clam shell. When you open the PC again Vista pops up instantly. If you leave the computer closed long enough (the time period is user-configurable) it will Hibernate to save battery power. It takes Vista too long to reload the desktop when coming out of Hibernate, so this option is not a good solution. I have tested it and leaving the PC in Sleep mode for 12 hours consumes about 20% of the standard capacity battery, 10% of the large capacity battery. This is an acceptable use of power resources for the convenience of "instant on" functionality, for me. The alternate Instant Mode (Linux) is an awesome feature of the Lifestyle PC. It is not only fast, it provides about 90% of what I need from a PC. Most of my computing is now done in the cloud. My need for installed software in Vista is minimal. One caveat here: The installed Firefox browser provided in Instant Mode is a dumbed-down version of Firefox. I have not yet researched hacks to resolve this issue. I will because I must be able to run Firefox plug-ins that I rely on and I suspect there is a not-too-difficult way around the Sony-Microsoft imposed limitations on Firefox available from Instant Mode. I'll post information about this matter when I have it figured out. Finally, the wireless features of the Lifestyle PC are wonderful. The process of using WiFi and Bluetooth are so smooth and simple that anyone should have no trouble using these wireless tools. 3G is another irritant. This time it is Sony-Verizon imposing limitations on functionality. The Lifestyle PC has all of the hardware needed to setup the built-in WWAN with just about any provider, but it too has been dumbed-down. I will not support Verizon. They are being pulled kicking and screaming to give users access to free and powerful tools. Instead, they have expensive proprietary tools they want to force on users. Sony is assisting them. A pox on both of their houses. I use an awesome T-Mobile G1 mobile phone. Fortunately, it is open-source (Android) and there is a plethora of software out there that allow the phone to perform miracles. I can easily tether the G1 to the Lifestyle PC and have easy, no additional cost, no problem broadband Internet access by connecting the G1 to the Lifestyle PC using a USB cable. Wow! This setup really works. I notice only a slight speed reduction between using the Internet at home via WiFi on my cable provided service and 802.11n router and using the Internet when I'm out-and-about by connecting via a tethered 3G setup on my G1. If you have appropriate expectations, you will fall in love with a Lifestyle PC. Just becuase it has Vista by .. N. Sanchez (TX) I'm writing this review becuase I'm not happy at all becuase of the Vista. I don't know what Sony was thinking or if they were thinking at all. The quality is good, but were is the quality test control center? Its a 1.33 GHz which is very slow! It's slower that older computers. I don't even care if it saves electricity either way its going to waste your time. Nice piece of hardware but vista is SLOW! by .. D. Singleton (Baltimore, MD USA) I really like this device but Vista really limits its full potential. Vista bogs it down. Takes forever to resume from standby mode and takes a really long time to boot up from power up. Otherwise, Sony has cranked out an awesome device. I carry it with me all the time. Great laptop, but not for everybody by .. Juan Alvarez (São Paulo, Brazil) I was one of the first people to buy one of these and have been using it since the beginning of February. (Bought the VGN-P530H) This is my main computing device that I use 12-16 hours a day and I love it, but it is not for everybody. I travel a lot, nearly all of it internationally, and often in economy. This is a laptop that you can use on the smallest of tray tables, even with the seat in front of you fully reclined. I bought the leather pouch accessory and often carry the laptop around in it. It's great to just be able to walk by my desk, toss it in the pouch and go to a meeting and then pull it out if I need it. Since it is only about the size of a notepad, it's easy to carry around everywhere, to situations I wouldn't want the bother of a laptop bag. The laptop appears sturdily built for the rigors of road warrior travel. Since February, I've flown more than 50K miles with it, including a 2 week vacation in Japan where we visited 11 cities. It's taken its fair share of bumps and doesn't show it. I originally bought this for my wife but began using it as my own when my company provided Dell E4200 broke in its 3rd week (the monitor backlighting electronics burned out). While the monitor lid is not thicker than other models, it seems to be more resilient because of the smaller surface area. The Vaio P is visually attractive. When using it in the executive lounge in the airport or on a plane, people will often come up to ask what model it is. The screen quality is amazing, especially when you consider they packed 1600x768 pixels into that tiny screen. You'll need 20-20 vision or better to be able to comfortably read this screen, which will be a deal breaker for lot of people. If you're unsure, try one out in a store before buying. Setting the icons and text to a larger size can help. One of the things that I don't like about the laptop is that it does not have and lower resolutions that are in proportion. For example, the next lower resolutions are 1024x768 and 