I'm considering buying Sony VAIO laptop. Do you have any experience?

[petralap]

I'm considering buying a laptop Sony VAIO SZ 220 (Intel core duo 1.83 GHz, RAM of 1GB, hard disc of 120GB) mainly for photo editing. I'm an amature photographer currently traveling for a year around South America. I have to process (select/edit) high number of pictures of very high resolution therefore I need a fast computer. As I travel I need something light.

Sony Vaio (together with Mac) was recommeded to me as a good laptop for graphic/picture editing. It is also extremely light (1.6 kg) and has an carbon and aluminium body.
I'd prefer PC to Mac as the new MacBook has been reported to have several defaults. It might be good buying it in a year time or so. But I need something reliable now. It is also much havier than Vaio.

Any suggestions/recommendations will be very appreciated.

Many thanks,
Petra

 

[kelox]

this is a decent machine, looks solid although i have no experience with it. i'm sure you'll be happy with it. let us know what you deceide.

 

[Iron Flatline]

I just bought that laptop (SZ 280) for the same reason. Light, great monitor, good for photography, prefer Windows. It's got a great keyboard for a fat-finger typist like myself. I'm quite pleased with it. There's a lot of software that it ships with for the purpose of up-selling you to buy it. Uninstall it or at least make sure it's not running in the background using up processor resources. I wish it had a built-in CF card reader, but Sony has their proprietary Memory Stick. Oh well. I have a little PCMCIA - CF card reader that slots in the side.

I recommend this laptop. Just be gentle with it, it's a little more fragile than your standard office laptop.

 

[petralap]

Many thanks for your response. It's very useful.
I heard about the problem of the Sony software that comes with the Windows XP and I heard that it is very difficult to uninstall it completely including the entries. Therefore, I'm buying just XP home and will try to buy XP Pro separately on a CD (quite diffecult to get hold of in Colombia where I'm right now) and reinstall/reformate the whole computer with the clean version of XP Pro. Then I will add just those programs that I really want. Hope this will work as I'm not that PC skilled..

You also mention that the pc you've got is SZ 280. I'm buying SZ 220 (the best you can get in Colombia) with increased RAM to 1GB (it comes with Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz as I mentioned). So I hope it is a similar thing to the one you have.

I also use CF cards (I have Nikon D200 - well recommended). It would be nice to put them directly to the pc. Well doing it via the camara is not that big deal.

Thanks also for the worning about the fregility. I'll try to get extra buffered second skin and will try to be extra gentle with it when traveling.

Cheers,

Petra

 

[Becky]

Hey there, I use a Sony Vaio at the minute as well as my pc. No probs whatsoever so far, love the black LCD screens they use too... I use mine mainly for university work such as autocad etc and also do a lot of photoshopping on there... nice bright screen makes a big difference!