Sony VAIO VGN-TX650P/B 11.1' Laptop (Intel Pentium M Processor 753, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+R Dbl Layer/DVD+/-RW Drive)
from: Sony
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PC Hardware : Sony VAIO VGN-TX650P/B 11.1' Laptop (Intel Pentium M Processor 753, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+R Dbl Layer/DVD+/-RW Drive) |
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Rating:  - * Save yourself the headache and avoid VAIO at all costs... ... I am a sad, disappointed owner of a Vaio Notebook (VGN-TX650P). It worked great for the first 3 months... and then, the nightmares began... initially, it would stop booting about every fifth time. As time progressed, it got worse and worse... every attempt to deal with Sony "Customer Service" was a fruitless effort in futility... They were rude and completely not interested in actually helping... I was told time and again that I would have to send them the computer and should expect a minimum $700 fee for diagnosing the problem and maybe fixing it... as I started to google VAIO computers, I discovered whole chat rooms and websites for people who were struggling with Sony customer service... i saw countless other people recount the same problems I was having... yet, the Sony techs would say, "We've never heard of problems like yours..." In the end, my VAIO has simply crashed and is no longer booting at all... I am now $2300 poorer with nothing but a plastic box and a long headache to show for it... don't believe me? Google "VAIO WON'T BOOT" or something like that and see the hundreds of people out there with problems... there's even talk about a class action lawsuit against VAIO... I don't know anything about it but you can see it in the posts... My personal opinion: STAY AWAY FROM VAIO!!! Rating:  - * Wonderful laptop ... beautiful screen, nice keys very fast and powerful. fits in my backpack and it's really durable, and fun to use. I love this thing, it's my main leisure computer. Rating: - * A really good subnotebook ... I bought my Sony VAIO TX650 from my local CompUSA back on January 3 2006 when on that day they had just received their latest shipment. It was on sale at the time for [...] but it came with a [...]. I was considering other laptops including the business version of an HP laptop but what sold me on this was the fact that it had some really cool extra features like WiFi, WWAN by Cingular, Bluetooth, and a DVD/CD player that does not need a boot into Windows. Plus not to mention the fact that this was one of the very first Sony VAIOs that I've seen that could actually take an SD card (which is what I really needed since I happen to own a Nikon D50 camera and could use a place to archive my photos). First off, the computer is very light. At the time I purchased this laptop, my other laptop (an HP Pavilion ZX5240US) was in repair. But it wasn't until March that I got my HP back and when I picked it up then I realized just how I forgot just how heavy an average laptop like that really weights! *rotfl* The screen is quite bright and readeable. The keys are a bit too small and they can take some time getting use to. Sometimes the computer can slow down a bit but then again I am a very patient person by nature. The only complaint that I really have with my Sony is the fact that I cannot seem to find out how to correctly configure Microsoft IIS 5.0 on it (since it does come standard on Windows XP Pro installations); if you plan on installing/using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 for web development, you may need to find a separate testbed. But for me, I've recently uninstalled 2003 and installed Visual Studio 2005 which comes with it's own web server testbed (and eliminates the need of using IIS 5.0). There were some softwares that came preinstalled with the system that I did not need. However, they were easily removed since such extras would have slowed down the computer anyways. At the time of sale, I was warned by the salesperson that Sony VAIO batteries in general tend to degrade sharply after 12 months. So at his recommendation, I purchased a 3-year comprehensive repair plan. It did add almost [...] to the purchase price (and as a result I paid [...] or so altogether) but he told me that over the course of these three years I may need to replace the battery at least twice at [...] a piece so I would be getting my money's worth in the long run. I haven't had to ask for repair yet, though. Nor have I experienced any of the other negative things that others have mentioned about in their reviews (i.e. noisy fans after a year, dead batteries, screen cracks, pixel drops, etc.) Get this laptop if you really don't like the idea of having to lug around a behemoth of a regular laptop. It can be held in one hand. If not for the price, at least get it for the looks as it seems to be a real "chick magnet" for me (hey, I've already gotten twelve different phone numbers from some really alluring ladies, even though I am an "average" looking nerd! 8-) ). One more thing: at [...] a month unlimited, Cingular Connect is a bit too expensive for me. I personally have T-Mobile. Even though it requires the use of a PCMCIA card to access and it runs on GPRS (which is much slower than Cingular's EDGE), all I pay is [...] a month. I get unlimited GPRS data access, unlimited T-Mobile HotSpot WiFi access, international data roaming, 20c a minute a-la-carte voice calls, and 200 in/out messages a month. Which is fine for me since I use GPRS for downloading my emails only. But if you can afford Cingular, then by all means go for it! Rating: - * If you buy a Sony laptop, be prepared to pay >$250 to replace a dead fan after the warranty expires ... If you buy a Sony laptop, be prepared to pay >$250 to replace a dead fan after the warranty expires I completely agree with the review by [Laptop Professional "Anonymous Owner"]. Potential customers, you should read reviews by owners who have owned the product for some time, especially for laptop. I bought a Sony VGN-T-250 laptop one and half years ago. It was one of the most expensive models and I only used it lightly during the one and half year. Now, the fan had exactly the same problem as posted by by [Laptop Professional "Anonymous Owner"], --- it became noisy for two weeks and then died. Sony insisted to charge >$250 to replace it because the warranty was just for one year. If you check Internet, you will find low quality fan is wide spread problem in Sony laptops. Be aware: Sony sells such low quality product at high price and then makes another round of profit by repairing it. I used to consider Sony a high quality brand and now they have destroyed their own reputation. I think there should be a class action lawsuit again Sony on the fan problem. For the same price, you can buy a much higher quality IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad, which I have owned for over four years and it works excellently. Rating: - * The portability and battery life are killer! ... I bought the TX670P (not TX650P) for my wife as her birthday present last month, as she said she wanted to be able to carry her computer in whatever bag she was carrying that day. At first, she said things like "I didn't want something this expensive." But, now she says stuff like "I don't like you touching my computer." We went on a 15 day vacation to New Zealand, and used it pretty much for 1/2 hour to 1 hour daily for photo transfers and web reservations. We only had to charge it three times during this trip. We have a sony camera and two sony-ericsson cellphones with expandable memory. So, the memory-stick slot is a blessing! We took all of 15 minutes to cut 3 music CDs from my wife's phone, so we could have some music in the rental car. With the 1 GB system memory, you don't experience any slowness, as long as you don't like to load useless programs in memory. I'm now contemplating trading in my powerhouse 15.5 inch IBM notebook for a TX770P, as my shoulders have, strangley enough, started hurting from lugging its weight. :-) |
Three of them date from the '20s and '30s and were produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The 1926 silent The Winning of Barbara Worth gave Western stunt man and bit player Cooper his first featured role (by accident--the actor originally cast didn't report for work!). A cowboy whose visionary surveyor father aims to "redeem the desert and make it one fine garden," Cooper's character is the third corner of a romantic triangle, ordained by the Hollywood caste system to lose lifelong sweetheart Vilma Banky to engineer Ronald Colman. Colman has lots more screen time than Cooper and bears the moral-ethical brunt of the eco-conscious drama; he's also surprisingly persuasive wearing a sweat-stained Stetson and trading gunshots with the bad guys (if this were a sound film, Colman could never have gotten away with it). But the camera and the audience are locked onto Cooper whenever he's on screen. In longshot or vulnerable closeup, he's already one of the gods of the cinema. As for the movie, the quality of the print is excellent, its clarity intensified by bronze, yellow, and moonlit-blue tinting that often seems on the verge of resolving into full color. Director Henry King shows a good eye for action and bold vistas, and a visual adventurousness mostly absent from his later work.
Next up chronologically is The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), and the best thing about this misbegotten movie is Garson Kanin's description, in one of his Hollywood memoirs, of how Leo McCarey sold the idea for it to Sam Goldwyn. McCarey was, of course, a comedic master (recently Oscared for directing The Awful Truth), and his exuberant pitch convinced Goldwyn and his staffers that audiences would "piss" themselves laughing at this romantic comedy about a daughter of privilege (Merle Oberon) who falls for a rodeo rider (Cooper) and learns homespun values. Goldwyn paid McCarey off, assigned some writers to the script, then realized there was no real story--"no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have put it. The resultant unfunny and unromantic endeavor oozes bad faith from every pore, with neck-snapping life changes foisted on the hapless Cooper and Oberon from reel to reel, and excruciating scenes (jitterbugging in a drawing room, playing house back on Cooper's ranch) that strain charmlessly for McCarey's patented brand of fey. H.C. Potter directed, understandably without conviction.
We and Cooper are back on track with The Real Glory (1939). The reliable Henry Hathaway helmed this second cousin to his and Cooper's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, with Cooper as an Army doctor assigned to the Philippine Constabulary on Mindanao in 1906. The movie was well-received when it came out; encountered in the shadow of the Iraq War, its tale of U.S. occupiers trying to help the local populace "stand up" against a fanatical and murderous insurgency takes on new fascination. There are some amazing passages--two horrendous murders by bolo knife--and the final battle sequence puts the CGI-riddled action films of the present day to shame. But the most impressive element is Cooper, and we can't improve on the verdict of that astute film critic Graham Greene: "Mr. Cooper ... has never acted better.... Watch him inoculate [Andrea King] against cholera--the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think any more."
For the final film in the set we jump into the '50s--the century's and Cooper's. Vera Cruz (1954) casts him as a former Confederate officer who's ridden into Emperor Maximilian's Mexico, hoping to make a fortune in the new civil war south of the border so that he can rebuild his own devastated homeland. Costar Burt Lancaster (whose company Hecht-Lancaster was producing) plays another mercenary, a real sociopath, and it's fascinating to watch these two stellar icons of very different Hollywood eras make common cause--Lancaster at the height of his grinning-predator mode, Cooper an aging knight whose aim is still true. Director Robert Aldrich keeps finding dynamic uses for the SuperScope format and flavorfully fills it with sublime uglies like Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Horvath, Jack Lambert, and Charles Buchinsky-about-to-become-Bronson. Pieces of this movie found their way into the dreams of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. --Richard T. Jameson
