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The
16.1-in Sony Vaio PCG-GRX670 is a Big step towards abandoning
your desktop.
by Zack Bryce, Tech Lab Manager
Powering the display is an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video
chip set with 32MB or DDR video RAM, not bad but for the top of the
line we would have liked see the newer Radeon 9000 chip instead with
64MB of DDR.
Plenty of
access doors and plenty of ports on all sides of the newly designed
GRX670.
The Vaio GRX670
is well armed in the way of ports too. It has two Type-II PC CardBus
slots, one Sony Memory Stick port, behind two cleaver independent doors
are both 1394a (i.Link) and USB 1.1 slots. There are no USB 2.0 slots,
but you know our opinion of USB 2.0, dead end technology in comparison
to FireWire 400 and the new FireWire 800 (mega bits per second). There
are also Microphone, headphones and another USB 1.1 ports behind another
door one opposite side of the GRX670.
We were shocked to find though, that there was no integrated WiFi of any type in the Vaio GRX670. No 11Mb/s 802.11b or Bluetooth, and that is a big knock on the GRX670.
While many will say that with the fast changing face of WiFi-WLAN, the newly released 802.11a and 802.11g standards, it’s good not to be tied into the older 11Mb/s “b” standard. Ah yes, but the war between the two 54Mb/s “a” and “g” standards may take a long time to settle out and good grief, 11Mb/s is faster than any broadband connection you’ll ever find! Besides, 802.11b will be compatible for a long time to come with its huge installed base.
Going
with the trend Apple started years ago, no floppy drive is supplied with
the Vaio GRX670, I believe that Sony probably has one that will fit into
one of the two removable bays, but check ahead if it’s your requirement.
This
notebook is also capable of using dual batteries to extend mobile life,
but you’ll have to give up a device in one of the bays. Our test
unit came equipped with a 1x DVD-RW/16x10x24 CDR-CDRW “super drive”,
if we may steal Apple’s drive designation.Burning a couple test
DVD movies when flawlessly with Sony’s software, but it will take
1x speed patience.
Battery life for this huge notebook
was a bit disappointing compared to some other contemporary notebooks.
We only got 2 hours and 5 minutes on the road and another surprise was
that the battery has a shelf life! It apparently discharges just sitting
there while turned off. After sitting unused for 5 days, the once fully
charged battery only had 65% when turned on. There must have been something
unusually wrong with this battery for it to lose charge while the notebook
remained unused.
Made for movie editing with bundled Adobe Premier LE, we
downloaded directly from Sony's hot digital TRV 950E camcorder.
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