VGN-FZ
Summary
The Sony Vaio FZ Series is a range of high-end laptops released by Sony in 2007 and replaced in 2008. It replaced its predecessor, the Vaio FE-Series and was later replaced by the FW Series. Being a higher end model, it featured upgrades from Sonys midrange option at the time, the SZ-series. The upgrades included features like a bigger 15.4“ screen, upgraded GPUs and on higher end models Blu-ray drives. The 2.000€ Laptop was praised for its sharp and saturated 1280 x 800 Pixel screen, with borrowed technology from Sonys line of Bravia televisions. The only downside to this was the relatively low resolution of the display. To truly enjoy the FZs movieplaying capabilities, one was able to use the HDMI port to connect the Laptop to an external monitor, for the ultimate Blu-ray experience. The FZ-Series also featured a wide range of ports, including three USB 2.0, FireWire, ExpressCard, Memory Stick and an SD Card slot. The FZs biggest drawbacks where it’s short battery life, lasting only 1 hour and 38 minutes while watching DVDs. The other big issue were the 8000 series NVIDIA videocards, which were prone to failure under heavy use. Today you can easily find many FZs with broken 8400 or 8600 GPUs.
Specs
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, T7250, T7500, T7700, T8100, T8300, T9300, T9500 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M or 8600M GS or GT Screen: 15,4“ 1280 x 800 Memory: 2 or 4GB DDR2 Ram Drive: 120-300 GB HDD
Daily Usage
Thanks to its powerful hardware for the time, it is still pretty useful for current day usage. Webbrowsing and textediting should be fine when using the dedicated GPU. Older games will also run fine, though modern games will struggle or outright not work. Also thanks to Sonys canceled driver support for devices delivered with Windows 7 or older, users will have issues setting up a new Windows installation.
Sources
Pictures: notebookcheck notebookcheck