sony tt entry level $1499 at amazon.com
 

I guess I'm going to find out if this sony tt (vgn-tt130n/b) will be my new travel laptop or not. I've been keeping an eye in this and also several tz refurbs for around 1000 - 1100 elsewhere, and they recently dropped the price on this model by several hundred dollars. Yeah, it is a discontinued model, but it is not a refurb and carries the full warranty.

I know, still kind of expensive compared to a netbook, but I'm getting really annoyed at the tradeoffs I have to make with a netbook. Don't get me wrong, I still like my S10. I think I might like this better.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G0MP7E

-David

I have had a TT (the 190NIB) for several months.

Fantastic screen ("full HD," 1080p) and able to run any program I need.

One minor annoyance: when the computer is on, even with the color closed, a very bright green LED is on. If you are in a small hotel room and you want to leave Outlook on overnight, this MIGHT be annoying.

Brighter than a night light?

He did say "minor annoyance". If it's anything like the green power indicator on my Sony FW, it won't bother me, but, yes, it is bright. On the Sony FW, there's a bright one on the end of the hinge, and a lit green circle on the hinge itself. You can certainly point the end hinge away from the bed, but the circle one will still be visible unless you put it to sleep. I think it turns yellow when it's sleeping. I don't know yet if the one on the TT is the same as that or not.

-David

I have it in hand now. It's a beauty.

Funny thing, when you unpack it, of course the battery is separate. If you hold the battery (the standard battery) in one hand, and the unit itself in your other hand, the battery feels heavier than the rest of the unit.

It unfortunately came loaded with crapware, mostly easy to deal with. I still can't figure out how they were starting Sony Care and Sony Update 4, there were no entries for them in the registry or elsewhere that I could find, but it was trivial to remove those useless (for me) apps with add/remove programs.

The keyboard and display are great. Not sure about the trackpad yet. The trackpad buttons are great. It's really a nice machine.

I'll be traveling with it for 2 weeks starting tomorrow. I'll report back later. I'm definitely keeping it. Can't really return it to amazon.com easily anyway.

I'm trying to live with UAC this time. What fun. :) Does anybody that knows what they are doing actually leave it enabled?

-David

Glad you like it. Let me know what you think of the green LED.

Regarding the UAC, I had a simple solution. I "downgraded" to XP SP3.

It's the same as the one on my Sony FW, only smaller. Those things don't bother me. The computer is in the bedroom a few feet from my pillow, so it really doesn't bother me at all. I suppose if the power button was pointing directly at my face ..., but rotating it the other way seems like an easy fix since it's on the side of the machine.

I also sleep with the tv on, so I'm not very sensitive to it, I guess.

I turned UAC off on the FW. The FW came with 64-bit vista home premium and 4G of RAM, so I decided to give it a try.

It's easy enough to turn off. But I tried to turn it back on once, and a bunch of stuff stopped working, probably file owner/permission problems. It's like a one-way switch if you turn it off and then install stuff. I'll probably get sick of hitting tab, tab, enter eventually and turn it off on the tt also.

-David