Test Acer Aspire 5551G Notebook

Zwei Modelle der Aspire 5551G-Reihe buhlen momentan um die Gunst der Käufer. Angefangen beim zirka 600 Euro teuren Aspire 5551G-P324G32Mn, das mit vier GByte Arbeitsspeicher und einer Festplattenkapazität von 320 GByte aufwarten kann. Als Prozessor kommt der neue AMD Athlon II X2 P320 zum Einsatz, dessen zwei Kerne mit jeweils 2.10 GHz takten.Sony VGP-BPS8 Wir haben uns gleich das besser ausgestattete Aspire 5551G-N834G64Mn geschnappt. Zum Preis von rund 700 Euro erhält der Nutzer eine 640 GByte große Festplatte und wiederum vier GByte DDR3-RAM. Beim Prozessor hat sich Acer diesmal für den AMD Phenom II X3 N830 entschieden, dessen drei Kerne ebenfalls über einen Takt von 2.10 GHz verfügen.

In den restlichen Belangen gleichen sich die beiden Modelle. Um die Grafikberechnung kümmert eine Einsteigergrafikkarte von ATI, die Mobility Radeon HD 5470 mit 512 MByte DDR3-VRAM. Das 15.6-zöllige Display löst – wenig überraschend – mit 1366 x 768 Bildpunkten auf. Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit ist schließlich als Betriebssystem vorinstalliert. Wer Intel als CPU-Hersteller präferiert,Sony PCGA-BP71 greift indes zum baugleichen Aspire 5741G. Ein Modell dieser Produktreihe (Aspire 5741G-334G50Mn) haben wir bereits ausführlich getestet.
Gehäuse

Optisch hat sich Acer beim Aspire 5551G einiges einfallen lassen. Die silbergraue Handballenauflage besteht aus gebürstetem Aluminium und erweckt auf diese Weise einen hochwertigen Eindruck. Schwarze Umrandungen bei Tastatur und Handballenauflage sorgen darüber hinaus für wohldosierte Akzente. Am meisten hat es uns allerdings der silberne Displaydeckel angetan,Sony VGP-BPL8 der mit einer schicken Textur versehen ist und das Notebook somit von der überwiegend tristen Konkurrenz abhebt. Insgesamt sind die Oberflächen recht verschmutzungsresistent, einzig der hochglänzende Displayrahmen erweist sich als ungemein empfindlich.

Bezüglich der Stabilität gibt es zumindest an der Baseunit kaum etwas auszusetzen. Auf der Oberseite ist erst bei stärkerem Druck ein Nachgeben feststellbar, auf der Unterseite zeigt sich lediglich der Bereich um das optische Laufwerk etwas instabil. Der Notebookdeckel ist demgegenüber nicht sonderlich verwindungssteif. Schon bei verhältnismäßig leichtem Druck kann das Display bedenklich stark verbogen werden. Die gute Verarbeitung lässt diesen Umstand aber schnell wieder vergessen,Sony VGP-BPS8A alles sitzt an Ort und Stelle.

Mit einer Größe von 381 x 253 x 34 mm (Breite x Tiefe x Höhe) wirkt das Aspire 5551G (für ein 15-Zoll Notebook) nicht nur relativ kompakt, sondern garantiert durch sein passables Gewicht von 2.6 Kilogramm fürderhin ein gewisses Maß an Mobilität.Sony VGP-BPS9 Die Scharniere arbeiten schlussendlich zuverlässig, lassen die Baseunit beim Öffnen des Notebooks jedoch deutlich mitschwingen

Ausstattung

Anschlussausstattung

Die Anschlussausstattung fällt enttäuschend mager aus. Neben RJ-45 Gigabit-LAN,Sony PCGA-BP2E VGA und HDMI findet der Nutzer lediglich drei ungünstig positionierte USB 2.0-Ports, zwei Soundanschlüsse (1x Eingang & 1x Ausgang) sowie einen 5-in-Kartenleser (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/XD). Auf Firewire, eSATA oder ExpressCard muss der Nutzer komplett verzichten. Für ein Multimedianotebook im 15-Zoll Format hätten wir in dieser Beziehung definitiv mehr erwartet. Dem ungeachtet verfügt das Aspire 5551G noch über ein integriertes Mikrofon sowie eine 1.3 Megapixel Webcam.Sony VGP-BPS10 Drahtlose Verbindung wird über WLAN ermöglicht, Bluetooth sucht man indes vergebens.

