IP: more tales of my now favorate computer

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

When I gave my last Tokyo Digest report, I said I had gotten a Sony Vaio
505 and liked it very much. I have now had it for a month and felt a
summary report was  due.


Main issue I have is when Sony will market it in the US with a US keyboard.


It is one of the best machines I have used. Even the Japanese keyboard is
no big problem. Cept for a few keys it is very usable in English mode. I
made the choice of staying with the Windows 95 J version to avoid he hassle
of bringing up the US version with the need to find all the Sony drivers.
It was a good choice. Works very well and even though the menus are in
Japanese they are obvious and most US apps end up with US menus EXCEPT the
MS  Office pack which seen to use some system features that make the US
menus into Japanese language . Anyone know what MS does and how to stop it.


I just added another 32 meg to the machine for about 260 $ and got a spare
battery. Battery life looks like 1.7 hours or so on the small normal
battery. The addition of the xtra 32 meg speeds up the system notably, BTW
I got the  memory etc from Doug at http://www.dynamism.com/. Nice people
who delivered what they promised. They also sell 505s in the US.


I final found the pen that lets one write on the pad. I picked up Paint
shop Pro (shareware) and it works great. The pen is in the side of the
display - nice packaging.


I am at a loss to see how the new HP which looks the same size etc is going
to be worth the extra 1000 or more they seem to want to charge (Sony has
not announced a US price but if they charge converted Akihabara prices it
would be about $2300 (for the 233 mh vs the HP at $4100 ) and if they
export the 233 or 266 models)and the colors of the Sony look cool compared
to the black. But I will see if I can find the HP and report more latter.


Farber recommendation -- look  for the Sony 505 EX -- even Manny Farber
wanted to steal mine when he saw it


Dave