'Old' Apple 1 GHZ PB G4 17 inch BLASTS Sony's Vaio 1,7 GHZ 17 inch AWAY !

[cigar]

I posted this personal review of mine already in dutch and a certain sneaky thief of legal software who does it under the name of "i am a tester", called it a fake review despite that he didn't have any proof otherwise and therefore makes his accusation as flame-bs.

Anyhow a friend of mine invited me a while ago at his office and asked me to bring along my old Alu.17 inch PB (aka Bismarck for me)to be compared against his new bought Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 wich looks almost like Apple's previous powerbook the Titanium powerbook.
Said and done i took my old PB 17 inch from behind the class vitrine and took it to his office where i put it on the table next to the latest notebook of Sony.

First of all:
Sony is known to make the most beautiful designs of the PC world.Stylish, crisp clear screens etc are it's main features from the outside. That said the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 looks from a distant beautiful and gives you even if you look inside the matching folder that "lust" factor.Looking closer in real-life like i did on the table that disappears and you begin to see the cheap carbon cover on the notebook the kindda of cover wich has that *tick*tick* sound if you knock and touch it.Compare that to the smooth Titanium of better Aluminium cover when you touch the Apple powerbook and you feel the difference in hardware already as a whole.
But enough of that: Let's see how this Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 behaves compares to the old Alu.PB 17 inch.
1st
The specifications of the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 are here to be seen, and the technical specifications of the Alu.battle-ship are likewise here.

2nd: The first thing i did was checking the time on reboot.Both were on a wireless company-network and were clocked after they were locked down and rebooted by pressing the "on" buttons on both.
Remarkable! The old Alu.17 inch PB showed it's desktop after 27 seconds! while the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 was still strubbling and trying to show it's desktop.

3rd: was a simple browser-test.
I typed in the website of CNN and behold,the old Alu.17 inch PB showed the website after 6 seconds while the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 was trying to load the page and showed it after +/- 45 seconds!
Maybe it was the website itself and the traffic of that moment.So i typed in another website,that of the dutch TV broadcasting NOS.Again the old Alu.17 inch PB safari-browser showed the website after 5 seconds.The explorer of the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 showed the NOS website after! 55 seconds!
As i said before; this was a simple browser-test of 2 website's and thusfar the latest Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 lagged big-time behind the old Alu.17 inch PB.Needless to say that i didn't take the time to have a test with Photoshop or encoding some video-files cause why should i when with simple-tests the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 loses big time to the old Alu.17 inch PB?
4th:
Let's see how the lid of both notebooks behaves when closing it.TheSony Vaio VGN-A1175 has a plastic-stickin'out-black button wich one has to press very hard with your thumb while holding the screen with your other hand when you push it up cause if not, the notebook as a whole will move from it's place ot even fall.That harsh is it. The old Alu.17 inch PB on the other hand has a smooth way of opening. Just presh the small metalic button and it flips open automatically and one can easily push with the other hand the lid further open.No sliding of the notebook here as with the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175.
When one opens the lid of the notebook the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 is not wakening up and has to be rebooted to show the last action it made before it was closed down.The old Alu.17 inch PB on the other hand shows when the whole lid is reopend it's final action therefore awakening from it's "sleeping' position.
Ok...does the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 at least has something to bragg about on a hardware level? Yes... it screen with the automatic luminance sensor en x-black LCD is in my view more crisper then the Apple's 17 inch.Also the screen is 1920x1200 and it has a DVD RW +!

To conclude it all:

Despite the Sony Vaio VGN-A1175 is the best Sony has to offer on the notebook-front, it seems it still lacks waaaaay behind Apple's innovative and slick powerbooks.

[fryke]

Erhm... And you're sure that this Sony's web settings were not set to first look for some autoconfiguring proxy server, which would explain the delay before showing anything? Your 'review' is quite clearly off the mark. This must have been one _badly_ configured Sony notebook... I'm glad this is in the opinions forum, for it certainly isn't a _review_...

[Viro]

Agreed. Something must be wrong for the Sony vaio to take that long to load a website. It must be searching for the DNS or something like that. I know that was a problem when I had a windows laptop.

[Zammy-Sam]

God, the 17'' alubook simply looks perfect. Does anyone care for anything else?

[cigar]

" fryke " wrote:
Erhm... And you're sure that this Sony's web settings were not set to first look for some autoconfiguring proxy server, which would explain the delay before showing anything? Your 'review' is quite clearly off the mark. This must have been one _badly_ configured Sony notebook... I'm glad this is in the opinions forum, for it certainly isn't a _review_...

I dunno about the delay in the showing of the Sony website cause i'm not the one who put those websites up in the air.But it is kindda disturbing.Regarding beeing clear of the mark.Let me put things clearly: Those 'amateur' reviews i read online of various socalled 'professional' reviewers of mostly FANSITES! are as 'professional' as mine.Meaning they are not more worthy as a review then my personal opinion as i wrote above.
Besides that: Most professional reviews from websites like Cnet or Apple itself are as biased as the persons who write about it cause...it is their PAID job! therefore givin'it a biased label in my view.
Suggesting that the Sony notebook was bad configured is off the mark cause it suggests that something was done to make it look bad.Unless you have a proove of that, your remark is uncalled for. This review/opinion/ was a simple handsdown test to see by doing a limited handling on how it behaves compared to an Apple notebook.Nothing more nothing less.
I've heard before that one can only call( or name) such a review legit or whatever if one does certain tests like the professional websites do (those technical spec's Cnet or PC World etc do)BS to the fullest like that is the standard. Anyone who isn't reviewing as part of his job doesn't have to follow those socalled 'industry standards'like fansites like to bragg about.
So to conclude it all:

A review is also partly an personal opinion/experience of something and therefore legit.

[Satcomer]

That is a good "opinion" cigar .

[fryke]

cigar: Get a grip. You're posting your 'review' as a new thread and already defend your opinion before anyone here attacked it. Doesn't _that_ show you that something's wrong? The Sony taking 40 seconds or more to load a website that another computer takes 5 seconds for shows me (and I've supported many Macs and PCs in the past and present) that the PC is looking for a proxy server. Just believe me: In 90% of the cases where IE on a PC takes a long while before showing a page (or part of it), the browser is looking for automatic proxy settings, which is the default setting, but many ISPs just don't provide such an automatic proxy server setting. That's not opinion, that's experience talking.

I'm sure you _liked_ seeing your PowerBook win, and I'm happy you're happy with Apple. But your review is, to use your own language, BS.

And while we're at 'your language': Watch it, please. We have very strict rules regarding the use of profanity in posts...

[Lycander]

My 2 cents:

People here who know me, know that I was getting a bad wrap for just coming in here and bashing Macs, defending Wintel. For the record I love/hate both equally and I just try to find answers and point things out. With that said...

- Windows Networking Wizard is garbage. Not only did it not fix my networking issue, it screwed things up even more. Whether or not people believe me, I do believe I have the credentials to be troubleshooting computers. And in my utmost unbiased and professional opinion, Windows' auto network configuration is a bad thing that should not be trusted. Should have just done it myself.

- MacOSX: DHCP, nuff said. I get an IP address, netmask, and DNS, that's all I need and all I want. I do not need other weird network settings.

The basis of my conclusions is on "out-of-the-box" configurations, and "wizards" that the average user will be exposed to. More savvy users tend to avoid wizards and default settings, manually making those settings themselves.