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“The Sony VGN S3XP laptop is a superb little powerhouse...”

written by DrugBuddy on 18/07/2005

Good Points
Weight, size, speed/performance, display, sound card, recovery util.

Bad Points
Default HD partitioning, but see the review text.

General Comments
The Sony VGN S3XP laptop is a superb little powerhouse and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a laptop to do anything (other than gaming). I've had mine for a couple of months now.



I've had no performance issues at all - I run a variety of apps from Office to Cakewalk to SQL Server. No problems with peripherals either - WLAN is top notch, I use a Bluetooth mouse and never had any cat5 LAN issues. The display is excellent - it's a Sony, that's kinda taken as read. The keyboard and touchpad, considering it's such a small unit, are pretty much as you'd expect on a huge 15" clunker. The fan does kick in on battery quite often, it's pretty quiet though, no noisier than any other laptop I've had.



If I had any criticism, it would be the default disc partitioning (although, through my own stupidity, I realise why this is the way it is - see below). Straight out the box the S3XP has a C:=30Gig and D:=40Gig (plus recovery part). 'Cos it has just the one HD, I'd prefer to have one 70Gig partition, but there's no option.



I found the default partition setup quite annoying until I installed an old app that wasn't SP2 compliant and caused the DVD driver to go AWOL (still recognised as a CD drive tho'). I hadn't created recovery discs at that point, but after a short conversation with Sony's tech support, it was explained that I could recover by running the recovery tool locally. This might seem a little long winded, but from that experience I realised that Sony have put a lot of effort into user Disaster Recovery. As it turned out I could recover the C: partition AND keep all the data I'd copied onto D - about a 20 minute operation. There is another option to recover the entire HD. Anyway, lesson learned - create the recovery discs as soon as you get the fecker out the box....(and move you're My Documents folder to D:)



In summary, it's exactly what I was looking for and more. After the recovery experience, I can't really fault the S3XP on anything. As far as cost goes, I'd initially looked at the Dell M series, but once I'd spec'd their units to the S3XP's spec they're way over the Sony's asking price.



(I do have to add a footnote re: the 'heat'. Every review I'd read before buying and since mentions the right hand CPU cooler heat - or hard disc heat - que?!?!? I fully believe that the RH 'heat' is mentioned only because every other previous reviewer has mentioned it. CPUs get 'warm' and the S3XP gets 'warm'. If you don't like 'warm' don't buy it - or any other laptop for that matter!!)