Sony Vaio VGN T350P
The Sony Vaio VGN T350P costs about 1800-2300$ depending where you buy it form and when you read this
CPU, memory, slots, features …
So let’s see… it has a 10.4 inch super bright display, very small size compared to other laptops, 512MB Ram memory, 1.2Ghz Intel Centrino Processor with 2MB cache. 60GB hard disk drive. Intel 82855 GME graphics card, total weight is 3.1 lb. IEEE 1394 Firewire slot, two USB slots, Sony Memory Stick Pro slot, slot for monitor if you like to connect it to a bigger display, dial-up modem, RJ-45 for wired LAN connection, wireless network card 802.11 b/g, Edge/GPRS card for mobile internet. 1 PCMCIA slot, CD and DVD writer. Dedicated buttons to control the DVD player
The performance is pretty good for a laptop, all applications (Office, Photoshop, Flash) and most games run very well. One thing that bothers me is the small keyboard that takes a while to get used to.
The laptop also comes with integrated CD and DVD burner so you can write DVD’s if you like.
Battery life is around 5 hours depending on what you do, it has some battery savings features and switches in control panel.
Mobile Internet: Another great feature is the EDGE/GPRS card that allows you to connect to internet wherever the cell phone has a signal, you have a sim card inside the laptop, just like cell phones. The internet service is provided by Cingular by default and you have to unlock the card (for free) by entering some codes provided by Sony if you like to use other internet service provider than Cingular. The actual internet speed using Cingular is around 15-23 KB/s, that is 120-184Kbps, not impresive but very good for mobile internet.
It comes with a 30days free trial for the Cingular internet service. You have to place some phone calls when you want to cancel this after the 30 days, (it was not the easiest thing I had to do).
You can also connect to internet using the wireless lan card but this will only be possible around wi-fi spots. This kind of internet connection is usually much faster than the fully mobile connection by EDGE/GPRS.
One thing that I didn’t like is that you cannot have the wireless lan card and the EDGE/GPRS card run in the same time.
The EDGE/GPRS card is also useless in Europe because we have a different frequency (than US) for mobile phones and the laptop’s EDGE/GPRS card is not triband that works worldwide.
If you get in trouble with the wireless card dropping the connection you need to update it’s drivers from the Sony site.
Tags: computer, laptop, notebook, sony, t350p, vaio, vgn
You might want to know that most models of Sony Vaio stop working after 1-2 years, this is because of some soldering problems with ram connectors and/or video card. I found a forum topic with many many peoples having the EXACT same issues with different Sony Vaio models. They are very sensitive. The symptoms are one of these (or all):
Computer freezes at few seconds after it is turned on, it will not turn on again unless you leave it off for ~10 minutes then it shuts down after few seconds again. You might also see a blue screen with something about windows protection error.
Most models are repairable though. Then they do it again.
Here is the forum toopic, it curently has 90 pages with 20 posts per page, that is 1800 posts from many people about the same Sony Vaio issue. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/5449