Softwareausstattung und Zubehör

Wie viele andere Hersteller (Toshiba, Sony, Asus etc.) übertriebt es Acer mal wieder maßlos mit der Softwareinstallation. Dutzende und meist unnötige Spiele, Programme und Tools nehmen das System in Beschlag, verlangsamen die Arbeitsgeschwindigkeit und machen oftmals mit nervigen Popup-Meldungen auf sich aufmerksam. Wir empfehlen daher,Sony VGP-BPS2A sich direkt nach dem Auspacken der Deinstallation zu widmen und das Aspire 5551G von seinem überflüssigen Ballast zu befreien. Während die Installation mehr als üppig bemessen ist (im negativen Sinne), hält sich Acer bei der restlichen Ausstattung arg zurück. So findet sich im Verpackungskarton neben dem 90 Watt Netzteil lediglich ein Garantieheft sowie eine Kurzanleitung

Eingabegeräte

Tastatur

Die Tastatur hat einen guten, jedoch keinen überragenden Eindruck hinterlassen.Sony VGP-BPS2C Die Tasten sind mit einer Größe von 16 x 16 mm wohl dimensioniert, Ausnahme bilden die Pfeiltasten, die mit einer Höhe von 8 mm unangenehm schmal geraten sind. Der Abstand zwischen den einzelnen Tasten beträgt rund 2 mm und reduziert auf diese Weise Fehleingaben. Von der Stabilität her gibt es wenig zu bemängeln, erst bei größerer Krafteinwirkung wippt insbesondere der dedizierte Nummernblock leicht nach.

Das Tippgefühl ist passabel, der Anschlag erschien uns allerdings etwas schwammig und somit nicht definiert genug. Vieltipper sollten das Aspire 5551G vor dem Kauf deshalb am besten live antesten.Sony VGP-BPS5A Beim Layout hat Acer derweil ganze Arbeit geleistet, nach einer kurzen Eingewöhnungszeit kommt man bereits gut zurecht. Weniger überzeugend erschien uns hingegen das recht laute Auslösegeräusch. Vor allem große Tasten wie Enter oder die Leertaste erzeugen einen lauten sowie billig wirkenden Klang.

Sony VAIO FW139E/H User Review

The Sony VAIO sony vgp-bps8 FW139E/H is a 16.4" semi-desktop replacement notebook configured with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, which runs at 2.26GHz with a Front Side Bus speed of 1066MHz, 3GB of DDR2-800 RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 dedicated graphics card, and a 250GB HDD. This model is one of the first VAIO FW models to come out and is meant to be sold at retail stores. 

Reasons for Buying

This notebook vgp-bps8 was primarily purchased as a PC to take to college. Now when you think college, you probably are thinking of portability. Being an Engineer major, portability comes second to power. This notebook was meant to provide up to four years of casual and heavy computing. The GPU was the important decision maker; I needed something dedicated, and the market was flooded with possibly defective nVidia GPUs. I narrowed my choices down to the VAIO FW and HP dv5t. I ended up going with the VAIO FW because of the larger screen and faster processor at my price range.

Where and How Purchased

The VAIO FW139E/H sony vgp-bpl8 was purchased at NewEgg.com for about $995. This was the best deal I could find, because the retail model shipped with 3GB of RAM and the Radeon GPU already included in the price and it was available sooner. I believe it was a fair deal because a similar Centrino 2 model would have been almost $200 more at the time.

Build and Design

I'm impressed with the overall build of the VAIO vgp-bpl8 FW. It's cased in Magnesium alloy, which makes it look semi-metal and semi-plastic at the same time. It is a very sturdy looking laptop; the screen hinge is perfect and stands strong, rubber feet under the laptop keep it from moving, and I have not yet been able to make a scratch on it. Design wise, it is fashionably sound. It carries the traditional VAIO look; the model I reviewed is the Titanium Grey model with black colored keys. It has a very professional look.

The power button is located on the right side of the hinge, and it glows green when turned on and orange when in hibernation. The media buttons are located on the right side, right above the keyboard. The speakers are on top of the keyboard, as well. The keys make the laptop stand out, as well. The black spaced-out keys make the laptop vgp-bps8a look very sharp to the eye. The "Motion Eye" camera is located right above the screen.

Screen

The screen on this model of the VAIO sony vgp-bps8a FW is an XBRITE-ECO LCD with a native resolution of 1600 x 900. Not only is this a unique sized screen at 16.4 inches, but it has a unique aspect ratio of 16:9. This aspect ratio is the true widescreen aspect ratio that HDTVs feature. This true widescreen size is perfect for managing windows while multitasking. You can have about four or five average sized applications on screen comfortably in the native resolution. The screen is a bit on the glossy side, but there are no reflections when there the laptop is turned on. When off, it doubles as a tinted mirror.

