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Recently I bought an Acer laptop and it lasted about two to three weeks before I had had enough and took it back for a full refund. It had some software issues, I didn’t like the way the keyboard felt or how the mouse pad and click buttons felt. I went to Best Buy and grabbed something different. I didn’t have much hope of finding a PC that I was going to be happy with, after all the duds I have dealt with over the years. Vista really turned my off when it was launched, and I would not even buy another PC if it had Vista installed. I had pretty much given up on the whole PC experience and was quite frustrated, but the reality of some of the software I needed to run was the I was stuck with owning at least one PC. We have two Macs in the house which we swear by and we know from experience are far superior computers, but we had to have at least one PC that worked okay.

So when I went to Best Buy to purchase a new PC for the first time in my life I was not excited at all about getting a new computer. The last two I had purchased (Toshiba Netbook and the Acer laptop) were big letdowns and it left a bad taste in my mouth. So I decided that when I bought this PC I would buy a brand that I have never owned before, and the model that was brand-new this year. I went straight to the Sony Vaio that was sitting on the shelf, touch the keys a little bit, and touch the mouse pad and click buttons a little bit. I asked a salesman to wrap up one of these new Sony laptops that had a decent sized screen and told him I had to get to the airport to catch a flight so that he would move fairly quickly and get this transaction over with. I really didn’t have any high hopes about the Sony brand either, but I had to give it a shot.

I don’t know why I didn’t have any great expectations regarding the Sony laptop, because we have two Sony big screens in the house (an old Sony 42 inch projection big-screen, and a 52 inch Sony LCD flatscreen) and they have been very solid. We also have a Sony cupboard mounted CD/radio in the kitchen, which has been very reliable and we had it for quite a while. I remember as a kid when the first small Sony Trinitron televisions came out and my father raved about them, and he bought one. The picture was much better than any of the other brands that were available in the stores in that small town, so the Sony brand had made an impression upon me quite early. But for some reason, even with that I was never really a promoter of Sony equipment. They always have a good reputation for making quality electronic equipment but for some reason I never really bought into it. Now it is different, because we go through a lot of computers and electronic equipment with our business and over the years the Sony equipment has held up the best.

So without believing all of the advertising hype and all of the happy Sony users out there, we came upon the realization that Sony may be the best brand out there from usage and experience, and not from blind faith in a review in a magazine or on a billboard, or on a cable television commercial.

Reviewing The Sony Vaio VGN-NW240D

So back to the Vaio VGN-NW240D notebook from Sony – so far I love this machine. The keyboard is extremely fast and reminds me of a Mac keyboard in color and key shape. I can type very quickly and smoothly and it’s quite enjoyable. The mousepad has a very nice feel to it which is smooth and quick. The click buttons are very responsive and give you the feeling of confidence that they won’t disintegrate with heavy usage.

The basic specs on the VGN-NW240D are as follows – (see here for complete specification details on the Sony web site);

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6600 processor (2.20GHz ) with Intel® Dual Core® processor technology with 4GB system memory
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive space with a max speed of 5400rpm
• display (screen) is 15.5″ and bright which I like very much
• DVD writer and Blue-Ray player
• front side bus speed is 800MHz using DDR2 (of course)
• 4GB PC2-6400 (2GBx2) with a max 8GB (as above on line 1)
• Intel® GM45 chipset (express)
• color is silver
• built in video camera
• OS – Window 7 Home Edition

So as usual I have run this machine hard to test it and in the past I have always been able to crash a Windows machine – no problem. Not so easy this time. The VGN-NW240D handled a serious load of applications without so much as hiccuping once. I ran all of these applications and processes at the same time and everything ran smoothly. Some of these programs are extremely taxing on any of the past machines I’ve owned.

• Macromedia Fireworks photo editing software
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software (transcribing from many digital voice recorder)
• Downloading data from the Internet
• Uploading a YouTube video
• Playing music through WinAmp
• Running Macromedia Dreamweaver in the background
• Running various other applications in the background
• Running a defragmentation and utilities

No kidding here – I ran all these programs simultaneously without even a glitch. I have never seen the blue screen of death and I have never had a crash, which is extraordinarily different in my experience with the use of PCs. I’ve been through Toshiba, Acer, Dell, Gateway, Hp, laptops and notebooks (and I know there are more in that list) over the years and I’ve never seen this kind of speed and power in a computer.

