Hi,

I am new to these forums so please excuse the newbie question.

I am thinking of purchasing the Sony VGN-T1XP (VGN-T17GP/S in the US) and assuming someone out there may have already purchased one, I have a couple of questions:

1) What is the performance of this thing? Does it need the extra 512mb of ram?
2) How hot does it get. Sony’s have a bit of a reputation?
3) How is the battery life as Sony estimate around 8hrs?
4) I have a bluetooth and USB mouse and wondered if there was any way I can disable the touchpad when using an alternative pointing device (the touchpad always gets in the way when typing up large docs).
5) I understand that these units do not come with a Windows disk which is not a probblem for me. Even so, I will be completey rebuilding the OS so that I can only install the apps I required. Does anyone know if all the non-windows applications and drivers that come with the T Series is provided on a separate disk? e.g. all drivers, sonicstage, Adobe Photoshop, DVD player and the like.
6) Is there anything else I should know before purchasing this?

Regards

Si

I have a VGN-T150 which I am very happy with…There are not a lot of T owners on this site yet…

I promise you that you will not be dissapointed…THe are great machinces…

I am using 512 mb of ram…ANd its been working great for me…I also used that amount with my TR and had no problems…It really depends on what type and how many apps you plan on running…

I have done clean installs with Windows XP and I have found out it takes a lot of patience if you want to do this…

About the drivers and apps of the recovey dvd…I do not know how to extract them…I am sure someone else on here will be able to shed some light on this…

Thanks for the great information although this type of system recovery is fairly new to me as I am used to buying pc’s with the driver disks and a separate windows disks.

So if I wanted to completely rebuild my machine, I would have to reformat the hard drive and then restore the operating system using the bootable DVD recorvery disk? This would install Windows and all Sony applications in one go. Is this similar to using a ghost image to rebuild it?

Having said all this, if I did want to rebuild my vaio manually I would need the following:

Windows XP Pro SP2 disk (check)
CD/DVD containing all necessary drivers and applications.

I assume that I could not use the DVD that comes with the vaio as the format of this disk would not permit the separate extraction of drivers and apps….etc ?

Sorry about this…just want to make sure I understand this completely.

Thanks again

Si

[quote author=“smjohns”]
1) What is the performance of this thing? Does it need the extra 512mb of ram?

Memory is memory, that has nothing to do with the T series or even with Sony Notebooks. If you usually need 1GB RAM, then you need it, if not then not. The Sony VAIO T Series don’t need a different memory management or something like that.

3) How is the battery life as Sony estimate around 8hrs?

Those battery life estimates are usually best case scenarios… expect a little less, down to 5 hours or something, depending on what you do.

However, looking at the capacity in mAh and comparing it to the capacity of the TR series batteries, combined with our battery life experience in the TR, 5 to 6 hours is actually a very good bet.

There’s no reason why power consumption levels between the latest TR and the T-150 should be far away from each other.

4) I have a bluetooth and USB mouse and wondered if there was any way I can disable the touchpad when using an alternative pointing device (the touchpad always gets in the way when typing up large docs).

Of course. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to. A USB mouse is a device and the touchpad is a device as well. Let your operating system just not care about the device and it won’t stand in your way.

5) I understand that these units do not come with a Windows disk which is not a probblem for me. Even so, I will be completey rebuilding the OS so that I can only install the apps I required. Does anyone know if all the non-windows applications and drivers that come with the T Series is provided on a separate disk? e.g. all drivers, sonicstage, Adobe Photoshop, DVD player and the like.

My experience with Sony VAIOs is that you don’t get a driver disk, but that you can download virtually everything from the net, most of it from Sony themselves. Just look at the driver threads in this forum.

6) Is there anything else I should know before purchasing this?

Yes: you get the best Sushi in Munich at Rotkreuzplatz. Enjoy your meal!

Regards,
Julien

[quote author=“FrodoID”]

6) Is there anything else I should know before purchasing this?

Yes: you get the best Sushi in Munich at Rotkreuzplatz. Enjoy your meal!

Regards,
Julien

true

last post was me, i forgot to log in, sorry.

Thanks for all the info.

[quote author=“Anonymous”]how do you load a movie into RAM drive?  Also, I’ve never heard of RAM drive before.  What is the difference betwwen RAM drive and HDD?

Don’t count on loading a movie into RAM drive unless you strip it down to 120x80 resolution.
The difference is that a RAM drive utilizes a portion of your RAm memory and allowing it to be used similarly to a hard drives’ storage method while a Hard Disk Drive uses a platter of ... something… to magnetically store information on the hard drive’s platter.
There is a thread on RAM Disks here .