Speakers

The built in speakers above the keyboard are of average quality. You can definitely tell the difference between the VAIO vgp-bps8b FW's speakers and the average external speakers.

Headphones are a must if you want to enjoy a movie or play music. I wouldn't recommend portable speakers as a replacement; the sound quality would be equal to that of the VAIO sony vgp-bpl8a FW. I wasn't expecting much from speakers, though. Speakers aren't the highlights of laptops, anyway.

Processor and Performance

Now for the fun part! The P8400 vgp-bps9 Core 2 Duo is remarkable fast in Vista; I have yet to experience a slowdown caused by the CPU. The bottlenecking component of this laptop is the hard drive, running at the average laptop HDD speed of 5400 RPM. The transfer of a large file via a 100Mbps network was fairly slow; this wasn't all the laptop HDD's fault, though. The laptop is capable of 1000Mbps transfers, and the file contained a large amount of subdirectories and files and slow transfer down in Windows. Bootup is fast, even when multiple startup applications are present.

Gaming wise, this laptop vgp-bps2a will be fine for last generation games. It plays Halo: Combat Evolved at native resolution and everything turned on perfectly. It also plays

Half-Life 2 with almost all settings on High (AA disabled) on the native resolution.

Benchmarks

Super Pi @ 2M: 1m 11s (20 iterations, no AC adapter plugged in)

Super Pi @ 2M: 0m 53s (20 iterations, AC adapter charging battery)

3DMark06: 2,569 3DMarks (869 SM 2.0 / 1023 SM 3.0 / 2021 CPU Score), AC adapter charging battery. No 3DMark06 benchmarks performed on battery power.

Heat and Noise

This laptop vgp-bps2b is built well to handle heat. After gaming for about 30 minutes, the laptop was still cool. It doesn't get very hot at all, and is probably one of the very good things about Sony's engineering. When not reading a disc, this laptop is silent as if not even on. When it reads a disc, however, it gets very loud for a brief 3 to 5 seconds. The fans are fairly silent when gaming, too. Heat and noise wise, it is a very well engineered machine.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The spaced keys on the Sony VAIO vgp-bps2c FW are fairly comfortable to type with. The keys are built well and they do not stick or have any flaws to them. For the serious gamer, I would not recommend using the keyboard, however. After playing first-person shooters on a real desktop keyboard, playing on the VAIO FW's keyboards (or possibly any laptop keyboards in general) are hard to get used to. But any serious gamer wouldn't be playing on a laptop, anyway.

The touchpad is average; it feels a lot smoother than other touchpads, but that's about it. I can't say much about it as almost all laptops now feature similar touchpad technology. The user is able to change basic properties of the touchpad, from button selection to double click speed.



Input and Output Ports

I/O wise, this laptop inspiron e1405 battery has one ExpressCard slot, three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire (dubbed i-Link by Sony), one VGA output, one HDMI output, one headphone jack, and one microphone jack. It also features a Pro MagicGate memory card reader. The I/O ports are pretty standard among all the new laptops; one thing to note is that an HDMI output is also technically a DVI output, as well. A mere HDMI to DVI cable can allow output to a DVI monitor if you don't like using VGA.

Wireless

The VAIO latitude e6400 battery FW comes with an Atheros wireless card that can access b, g, and n type wireless networks. It also comes with Bluetooth wireless for connectivity to peripherals. Wireless can be turned on and off by the simple use of a switch located on the bottom left of the laptop.

Battery

The battery inspiron 1545 battery life is fair; I keep the laptop on full brightness while not charging, and it usually lasts about 2 hours. The laptop downclocks the processor when there is no external power source to conserve power. The P8400 processor should be saving about 10 Watts thanks to Intel's Core 2 Duo P**** models, which run using 25W instead of 35W.

Operating System and Software laptop battery

The VAIO FW came with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit (Sony OEM). It did come with quite an amount of bloatware, but I managed to uninstall what I did not need. Among some of the bloatware, there were applications I found useful: Sony's backup recovery software, Windows Live OneCare, a 60-day trial of Office, and VAIO Content Exporter. The backup software allowed me to make recovery disks easily, and the VAIO Content Exporter converts video file formats.

When I had initially gotten the VAIO, I planned to do a fresh install of Vista. However, I was unable to do so with what was supplied, and so I had to find a different route than recovery disks. Using an Anytime Upgrade Vista disk that is sold separately, I tried a fresh install. Everything worked until it came time for the drivers; one of the drivers gave told me it can only install on Windows Vista. I was confused as I was running Vista, and decided to call Sony ...

