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my own rules would be to pick a business class laptop. however, against my better judgement i am picking the Sony VGN-TZ11XN/B. but for an eye-watering £1580 ($3160) it's very steep. however, imo it's an absolute gem with 7+ hours battery life and extreme portability. since this is sony's first incarnation of this line, i think we can expect faster revisions in the not too distant future.
Is that the one with the LED screen? I think I looked at that one as well. Then I realized I could deck out a XPS m1330 for like $400 less. Weighs about 1lb more overall, and battery life isn't quite 7hrs, but still pretty good.
I'm also looking at the new Asus business line. The V2S I think. At 14" it's a little bigger than I wanted, and I think it's another 1lb on top of the XPS, but again, better specs and several hundred less.
The Asus isn't out, and the XPS has over a month build times currently, so I'm not in a huge rush to decide.
yes it is. with a carbon fibre chassis to boot, it's quite durable. now, if sony will just release a model with a faster cpu, as in not just confine it to the ULV chips. i might actually consider one.Quote:
Originally Posted by dizzy49
*can't believe i am considering a sony laptop lol*
The ULV chips are the basis for the long battery run times.
very true, but i don't mind sacrificing a couple hours for a faster cpu. would be nice if sony gave us a choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by ua549
Another thing is that those battery run times are advertised, not actual.
In a normal operating environment the battery run times are usually less than half of the advertised times.
I can get 6 hours runtime on my Latitude D620 w/C2D T-7200 (max power saving mode) in a totally darkened room with the backlight at its lowest setting, turning off the networks and running a single application that does not use the hard drive.
During normal use (max power saving mode) in natural sunlight with the backlight on automatic, 2 networks running and a handfull of applications running and accessing the hard drive 2 or 3 times a second, I can squeeze out 1 or 2 hours of run time if I'm lucky. Even with the backlight turned up full the LCD is barely readable.
I have the D630 w/ the 9 cell battery (looks like a mini-wrist rest sticking out the front) and I get about 4 hours of solid runtime, with bluetooth and wifi running (and even cellular if I'm using that card), 50% screen brightness and standard business usage (multiple apps open, internet traffic flow, etc). I'm actually highly impressed that I get so much run time out of it.
I have the same 9 cell battery as you have. I'm on the second one in 7 months. I'm usually running internal Bluetooth and 2 internal Wi-Fi cards, 7200 rpm drive and the DVD drive (read only). When indoors, I plug into a gigabit LAN and turn off one Wi-Fi card.
IMO Its the backlight that makes the difference. At 50% brightness my screen is not readable indoors during the day. At full brightness it is barely visible outdoors. The sun is much brighter 400+ miles further south than you are.