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Rating: 
Summary: Great machine, case scuffs annoying
Review: I HAD THIS FOR ABOUT 2 MONTHS NOW. I AM IMPRESS WITH THE ATI RADEON GRAPHICS CARD AS IT PLAYS VARIOUS 3D GAMES. SO FAR I LOADED NEED 4 SPEED UNDERGROUND, AND FREEDOM FIGHTERS, AND IT PLAYS GREAT. BE FOREWARN; RUNNING A GAME ON CD REQUIRES LOTS OF POWER SO DONT EXPECT THE SAME PERFORMANCE ON BATTERIES. I HAD PROBLEMS WITH ERROR MESSAGES POPPING UP REGARDING THE SONY MEDIA SERVER. TECH SUPPORT HELP CORRECT THOSE PROBLEMS OVERALL, ITS A GREAT CENTRINO MULTIMEDIA/BUSINESS LAPTOP, ALL PROGRAMS WORK FAST AND THE SYSTEM SEEMS VERY STABLE. SO AFTER TWO MONTHS.. NOTHINS CRASHED YET!!! GREAT LIL MACHINE.. ENOUGH KEYBOARD SPACE.. AND VERY FAST! ONLY NEGATIVE... IS THE 2 X 256MB MEMORY THAT IT COMES WITH INSTEAD OF JUST 1 512MB! THOSE SONY EXECS ALWAYS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY FROM US!
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT STABLE MACHINE! SUPERB GRAPHICS/MULTIMEDIA NOTEBOOK
Review: I HAD THIS FOR ABOUT 2 MONTHS NOW. I AM IMPRESS WITH THE ATI RADEON GRAPHICS CARD AS IT PLAYS VARIOUS 3D GAMES. SO FAR I LOADED NEED 4 SPEED UNDERGROUND, AND FREEDOM FIGHTERS, AND IT PLAYS GREAT. BE FOREWARN; RUNNING A GAME ON CD REQUIRES LOTS OF POWER SO DONT EXPECT THE SAME PERFORMANCE ON BATTERIES. I HAD PROBLEMS WITH ERROR MESSAGES POPPING UP REGARDING THE SONY MEDIA SERVER. TECH SUPPORT HELP CORRECT THOSE PROBLEMS OVERALL, ITS A GREAT CENTRINO MULTIMEDIA/BUSINESS LAPTOP, ALL PROGRAMS WORK FAST AND THE SYSTEM SEEMS VERY STABLE. SO AFTER TWO MONTHS.. NOTHINS CRASHED YET!!! GREAT LIL MACHINE.. ENOUGH KEYBOARD SPACE.. AND VERY FAST! ONLY NEGATIVE... IS THE 2 X 256MB MEMORY THAT IT COMES WITH INSTEAD OF JUST 1 512MB! THOSE SONY EXECS ALWAYS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY FROM US!
Rating: 
Summary: A GREAT BUY HOWEVER THERE ARE A FEW PROBLEMS
Review: I HAD THIS FOR ABOUT 2+ WEEKS NOW. I AM IMPRESS WITH THE ATI RADEON GRAPHICS CARD AS IT PLAYS VARIOUS 3D GAMES. SO FAR I LOADED NEED 4 SPEED UNDERGROUND, AND FREEDOM FIGHTERS, AND IT PLAYS GREAT. BE FOREWARN; RUNNING A GAME ON CD REQUIRES LOTS OF POWER SO DONT EXPECT THE SAME PERFORMANCE ON BATTERIES. I HAD PROBLEMS WITH ERROR MESSAGES POPPING UP REGARDING THE SONY MEDIA SERVER. TECH SUPPORT HELP CORRECT THOSE PROBLEMS HOWEVER THEIR TECH SUPPORT WAS VERY RUDE WHEN IT COMES TO TROUBLESHOOTING THE INTEGRETATED WIRELESS. I HAVE DSL AND A G ROUTER, AND THE WIRELESS CONNECTION IS ALWAYS AT VERY LOW SIGNAL STRENGTH AND AVERAGES AROUND 1-5 MBPS AND HAS OFTEN LOST CONNECTION. THERE IS ALLREADY A PATCH FOR THE INTEGRATED WIRELESS ON THEIR SUPPORT WEBSITE, SO THEY KNOW OF THIS PROBLEM. I AM TEMPTED TO JUST BUY A WIRELESS CARD AND NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT ANYMORE. OVERALL, ITS A GREAT CENTRINO MULTIMEDIA/BUSINESS LAPTOP, ALL PROGRAMS WORK FAST AND THE SYSTEM SEEMS VERY STABLE. THE PROBLEMS WITH THE WIRELESS CONNECTION AND THEIR WEAK TECH SUPPORT IS THE REASON I GAVE THIS A 3 STAR CONSIDERING I PAID 2 GRAND AND ONE OF THE REASONS I PURCHASED THIS MODEL WAS BECAUSE OF THE INTEGRATED WIRELESS.
