Bizhack.net

You may accuse me of the basest hypocrisy, and you’d be right. A few articles ago I previewed the Asus Eee PC 900, and grandly ordained that anyone choosing to get a powerful gaming laptop was a techtard or gigaspaz or whatever the web invective of the day is that trolls are hurling at each other on Youtube. The reason for my hypocrisy is this: I am typing this article right now on what is one of the most expensive laptops available at the moment that’s not armour-plated, made out of kryptonite or needs to be nailed down in order to stop it floating away on the breeze.

The Sony Vaio AR61ZU uses the Intel Core duo T8300 running at 2.4Ghz, possesses a frankly obscene 4Gb of RAM and 512Mb of video memory, and has two, yes two hardrives each weighing in at 250Gb. The pair are linked using RAID 0 to create a single virtual drive with 500Gb of data storage. In addition to that, the 17″ X-black screen boasts 1600×1200 resolution, which is just as well as nestling in the side of this mighty beast is a Blu-ray writer. At the risk of over-egging the pudding, Sony have included a digital TV tuner along with a preposterously chunky white remote control. Presumably the reasoning behind this is that Sony assumes that in order for you to afford this laptop you have to be old enough to be well into the throes of long-sightedness. And pricey it is too: Given that a full on normal-sized laptop can now cost as little as £300, dropping 1800 notes (or there-abouts) on this beast may seem excessive, and certainly not within everyone’s means.

One of Sony’s strong suits is connectivity, and there are more holes in the side of this thing than there are in Mohammed Al Fayed’s logic, along with the now standard built-in webcam and microphone combo. Vista is pre-installed, and there is the usual bundle of free trials and bloatware that is now pretty much standard on any laptop. My feeling is that it is hard to begrudge manufacturers for this, for while many of these programmes are for the most part rubbish, they save you money as software manufacturers pay for the priviledge of having their apps loaded onto these machines in the first place. Sony admitted as much when they started offering you the option of having the laptops without the ignore/uninstallware for a bargain extra $50. That’s not to say that it isn’t a shame that they don’t automatically provide you with a beautifully untainted blank canvas to begin with.

So far the only faults I have detected with this machine are ergonomic. When is someone going to invent a shiny plastic material that looks amazing but doesn’t go all smeary at the slightest graze of a human paw, and doesn’t feel sticky when you rest your wrists on it to type? These are the whines of someone who is not blessed with the slightest degree of knowledge about materials science, so I may have just blithely sneered at some sort of holy grail. The other difficulty is one common to most laptops, that of heat. If you’re not careful it’s all too easy to get the fan vent stuck up against some part of your body (particularly if you like to use it in bed) resulting in the distressing phenomenon I like to call scorched girth.

Still, at least it’s me that’s smoking, and not the Vaio. Knowing my luck that will probably start soon enough for me to get onto the second page of my “laptops that have mysteriously died on me” list by next week. Now if only I can find that list in my “technological dissappointments” filing cabinet…