Official Vaio Y 13.3 Series Owners Lounge

[dmk2]

I'm looking for a light laptop preferably with a dvd drive that I can take to school without the power adapter. The Toshiba would be great for this purpose except that many people have started reporting that it's almost impossible to get 8 hrs of battery life on it.

The Sony laptop has a great battery life (true or false?) but is a little slower and does not have a dvd drive which means I would have to buy an external drive.

Not sure about battery life. Sony only advertises 6 hours for the new Y. They used to advertise 8 hours for the old Y with SU7300, and it could get 6-6:30 on a charge doing web surfing over wifi and a bit more if you're just using office apps. The jury is still out on the new model, but maybe an hour less? That would put it in close competition with the Toshiba R705.

If you need more battery life from the Y, you can order it with the extended battery. Alternately, if you have a Sony Style store nearby, you can still buy one of the old models. Most still have stock remaining and will discount.

If you actually want to use a DVD drive while you're away from home, e.g. to watch DVDs that you haven't ripped to the HD, then the Y is not a good choice. I never use an optical drive except for installing store bought software, so I don't miss it on the Y.

Build quality is good on both machines. The R705 is lighter and a little smaller, but feels just as sturdy. I think the R705 is a little more stylish and attractive. They both have average screens. The Y has a better keyboard and runs really cool & quiet. The R705 has more power and DVD drive. I was put off by the heat generated by the R705 and the location of the fan intake (blocked when you're using on your lap) otherwise I would have gone with that instead. I think the R705 would actually be a better machine with an i5-430UM or i7-640UM ULV instead of the standard voltage i3-350M, but the price would probably be higher.

[cjk0102]

Carrying around an external dvd drive sort of sounds like a pain in the butt, so if you really need this I'd be tempted to go with the Toshiba. Alternatively, have you thought about purchasing a 16 or 32 GB flash drive?

thanks. i think you're right. i think i'll go with the toshiba. i think it's lightweight enough that i can carry the power cord.

thanks!

[SoundsGood]

Build quality is good on both machines. The R705 is lighter and a little smaller, but feels just as sturdy. I think the R705 is a little more stylish and attractive. They both have average screens. The Y has a better keyboard and runs really cool & quiet. The R705 has more power and DVD drive. I was put off by the heat generated by the R705 and the location of the fan intake (blocked when you're using on your lap) otherwise I would have gone with that instead.

Nice comparison. I haven't seen a Y myself (and the R700 is tempting) so I was curious about how the two compared.

[jalapar]

Hey everyone,

I've been lurking around this forum for the past week as I've been wanting to read some feedback on Sony's Y series since I'm in the market for a ULV Laptop. I've also considered Asus, Acer and HP's ULV series in the decision making process and had originally picked up a Asus UL40VT and the keyboard flex was too much for my taste, noisy keys especially on the WASD side of the keyboard and I just couldn't get the use of the touch pad and a single touch pad key bridging the left and right button.

But Sony's Y series seemed to have a better build but no dedicated GPU but I'm not in the market for games. I had originally purchased the VPCY216FX which has Intel's SU7300 processor and it was a great little machine but once I found that Sony had discontinued it and that I had bought an open box unit as the Futureshop I went to were using these $799 laptops for training(which is stupid). The techs had restored the laptop which took about 1 1/2 hours and CHARGED the battery while restoring which I found even more irresponsible of them as computer technicians, so I returned it

I'm picking up Sony's VPCY216FDB which has finally arrived in Canada and is exclusive at Futureshop at a hefty price of $899. So if there are any Canadians here check your local Futureshop if your interested.

I'll post up the Windows Experience Score, my own take on the laptop and battery life on real usage(web browsing, spreadsheets, programming etc).

Let me know if you guys want me to look into something specific about the laptop and I'll try to answer you the best I can.

[alanbrenton]

For those who bought the Y Series, because it's fairly new, did Sony solve the battery drain issue when in standby or hibernation? I searched the thread and did not find a definite response. Thanks.

[elite.]

Hey everyone,

I've been lurking around this forum for the past week as I've been wanting to read some feedback on Sony's Y series since I'm in the market for a ULV Laptop. I've also considered Asus, Acer and HP's ULV series in the decision making process and had originally picked up a Asus UL40VT and the keyboard flex was too much for my taste, noisy keys especially on the WASD side of the keyboard and I just couldn't get the use of the touch pad and a single touch pad key bridging the left and right button.

But Sony's Y series seemed to have a better build but no dedicated GPU but I'm not in the market for games. I had originally purchased the VPCY216FX which has Intel's SU7300 processor and it was a great little machine but once I found that Sony had discontinued it and that I had bought an open box unit as the Futureshop I went to were using these $799 laptops for training(which is stupid). The techs had restored the laptop which took about 1 1/2 hours and CHARGED the battery while restoring which I found even more irresponsible of them as computer technicians, so I returned it

I'm picking up Sony's VPCY216FDB which has finally arrived in Canada and is exclusive at Futureshop at a hefty price of $899. So if there are any Canadians here check your local Futureshop if your interested.

I'll post up the Windows Experience Score, my own take on the laptop and battery life on real usage(web browsing, spreadsheets, programming etc).

Let me know if you guys want me to look into something specific about the laptop and I'll try to answer you the best I can.

Sony revamped their Canadian website yesterday. You can order the i3-330 UM version from their website for the same price Future Shop is selling. I'm expecting the color choices will also be available in the near future.

[jalapar]

Sony revamped their Canadian website yesterday. You can order the i3-330 UM version from their website for the same price Future Shop is selling. I'm expecting the color choices will also be available in the near future.

Nice, it's about time they updated their website. But I just picked it up and I don't mind the Black only thing I wish was that they keyboard wasn't bilingual all these extra characters on the keyboard just makes it look too busy.

[elite.]

Nice, it's about time they updated their website. But I just picked it up and I don't mind the Black only thing I wish was that they keyboard wasn't bilingual all these extra characters on the keyboard just makes it look too busy.

Oh that kinda sucks.
The SU7300 version doesn't have that bilingual keyboard.

[visiom88]

I received my laptop on Monday and I absolutely love it. It may not be as sturdy as ThinkPad, but it's tolerably well built in terms of sturdiness. Windows Experience Index scores are as following:

CPU - 4.2
Memory - 4.9
Aero - 5.0
Graphics - 6.1
Hard Drive - 5.9

I'm surprised how smooth it can run Half Life 2 with maximum graphics settings and native resolution. CPU may seem lacking, but I don't think WEI is a good measure to evaluate the performance of Core i3, because everything just seems much smoother and snappier than my previous laptop, which had CPU score of 5.2.

[jalapar]

Oh that kinda sucks.
The SU7300 version doesn't have that bilingual keyboard.

Ya thats what I loved about the VPCY216FX's keyboard and now I'm hearing some sort of ticking noise which could be the HDD's needle so I might go exchange it sometime during the week.