Customer Support

Unable to install the drivers properly, I contacted Sony support. They informed me that the user is not able to properly use the VAIO without OEM Vista, because the driver only recognizes the OEM Vista version. Slightly disappointed, I had to reinstall again using the recovery disks and once again manually uninstall the bloatware.

Aside from the OS disappointment, Sony's Customer Support was the most knowledgeable I have talked to; they knew exactly what I was talking about, it wasn't outsourced, and were quick to pinpoint the driver prerequisites.

 

Conclusion

The Sony VAIO FW139E/H was a good purchase for me. The features, build, and price were right, and I am content with the purchase. It is more than enough for any engineering CAD applications I will be using for undergraduate studies, and is great for multitasking and mild gaming.

The VAIO FW's CPU and FSB speed, 3GB of RAM, and Radeon GPU are a wonderful combo for mobile power. The aspect ratio of the screen is perfect for entertainment. The build quality is fantastic; Sony does not deliver anything but their best in hardware.

The downside is insignificant. For someone looking for the best battery life, being able to play the latest game on High settings, or good sound reproduction, this is not the laptop they should look into.

This laptop is fine for the mild power user who still wants portability. Of course, my vision of portability probably differs from someone who finds 6.4lbs heavy. It is nothing like the large VAIO AR, however. The VAIO FW is an FZ in size, and half-way between an FZ and AR in power.

Sony VAIO TZ Review

The Sony TZ is the latest offering from Sony in the ultra portable market. With its small size and extreme low weight, it is a must on any business traveler's notebook list. The Sony TZ original battery code : sony vgp-bps8 , vgp-bpl8, vgp-bps8a, vgp-bps8b combines a new LED backlight display, solid state drive, over-sized battery, and ultra low voltage processors from Intel to make it an all around extended battery performer. Read on to find out how the paper specs stack up in real world use.

The touchpad was easy to use, and very stable with finger tracking. sony vgp-bps9 did not appear to have any lag moving across the screen, nor did it have any pause when it sat idle. My only complaint with the touchpad was the upper boundary was flush with the keyboard tray, making it easy to slide your finger right off the surface. The soft texture made the touchpad easy to control, as well as very comfortable on the fingertips.

Performance and Benchmarks

The only modern game I found to work at sony vgp-bps9a/b decent frame rates was Half Life 1 as mentioned in my first look. Dell inspiron 6400 battery Watching movies, editing photos, and using productivity software worked out much better. The beautiful LED backlit screen really made those activities enjoyable. Below are the standard benchmarks to see how this laptop stacks up against others notebooks. Keep in mind that the TZ compares favorably to other notebooks in the ultra portable notebook class.

Software

Once you dig deep past the bountiful bloatware, and get a chance to uninstall most of it, the TZ laptop battery really becomes different machine. Power usage drops, programs load faster, startups and shutdowns speed up ... I can't recommend enough that users clean off all of the bloatware before they start using the notebook. If you add up all the preinstalled software, by far the most has to do with specific Sony notebook features like backlight adjustment or eject functions. If you take off too many, you start to lose vital functions. I really wish Sony incorporated all system functions into one software package.

Battery

Under normal use, backlight at 80 percent, Sony vgp-bps8 vgp-bps9 Optimized power profile set, and using wireless for web browsing, the TZ vgp-bps9a/b pulled off six hours and 43 minutes. I vgp-bps9/s vgp-bps9/b was hoping for more, as the preproduction model seemed to go more than seven hours, but it was still very good. Watching movies on the laptop got just less than four hours, meaning you could get through even the longest movies on a flight without a recharge.

Charging the battery took quite long compared to what I have been used to. More than five hours to get a complete charge was not out of the question, and two hours to get over 50 percent. Most other laptops will charge at a faster rate up to the 75-80 percent level, but the TZ had no such feature.

Heat and Noise

Even with the low voltage processor and SSD drive, the Sony TZ sony laptop battery dell laptop battery could produce heat with the best of them. The bottom of the notebook got quite hot even under normal use, and the fan was always running after the notebook had been on for over 20-30 minutes. Fan noise was minimal, and the only way to tell it was blowing would be sticking your hand next to the outlet, and feeling the warm air blow past.

Below are heat overlay images showing where the Sony warmed up (in degrees Fahrenheit) during normal extended use

Conclusion

Compared against every other ultra portable notebook I have worked with, the Sony TZ was by far the brightest, lightest, and smallest of the bunch. The screen was gourgeous, battery life was excellent, and the notebook barely weighed anything. I would recommend this notebook to anything considering a portable laptop, especially those who demand the lightest possible items for travel.