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.

Amazing laptop

I've been looking for a laptop for a while (to replace a 6 year old, much loved laptop) and could not decide, but finally took the plunge for this one. Expensive, yes, but hugely impressive performance, coping with importing video, playing music, surfing the web and emails all at the same time. I guess for this money you would expect that, but amazing nonetheless. Looks fantastic too and seems really well built. I've no regrets, even if the credit card has taken a hit.