Re: OT: Ultraportables--recommendation sought

[Si Wright xywrite4@xxxxxxxx]

On the ultraportable front,  you should look at Sony's cute little VAIOs in the VGN-TX** series like this one. Pricier and slightly slower than the Lenovo (1.2 vs. 1.5 Ghz), but it's an entire computer, with no outboards necessary.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2573106&Sku=S168-TXN15P/B&SRCCODE=BIZRATE&CMP=OTC-BIZRATE

It's smaller than an 8.5"  x 11" sheet of paper and feels nearly as thin, partly through eye-tricking design.

I have the VGN-TX650P, while the newer version has more memory and double the hard drive (80GB). .

The screen is an inch smaller diagonally than the X41, and it is bright and sharp--blacks are very black. . It also has a built-in CD/DVD RW drive and still weighs 2.84 lbs.

Mine gets a lot of use and has had a lot of travel, and except for some scratches on the screen from my carelessness, it's holding up quite well.  My wife's is in even
 better shape.

It's not the fastest bootup I've ever seen, but it's not bad once you prune some Sony services (and in my case, Quicktime and iTunes Helper and Real and Symantec Automatic Live Update) from the Startup configuration. You can always Hibernate rather than shut down for a fast reboot.

And it comes with XP Pro, which I hope to cling to for as long as possible rather than accept Vista.

It has become my fulltime computer. Easily runs XY4 with Tame 5 (I never upgraded after bad experiences, and probably won't.)

Of course  it's still bigger than my beloved videocassette-sized Toshiba  Libretto 70 CT running Win98SE and making XY feel completely at home. But eventually the processor speed (120 Mhz) and lack of USB capability put that one on the shelf. 

Jon Pareles


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