If I had HK$16,980 to spare, I would buy the Sony Vaio PCG-Z1GP. It has everything one would like in a personal mobile computing device - designer chic, wireless LAN, fast processing and ultra portability. But if you are looking for a portable gaming machine then the Z1GP isn't it, having just 16MB of video random access memory.
If it is design you are after, this is the laptop you will want to buy. With a footprint of 24.7cm by 31.6cm, and a thickness ranging from 2.38cm at the front to 3.9cm at the back, the wedge-shaped 2.7kg Z1GP is portable enough for the road. It is about a kilogram heavier than the Samsung X10, which is the lightest Centrino laptop in the market.
It has a pair of USB 2.0 ports and an i.LINK or FireWire/1394 port on the left-hand side, along with the audio ports for microphone and headphone. An RJ-11 modem port lives on the right-hand side, plus an RJ-45 Ethernet connector and a VGA port behind a drop-down door at the back. However, it does not have infrared connection and a TV-out port.
Apart from the MagicGate Memory Stick slot, there's a single Type II PC Card slot set unobtrusively into the left-hand side. Indicator lights for power, wireless LAN and Bluetooth are set on the top right corner above the keyboard. Other nice details are the integrated LEDs on the power button and power connector, and the unobtrusive two-button touchpad, which has the same silver-effect finish as the rest of the system case. I didn't like the touchpad, however, which gives off too much friction because of the matte finish.
This 1.3GHz Pentium M/Centrino system is a smooth operator too. It comes with a generous 512 megabytes of DDR SDRam, with a maximum of 1 gigabyte, although the 855 chipset supports up to 2GB. Storage is provided by a massive 40GB Hitachi hard drive and a built-in, non-removable DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive.
The 14.1-in display is driven by an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 chipset with just 16MB of dedicated video Ram. This is a disappointing specification, especially from a company which touts a superior multimedia and audio-visual experience. The 2D acceleration is impeccable, but its 3D performance suffers in comparison to more highly configured competitors.
Two bundled Sony utilities worth mentioning are the Performance Balancer and Power Panel which give you a high degree of control over the trade-off between performance, battery life and fan noise. Performance Balancer provides two tabbed pages, 'Running on Batteries' and 'AC Plugged in', that provide preset and customisable combinations for LCD brightness and fan speed which affects battery life and performance.