Hooray for Vaio

Fantastic, quality laptop delivered top speed. Very easy to use. I would happily recomend this item and Amazon to anyone. Top notch. My first laptop and couldn't be happier.

Didn't work

When we received the remote control it stated that it was for the USA region only
Great !! we live in the UK

very impressed

this laptop was excellent value for money.
its got a good look and ive not had any major problems with it, though i have found that the touchpad sometimes seems to be less sensitive than at other times.
the only thing this model lacks is extra keys for music/dvd controls.
overall im impressed and it does everything i need it to do.

For business users

TZ line remains to be a good candidate for business category. Note that there are different models available for CPU, memory and HD.

It's clear to me from its characteristics that this was not designed for everybody. It's mostly for mobile office use, such as for business and journalism. If you are after a budget or gaming laptop, you are not its target demography. This laptop's strength boils down to several things: size, weight, display legibility, battery life and keyboard. These define the 'ultraportable' market, and this model attacks this territory very well.

Size and weight are immediately noticeable. It's so thin and small, just by how much might not sink in till you see it in real life. I slot this into my small bag for A4 documents and go to work. Despite that the small screen is gorgeous - crystal clear, vivid and metal sharp so that it's easy to see/read. Whatever they've done to it, they've done it well.

Battery life for me is around 7 hours, which isn't as long as stated. I suppose this varies depending on your usage. I mainly use Word, Excel, Visual Studio, Firefox/Thunderbird and mp3/DVD playback from time to time.

The keyboard looks odd, but this alongside the cylindrical hinge design comes from Sony's 505 revision series from several years ago. I think they did the right thing by bringing it back. It feels odd at first, but a week is enough to get used to it. For me it's not as good as IBM's legendary Thinkpad keyboard, but it comes close considering the keyboard is smaller than usual.

Less important for me, but they squeezed in a DVD RW/DL drive, which is a nice touch for such a compact model.

CPU and GPU seem to be the area where the sacrifice comes in, mostly likely to push down the cost and improve battery life. Then again, what it comes with is more than adequate for its target demography; you won't even think about it after opening it.

Then comes the ugly side - the junk software, or bloatware as it's called these days. I fail to understand why they include so much rubbish in what is otherwise a perfectly good laptop. Do they get paid for including all this crap? I recommend that you do a bit of tidying up.

In conclusion, Sony has made a great ultraportable for a niche market, focussing very much on the city-goer's market. The big price tag only goes to reinforce that point alongside its design, which is an icing on the cake - something about this laptop screams quality. It has a clean, subtle design that gives a luxurious overtone. I can't put a figure on why, but it looks so precious, so much so that I'm beginning to think showing it off in public places is dangerous.

It's easy to miss the point of ultraportable's market, because conventionally people look for power in PCs. I would suggest that you consider your requirements carefully before investing in this one, otherwise you will not only waste money, you will likely undervalue its strengths as well. But provided that you fall into ultraportable market, you will be hard pushed to find a better laptop than this - for now.

Powweful portable notebook

This is pretty much top spec mobile computing.
The processor and speed are fast, good size hard drive and comes with built in 3G card. The screen is very thin and the display is excellent. The carbon fibre case makes it light also. Battery is between 2.5 hours and around 5 depending on what power management system you use. Fingerprint recognition is useful also.
Only downsides are the price, problems with Windows Vista Business and the bundled Sony software and continued Sony updates that keep popping up.
You can now get this for around £1100 if you shop around since Sony have just launched the SZ71 which has 200gb hard drive and a slightly faster processor.

a good laptop

ive got a sony fz21s (t7500 2.2gh 4mb cache,2gb ram, 8600 gs graphics, wireless N, 200gb HD + blu-ray) which is the same as the new 31s but with a dif processor and hard drive as far as i know.

im happy with it. the minor points are - left 'ctrl' key is v. dodge, battery life is poor (although the new t8100 would improve things), the screen is a little heavy, there is no remote control and the laptop itself feels delicate and would definately break if i dopped it, its also expensive.

its fairly quiet (sounds like a vacuum cleaner in the very far distance), looks sleek and tidy, is quite light and has a bright screen. the speakers are average, touchpad is good and the computer runs smoothly.

the sony is a good choice and im pleased with mine. 4 me it was between sony, hp and dell. the blu-ray clinched the deal.

Lots of trouble for me...

This notebook gets EXTREMELY HOT!!!
All i have had with this notebook is trouble.
Be careful

NOT TELETEXT Version

Although this Sony remote is well made and robust it is advertised as the suffix 't' model.( 't' for Teletext I presume ). However,when it arrived (viaUSA?) it DOES NOT have dedicated Teletext oolour coded buttons.This might not bother some customers,but I would prefer the UK version for ease of use.