Sony VGN-SZ780 Laptop Review

Recently I purchased a Sony VGN-SZ780 Laptop, as I haven’t had a working computer for close to a year now. Previously I managed to get by using my roomate’s laptop and the desktop at my research lab. My roommate had a sony SZ330 I believe with Windows XP (32-bit), it worked quite nicely once I reformatted it and removed all the bloated software that Sony installs by default. It was with this experience that I decided to purchase a Sony Laptop. I myself am mostly a Linux guy, I put it on everything pretty much . So I figured I would install it on my new Sony VGN-SZ780 Laptop. I purchased my laptop for around $2500 (quite pricey I know, but I figured the experience that I had with another Sony model was worth it).

Little did I know that I would have spent the next few weeks figuring out drivers for Ubuntu 8.04, but we’ll come back to this later. I did give Windows Vista a shot, but there were too many issues. For example, after a logging in and after windows completes loading everything it needs to for startup I am looking at 93 processes running. Are you kidding me? I just bought this computer and there are already 93 processes running. I decided what the hell, I have 4 gigs of ram and a new 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, I’ll see how it performs. So after installing a couple things like office 2007, CD burning software, extraction tools, etc. I am now at 110 processes running. I am now also beginning to experience multiple crashes when doing nothing. I think if I stare at Windows too long explorer crashes and it urinates all over on my laptop. As I was busy with work I did not have time to reinstall it or try linux at the time, but now that I am free for a bit I gave it a shot.

I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) on the laptop, and everything seemed alright at first. I was using a wireless keyboard and mouse at the time. However I recently starting using my laptop for more than just a screen on my desk. I starting using it for it’s portability. That is when I ran into problems with the touchpad. The sensitivity on the touchpad is ridiculous, I did install the right applications and messed with my xorg.conf to fix the issue, but neither worked. Another issue that I noticed with the touchpad was that in order to click using the touchpad (not the buttons below it) the mouse needed to be in motion. I later discovered that the Alps drivers are not well supported in linux like the Synaptics drivers; that is because Alps hasn’t really provided support to the open source community for their touchpads. It became really unbearable to use the laptop without a usb mouse. I was happy with linux. I had the 4GB of ram working (sudo apt-get install linux-server), but if essential things like the touchpad don’t work, it’s just got to go. So I decided what the hell. I’ll put windows XP on the laptop.

Windows XP, another failure for Sony. Sony just won’t support all the drivers. Things like the camera, some other sony utilities, fingerprint reader, some function keys (like adjusting brightness) just didn’t work. If I’m back to Windows atleast I should get functioning Function commands with the keyboard. Also no support for memory greater than 3GB on 32-bit XP, but that’s not Sony’s fault. It is just a limitation with regular 32-bit OSes. What next? How about Windows Vista 64-bit.

Well, since sony only supports Windows Vista with my laptop how about I install 64-bit Windows so I can atleast use all 4GB of ram, which I paid for. Yay, Windows now recognizes 4GB of ram, but wait hmm, Sony doesn’t have any 64bit drivers. I managed to get wireless working by downloading the 64-bit drivers from intel’s website, and that was about it, everything else pretty much failed. So back to 32-bit Windows Vista.

So I reinstalled Windows Vista (Not using Sony’s Restoration CD, as I don’t want bloatware). Downloading and installing drivers from Sony’s website do not work as expected, some fail. Only Sony’s resoration cd works.

In conclusion if you are at the least a bit of a computer geek, I highly recommend that you not invest your money into Sony’s line of notebooks.