Sony Vaio VGN-FE31Z review

Hard disk space is the one area where notebooks are way behind their desktop counterparts.

Sony's Vaio VGN-FE31Z aims to close that gap with its huge 200GB Fujitsu MHV2200BT disk. Rather than turning to new technologies such as perpendicular recording, Fujitsu has cheated a little and added a third disk platter to the 2" drive.

This increases the height of the hard disk by 3mm, so it won't fit in a notebook that hasn't been designed for the drive. Despite this, the VGN-FE31Z doesn't look at all bloated. In fact, it's one of the more slender and attractive-looking 15.4" notebooks we've seen. The dark silver plastic is stylish and it feels rigid and well constructed.

The keyboard has the same unusual design as many other Vaio notebooks. The large keys and decent travel make typing easier. The touch pad is sensitive, though, which makes it hard to control accurately. Reducing the sensitivity in Windows helped, but also made the pointer a bit sluggish for our tastes.

The display is good, but not outstanding. Our white test showed some mild variation in backlighting at the bottom of the screen, but there was no unwanted coloured tint and only a touch of graininess. Our colour test showed smooth transitions, so those who want to edit photos should have no problems.

They will be frustrated by the memory card reader, however. It only supports Sony's own Memory Stick format, so those using the more common SD cards will have to use an external reader. There are three USB2 ports provided, along with a FireWire port. The VGN-FE31Z also has both types of expansion card slot: CardBus and ExpressCard.

Inside, there's a fast Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 processor, easily powerful enough for most tasks. Sony has fitted a massive 2GB of RAM to this notebook, so you can take on big jobs such as video editing, plus you won't need to upgrade the memory in the notebook's lifetime.

The Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics chipset is capable of running the latest games at reasonable detail levels. It will also come in handy should you wish to run the new Windows Vista operating system, with its 3D-accelerated Aero interface.

At this price, you should expect something special from a notebook, and the VGN-FE31Z doesn't make any compromises in specification. However, there are some minor niggles, such as the touch pad and memory card reader, which stop it from receiving a top score.

Author: Seth Barton