:Sony Vaio FS90 A Spec

Since the birth of the portable PC or “notebook” or “laptop”, 2 trends have developed: on one side, there are the SUPER MEGA ULTRA MINI COMPACT jack-of-all-trades that do everything (they even make coffee), and on the other side you have the big units that blow regular office desktops away with their specifications (but this last category is not the one we will look at in this test).

The “Father” of the BIG laptop or Desktop Replacement is without a doubt the Apple with its 17” Titanium. It’s your weapon of choice when being mugged on the street, one aimed hit on the head of your assailant with your Apple should put him out of the game for a long time.
In the PC world, there was no real SUPER MEGA portable computer, and once again, Apple has started this trend. It’s obvious that there was a need for a device that could be used as a Body Board or, with the addition of some “bones” and “indi”, a Sk8board.These machines were successful with their dimensions but they never incorporated any spirit or real power. A G4 makes a Pentium M look like a 486dx2. But all this is without taking SONY and a normal Pentium M into account. Maybe some background info on the Pentium M: this CPU is developed on the Pentium III and not on the crappy P IV, so Intel made a wise decision to build the M on a good basis.

So basically SONY is bringing out this extra-ordinary laptop. Designed by their engineering department, I present you: the FS90 A Spec. Hidden behind a very Grand Turismo badge, this is a real monster!

Video of the FS90 A Spec





- Pentium M 2.13Ghz
- 1Gb of RAM
- 100Gb HDD
- GeForce 6200 @ 128Mo
- 15" WSXGA+ screen (ultra mega super big… please, stop making up ridiculous names for these screens) with a 1680x1050 resolution
- Multi everything burner, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+DL (Double Layer like in the kids pampers)
- Everything packed in a 364x259x35.6mm and 2.9kg casing (add another kg for the charger though)




As this type of machine is meant to replace a desktop PC, it needs to be discreet and not mess up the living room. The design of the FS90 A spec is amazing and its build quality is flawless… well, almost, because there was one thing that bothered me, but you’ll see that later in this review (and no, I’m not a maniac… well, maybe just a bit).


These are a bunch of pictures that (hopefully) give you a better idea of what the FS90 A Spec looks like.




The control LED, with the Power button, the battery, the HDD, the Memory Stick and the Wireless LAN, under which you can find the Hardware On/Off switch.




On the right of the WiFi connector you can find the headphones and microphone ports, and I admit that that place is not the best, especially if you’re a big Skype user like me (2 to 3 hours per day) that works at the same time while calling. In that case, the jack of the microphone/headphones can bother you while you’re typing on the keyboard (your wrist is located just above the 2 connectors).



A PCMCIA slot



The FireWire (i.Link), the MS Pro slot, 3 USB ports, a VGA out connector and the power plug. Small problem here (and this is where you’ll discover that there is a little maniac hiding inside of my body): the MS Pro slot… no, let me stop you right here, I will not criticize the format itself, but I do have a problem with the way the slot closes. The small cover that you can see on the picture is not very well designed. You have to push the top part, which is ok, but when you have to press the bottom part, it never closes completely… So this was the most important remark of this review, all the rest is very unimportant… and this element makes me doubt whether I want to buy this laptop or not… just kidding! But on a gorgeous machine like this, you would have thought that they would have invested some more time to make this cover fit properly (Ok, I’m freaking you out, I know ).




This is the ventilation of the cool Pentium M 2.13Ghz. A BIG advantage for this machine is that it’s VERY quiet.



The multi-format DVD player burns everything (DL, + or – and also RAM), on the left hand side of the picture you can see the Ethernet and modem ports.



Once you close the lid, this is what the machine looks like.



The wireless antenna is situated above the PCMCIA slot on the side of the screen.





This is a series of pictures that should give you an idea of the dimensions of this beast.



This is a Sony VAIO U71P on the keyboard of the FS90 A Spec.



A nice family picture:

On the right my Vaio Z1, a JVC Interlink MP-XP741, the FS90 A Spec, in front of it a Zaurus SL-C3000 and on its right (on the picture) a Fujitsu T70K




Now, BigMac time, nice no?



My valued Z1 (about to retire after 2 years of good service) next to the FS90 A Spec. For your info, the FS90 A Spec has a 1680x1050 15” wide screen, and the Z1 has a 1400x1050 14” screen.



For those of you that still remember the dimensions of a disc, this is what it compares to when put on a PC.



The battery of the FS90 A Spec (top) and the battery of my Z1 (bottom) with the same capacity (4400mAh).



The charger is probably made of lead, because it is very heavy.




The screen is not as impressive dimensions-wise as that on a Mac Titanium 17. The 15” Wide of the FS90 A Spec is smaller , but the size does not really matter, the resolution does. The 17” SuperDrive Mac has a 1440x900 resolution… not bad, but my Z1 offers the same. Opposed to that, the FS90 A Spec kills the competition with a 1680x1050. Displaying 2 windows at the same time is not a problem at all (I’m a big fan of dual screen since young), just click on the image to see what the result is (real size).



The other important characteristic of the screen is that it’s a XBlack SONY screen, that gives a very pure impression. Inside, it’s very nice to read/look at, but outside in bright sunlight, it’s useless. The other inconvenience of this screen is that when you watch a movie or play a game and the action is situated in a dark setting, you might have some difficulties… but overall it’s not that bad.






I imagine that A LOT of people asked themselves what this machine could deliver as performance, especially when it comes to graphics. So I used PC Mark (version Free 2004) and 3D Mark (version Free 2003), did my tests amd compared the data to my desktop at home (Pentium 4 2.0Ghz, 768Mb of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9600 with 128Mb). And guess what? The FS90 A Spec annihilated my desktop PC.

PC Mark gives

3780 Points for the FS90 A Spec against 2417 for my P 4



3D Mark gives

2495 Points for the FS90 A Spec against 825 for my P 4




I have no other choice than to take my P4 and burn it, the shame is just too great. I won’t go any further in my analysis of these numbers as I’m not able to do an in-depth comparison, but just looking at these plain numbers, there is a WORLD of difference.

The video card seemed to digest the things I fed it and I also took a screenshot of the configuration panel of the GeForce 6200. As you can see, you can tweak and tune a lot of settings to get the best out of your 3D ganes.







The keyboard is really nice to use, and the only big surprise is the size of the “ENTER”-key, it’s 2.5 times as big as the one on my Z1. The burner works flawlessly, there’s enough RAM and the WiFi b/g works like a charm.
The weak spot of this machine is the battery life and you really shouldn’t expect to go at war for more than 3 hours… but is that what the typical user of this machine demands? Not really. The PC will spend most of its life on a desk, and not on the streets of a big city.








Thanks again to GeekStuff4U.com for providing us with this unit for a test.



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