5 Minutes With: Sony's VAIO SZ56 notebook

Alongside offering a fairly casual technology news blog, TB Tech offers professional technology advisory, setup and maintenance services to our small business contacts.

We like Sony very much - their VAIO notebooks last and are quite reliable - for us. It came as little surprise then, that when it came to recommending new notebooks for one of our closest business contacts, we chose from within Sony's range of VAIO business laptops.

The 13" lightweight VGN-SZ56 model turned out to be the choice, and today we picked up the five ordered for that contact. Of course, we had to spend five minutes checking it out.

The SZ56 has a premium feel to it - the mixture of brushed aluminium with chrome accents really appeals. The SZ originated Sony's tapering idea - now seen best in the ultralight VAIO TZ series - the notebook starts out fairly thick, and tapers down to a thin front panel. This design gives the notebook a lightweight - and thin - feel.

Speaking of weight, at 1.93kg, the SZ56 certainly isn't heavy, and it's fairly thin by Windows notebook standards anyway.

The full-size keyboard isn't backlit like Apple's MacBook Air, but it is very comfortable to use. The keys are naturally tilted a bit further up from the palmrests because of the notebook tapering - this adds to the ergonomic feel.

We would have preferred the SZ to have a wider touchpad, like the pads found on Apple notebooks - alas, it is a square that, although big enough, offers fairly little room for the fingers.

As the five notebooks have to be set up with our contact's internal servers, we didn't power our photoshoot model up and see how Vista Business ran - however, we're sure that the 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor will be quick.

We'll wait for a report back from our contact on the everyday use of the SZ56 - but our expertise and first impression tells us that it will be a lasting machine for heavy business use.

See: The Sony VAIO SZ56 in pictures

5 Minutes With: the Multi-Touch MacBook Air

´Five Minutes With´ is a new series, edited by Tom Baker, and contributed to by the TB Tech team.
Sometimes it takes a while for us to be eligible to receive a particularly popular new product for review, so we´ll hit the stores and spend some time with a revolutionary new device.

This weekend it was the Apple MacBook Air - another Apple wonder or just another ultraportable?

The first thing you notice is the thinness. It is thin - I was somewhat skeptical at first as to how thin a notebook can actually be. It is like the new Apple keyboards; they sit flat on the floor. It is as if nothing is supporting the touchpad and keyboard of the Air - it is truly amazing.

Using it is very comfortable; the full-size keyboard is very easy on the fingers and the split design leaves only the MacBook Pro with the old-style Apple board. Of course, the keyboard is backlit, but we didn´t get a chance to see how accurate the ambient light sensor is.

The touchpad is far larger than the version on the MacBook or MacBook Pro; it accommodates Apple´s Multi-Touch control which makes zooming, rotating and panning a real pleasure.

The multi-touch really works. In iPhoto rotating images is amazing; you just take two fingers on the pad and turn them clockwise or anticlockwise. Zooming in documents and images works really well, as does skipping through slideshows with the new three-finger swipe.

Other than these new distractions, the Air is much of the same. Itś a well-built, light, thin and stylish Apple machine; there are obvious shortcomings - one USB port won´t satisy most users, no FireWire port is an annoyance, and anywhere out of the U.S. (where WiFi is bountiful) the lack of Ethernet is unacceptable.

However, I´m left without no doubt that the Air will appeal to thousands; if you are looking for an ultraportable with Mac usability and style, and you have a good wireless setup at home and at work, you won´t miss the missing features at all.

So then, our first impressions of the Apple MacBook Air are good. We will delve deeper into this model when we are able to secure a review machine sometime in the next few months.