Windows 7 Home Edition

All I can say is wow – is it possible that Microsoft has finally got it together? I have been amazed at how well Windows 7 has been performing on this computer. It took a little bit to get used to using Windows 7 because I had always been using XP on every machine I own. It is somewhat like the Mac OS in that they have provided taskbar pinning functions at the bottom of the screen, and the search function is excellent. No more hunting through the control panel for utilities and programs. Just click the start button and type in what you are looking for, and instantly a menu fills up giving you links to the exact item you are looking for. Once you get used to this you’ll never want to go back to an old XP machine again. I was concerned that using the 64-bit operating system the computer would not be able to handle the software loads I put on, and have heard nothing but a nightmare stories about how much RAM Vista takes up when it is operating. I am so pleasantly surprised to see that this computer runs everything with ease and all of the bells and whistles that Windows 7 uses are actually usable!

For Disgruntled Microsoft and PC Users

So if you are one of those disgruntled Microsoft/PC users who was a professional and is sick and tired of the problems associated with the past notebooks and laptops on the market, you may want to consider trying one of these Sony Vaio notebooks before you jump off the ship and purchase your first Mac. Usually PC users who use their notebooks for professional reasons have no choice but to stay in the PC world because of the software they are running, and many of us have gone the route of buying a Mac and using the Mac Leopard boot camp utility to install Windows. I have gone that route, but it really was kind of a pain to use and I think that the Mac side of a hard disk was no longer performing at the capacity it is normally capable of. In the end, it is better to have your MacBook operating the Mac OSx by itself without any intrusion from the Windows installation, and it is better in my opinion to simply have a separate PC notebook to run your Windows operating systems. This has been our experience with our small business anyways.

I think that before us PC users finally throw in the towel and give up on Microsoft we need to hang in there and give it another try with these newer and more powerful machines. One thing for sure, if you have never used a Sony notebook it’s worth trying one out before you make any rash decisions and completely give up on PC machines and jump over to the Mac bandwagon. I think you will find using a new Sony Vaio running Windows 7 you’ll be overjoyed, or at least pleasantly surprised with the experience.

Sony Vaio Movie Story Software

The Vaio VGN-NW240D comes prepackaged with Microsoft’s Movie Story software which is their attempt at competing with the Mac iMovie application that comes for free with every Mac you buy. In my opinion, it doesn’t even come close. We tried using the software to make a quick movie for upload to YouTube, and it was chaotic to say the least. It doesn’t have the functions that iMovie has and isn’t user-friendly. They’ve got a long way to go if they ever want to catch up with Mac in the movie editing market. If I was to be honest about Sony’s Movie Story software would have to say that they were not really trying to compete with iMovie or Microsoft’s Movie Maker application. They could have honestly believed that this little bit of tripe would compete with these powerful programs. I uninstalled it immediately.

Don’t Get Me Wrong Though

Don’t get me wrong, if I could run all the programs I need for business on a Mac I would dump all PCs for good and for ever and say goodbye the Microsoft in a heartbeat, but the reality is that I am a long way from ever being able to do this. What I find frustrating is having to go between a Mac and the PC all the time and having to do some work on one operating system and then doing some other work on the other operating system. It would be nice to be able to do everything in one place it on one machine.

Here is a breakdown of which machines and operating systems I use for the different tasks on a daily basis;

Sony Vaio PC;

• Image editing with Macromedia fireworks
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation
• Macromedia Dreamweaver HTML editing
• Web browsing and research
• eMail
• Spreadsheets and documents using Windows office
• DVD burning
• Blogging

Mac Notebook;

• Image editing with Macromedia fireworks
• eMail
• Web browsing and online research
• Movie and video editing
• All music creation and audo editing
• Watching movies
• Traktor DJ Scratch Pro audio editing
• Garageband recording
• iTunes for all mp3 and music cataloging

I I think that pretty well covers the different tasks I carry out with my Sony Vaio and my Mac(s). My wife works in our business as well and she uses a new Mac notebook too because she doesn’t require any of the software I run on the PC. We finally had to break down and get her a good computer and I thought it was a great opportunity because she doesn’t have any long-lasting prior experience in the PC world, and I thought she may as well start and stay using a Mac going forward. She is getting used to it and I don’t think she will ever leave the Mac world.

How Much Did the Sony Vaio Cost?

The all-important question of cost. After taxes and accessories I spent just over $1000 on the Sony Vaio VGN-NW240D. Not a big deal and I feel that I got a much bigger bang for the buck than when I spent $1400 on my last computer which was a Gateway Notebook. Until I bought the Sony notebook I would have to say that the Gateway had been my best purchase. It lasted two years which is a very long time for me to own a PC because I beat these suckers to a pulp with traveling, extensive usage, and basically dropping them once in a while. I can be a bit of a savage goes to my computers because I see them as nothing more than tools that don’t have much of a butterfly feeling in my stomach when I think about computers and software – they are more like hammers and pickup trucks to me. I need to be solid, rugged, and reliable.

So far the Sony machine has been all of the above and perhaps I have found the right brand for all future PC purchases. Figures crossed.

Tags: acer, best, brand, laptop, mac, notebook, sony, sony vs mac, toshiba, vaio

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