Rating:
Summary: The touchpad is fine. Please read your manual
Review: I have an PCG-V505ECP. The touchpad was a little bit confusing in the beginning but after I read the online manual the mistery is solved. The touchpad actually work both as mouse and scroll wheel. When you slide your finger along the right side of the pad, it activates the scrolling mode. This is configurable if you don't like it, although I agree they probably should put some hint (such as a color strip) on the touchpad so people will aware of it at the first place. The wireless 802.11b works fine for me. I've use it for only a few days but I like it a lot. The battery life almost as good as they described (maximum 6 hours if you don't use any power-consuming features). Also it comes with the support of Java by default. The only thing bothers me is that there are too many trial software (AOL, MS Office 2003 60-day trial) so I need to spend one hour to uninstall them.
Rating:
Summary: Its great
Review: I love sony vaio's. I have had this v505ex for a couple of weeks and love it. It is so fast, light. The screen is huge and the keyboard is great. It has a great warranty and sony backs everything.
Rating:
Summary: Great machine, case scuffs annoying
Review: I love this machine. The one kvetch I have is that the beautiful casing scuffed very easily, and I can't seem to remove the scuffs. Other than that--it's extremely fast, very light, keyboard size and play are great, I have no complaints.
Rating:
Summary: In love with Vaio
Review: I've had my Vaio PCG-V505EX for a year now, and I haven't had any problems yet. It's light so I can carry it under one arm easily. It withstands light shaking and bumping, so it's not too fragile. I bring it everywhere!
Keyboard feels great, screen is nice and bright. Only thing is I found out about Giga Pocket, which this particular model doesn't have. I would love to be able to watch TV from my laptop and record TV shows...
Rating: 
Summary: NOT RUGGED ENOUGH TO BE PORTABLE!
Review: I've had two of the V505 series, this one being the latest. The first one suffered from touchpad problems (clicking at random) and had to be sent out for repairs for a month right after i got it. After two months of use I noticed the case was so poorly reinforced that ripples would go across the screen if you slightly touched the back. After a few more months of carrying it around in a case purchased especially for it, it had major pixel damage. Sony's telephone representatives insisted that carrying it in a laptop case was excessive or abusive use and refused to replace it for several months. They finally replaced it with this model, and now the touchpad is starting to malfunction again. Aside from the touchpad not working and the wireless card not working on some LEAP enabled networks, this model works well enough and it would make an OK desktop replacement for someone who works from home and never moves their laptop more than a few inches. If you're looking for something you can haul around with you though, look for something that's built better.
Rating: 
Summary: Avoid Sony
Review: Just got this Notebook for 3 days. It has problems maintaining it's wireless connection. I tried it on 2 different wireless access points (Netgear and SkyHawk) and Vaio drops the connection every 5 mins. I'm literally 4 feet from my access point, and it still drops. All my other wireless connection works fine and the Dell Notebook works fine. I called Vaio Support and they're useless. They first said that my warranty expired??? and then proceed to say that I purchased it from an unauthorized seller (Amazon). After I resolved that issue, they start to blame the wireless access point. That's a total BS, because my other wireless devices would be affected if it was the access point. Also, I used the Vaio on 2 access points! How can that happen to 2 different access points??? Aside from being small, light weight, excellent battery life, and slick design; this one sucks without the support. I will be returning mine back to Amazon and stick with Dell. They offer better support and quality. I strongly recommend another small notebook and avoid Sony!!!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Add RAM and Watch for Heat Stress
Review: This is my third Vaio laptop since 1999 and my wife has one also, plus two Vaio desktops, so you can tell we like this brand. I like my PCG-V505 for several things, like the speed and the built in DVD writer, which seems very fast. It is great to use data DVDs for backup and ripping music CDs into iTunes is very swift.
But the PCG-V505 series has two minor issues for me--the keyboard keys have tight edges that can catch on fingernails and the case scrathes easily as one other reviewer indicated--and a major problem for anyone with XP and anything over 512MB of RAM. There is a known bug in XP that can prevent hibernation in machines with 1 gigabyte or more of RAM.
Hibernation is essential for a laptop because the hard drives in laptops are susceptible to heat damage. The longer they run in a high temeprature laptopn case, the sooner they die (I think I have replaced enough hard drives in laptops, including Vaois to make this claim, and if you read the tech lit, this is a well-documented phenomemon). So if the laptop won't hibernate you either have to shutdown as you travel between locations or it is liable to come on, in your bag, during travel, resulting in damaging 'hot briefcase' syndrome.
I treated myself to 2 gigabytes of factory-installed RAM in my machine and boy am I regretting it. Performance is great, I can run a ton of apps at once, which is how I like to work, but no hibernation. Sony support told me XP SP 2 would fix this (it is listed on the fixes that Microsoft claimed). But SP2 did not fix it and the thing that bothers me is Sony knew of the problem when they sold me the machine. Tech support at Sony was not at all helpful -- "rebuild the machine from scratch then add one app at a time, test, and then add another." Since the problem only appears after about 24 hours of use, and I can't go without some apps for several days, this was not a good fix.
Microsoft support was more helpful and is still working with me on it. But I am now inclined to take out the extra RAM and sell it (at a loss) defaulting back to the standard 512MB. My advice to buyers, test the keyboard yourself, and skip the extra RAM.
Stephen
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