800x600 which appear distorted since they are out of proportion compared to the native resolution. There are times when I'm in a bumpy car or somewhere else with a lot of motion and use the 800x600, but it would be nice if they had something more proportional like 800x400 or 1024x500. Love the keyboard and the pointer stick (I can't stand track pads). The right shift key is unusually sized and placed, it drove me nuts for about 2 weeks until I got used to it. The power adaptor is small. There are no ports for Ethernet and VGA on the laptop, you need to plug in the included dongle for that. The dongle is fairly small and clips on to the power adaptor brick. The only thing I didn't like about the dongle is that it does not have little LEDs on the Ethernet port that show the status of the Ethernet connection. This is a useful features for travelers - to know more quickly if the port you plugged into is live or not. The laptop came with Verizon 3G, which has a nice prepaid option where you can buy service for $9.95 a day, without entering into a contract, which is nice compared to buying WiFi access in hotels, since you can use it anywhere you have coverage for the day. (I didn't find any coverage holes on my trips to southern California, Chicago, Northern Virginia, Baltimore and Miami) However, since most of my travel is outside the US, where the card does not seem to work, this is a mostly useless feature for me and it would have been nice to be able to trade it for something more useful like, GPS. A few things I didn't like: The main issue we had with the laptop was poor performance with Windows Vista. As installed, it is unacceptably slow for regular everyday use. We installed the beta of Windows 7 on the laptop and it is working fine. Installing Windows 7 on the laptop is a breeze, the only drivers I downloaded were for the video and the network. I have been running with this laptop as my main computer for the last few weeks (on Windows 7) and the performance is not an issue opening web pages, outlook, powerpoint, excel and word at the same time. Things will start to slow down with too many (e.g., 8 Firefox windows, outlook, 2 powerpoint presentations and 3 excel sheets) - closing a few windows will bring back the zippiness. We didn't get the SSD and I wouldn't bother. I keep a fast 32GB SDHC card in the SD bay to increase the storage size since 64GB can be a little limiting. The battery life is not great - with WiFi on, I get less than 2 hours battery life. A little more than 2 hours with the WiFi off. The power adaptor outputs a non-standard voltage: 10.5V, so you will not be able to use it with nearly any universal power supply or universal laptop batteries (like the ADC). Together with the low battery life, this is a serious problem on trips. A word to the wise, contrary to some misleading information on the Vaio website, this laptop does *not* come with GPS or any navigation software. I was very disappointed about this, as the website intro to this product implies they have it and the sales rep that sold me my laptop over the phone confirmed that the laptop definitely does come with GPS. To the best of my knowledge, none of the P-series laptops Sony is selling in North America come with GPS. We came very close to returning the laptop for this reason alone. Another thing to be wary about - the sales rep tried to sell me an Ethernet/VGA dongle when the laptop already comes with one. The WiFi card does not support 5GHz WiFi N - this is disappointing in a brand new premium laptop since this has been available on many laptops since the middle of last year. Also, the laptop does not have an easily found serial number on the bottom. This may sound nitpicky, but it's a problem for those of us that visit buildings that require registering the laptops with a serial number before entering and upon leaving. In summary, this may sound like a lot of things not to like for someone who loves the laptop, but I wanted to be complete as this laptop is not for everybody. I love the smaller size and that for such a small size it has such a nice keyboard, screen resolution and reasonable performance on Windows 7. More memory, a faster processer and a larger disk would be nice, but I can get by. The bigger problem is the battery life and I'll probably be getting an extended battery in the future to solve that. The Vaio P is also reasonably rugged - my last 2 laptops were a Dell E4200 and a Sony TZ-200 both of which developed screen problems and needed repair on my first or second trip with them (and neither suffered any significant abuse). I'd give it 4 stars, but am docking Sony 1 star for being misleading about the GPS. Would be great, if it worked.... by .. Jeffrey A. Thomson (Seattle, WA USA) Well, would be a great computer - if it worked.... Ordered the cute little red PC from Sony direct.... Would have been nice if they loaded the operating system on to the computer correctly. It is hard to imagine how a PC can pass Sony quality control if Windows was not loaded. Sony is going to take 10-14 days to replace it... I have asked for a refund as I do not want to deal with Sony's poor customer service in the future. Think long and hard about buying a Sony PC... In this day where you can get a computer basically at your local 7-11, customer service matters as much as the quality of the hardware. In my case, Sony Customer Service let me down. Jeff Thomson