Sony TZ21MN

Could less be so much more with this tiny portable from Sony?

Those who know me, know that I’m a dedicated Apple user. I’ve been in contact with their computers since I was a small child. So, when I found myself reviewing three Sony laptops over the last week my situation has been one of curiosity, wonderment and a little bit of dismay thrown in for good measure.

FIRST APPEARANCES
The first Laptop I looked at was the TZ21MN and, out of the three was the one I found most impressive. Mainly due to its size, the TZ21 is perfect for those on the move, sporting an 11.1inch screen, which while small is clear as crystal (liquid crystal that is). Of course with such a small screen, the footprint is also reduced, the overall dimensions resulting in a laptop that is just a little bigger than a book.

The TZ21MN sports a new colour, "Platinum Sand", which is like silver with a hint of gold thrown in. This finish makes up the top of laptop and extends around to the inside to form a trim that surrounds the screen. The Keyboards low profile keys sit nicely on a glossy base, itself on a slightly lower level than the front of the laptop, this in turn means no contact between screen and keys and therefore the screen will not suffer from those nasty scuff marks.

Overall, the TZ21MN is a notebook that no corporate athlete (Sony’s words) would be ashamed of being seen with, and, it is certainly well suited to the more business minded user who needs something with the combination of compactness and good looks.

IN USE
At first I thought having such a small laptop would be something of a hindrance and it certainly wouldn’t be much good for desktop publishing but for the everyday man (or woman) who’s requirements don’t go further than writing a letter, sending an email or creating an Excel document it’s perfectly suited.

The small size of this laptop does have a number of advantages mind, not only does it make it much easier to carry around than some of the behemoths that have become increasingly common (due largely to the current vogue to have lovely widescreen screens) but it also performs admirably as an entertainment device, the image quality is excellent due to the X-Black LCD with LED screen technology and outperforms any portable DVD player that I’ve come across.

The only little niggles I have is that the sound from the speakers is a bit tinny, however this is unlikely to be an issue as most people will probably pipe the sound directly into their heads via the headphone socket. The only other complaint I have is that the eject button on the DVD drawer is absolutely tiny, so small in fact that no matter how I tried I could never find it unless I tilted the thing around to have a look. I just can’t get my head around the thinking here, surely when producing a quality high-end product that’s sold at a high-end price you’d create a more intuitive approach (sure there’s the eject button with the front AV controls, but it only work if the drive hasn’t been turned off to save power), I can’t help but feel that a slot loading device would be much more at home in a machine like this.

Okay, so the keyboard utilises the low lying style of key that has recently become popular, I’d not used a keyboard like this for any extended amount of time before and was interested to see how I’d rate them for everyday use. While I must admit that I prefer the more traditional style I had no problem using the TZ21MN all day long, the keys respond well, bouncing back firmly, I also like the fact that they are well spaced out, clearly marked and are of a good size, having the arrow keys slightly lower than the rest of the keyboard also made life a bit easier.

FULLY FEATURED?
While it may be little, the amount of features and ports Sony has crammed into the TZ21MN is incredible. Lets start at the front, where we have the AV control buttons, simple enough and as expected with play/pause, stop, eject and so forth, they are those little round metal ones that leave an impression in the pads of your fingers though, something, while not a big problem just diminishes the touchy feeliness of the laptop, they do however complement its styling. Directly under these is a little switch that either turns on or off the laptop's ability to connect to a wireless network, so great for security and power saving. This, in contrast to the AV controls, is made of a flat black plastic, which begs the question, why not have all the buttons like that?

To the left of the trackpad there are some LED’s that seem to signify battery and processor performance, to me these seem to blink randomly and their purpose was quite frankly lost to me, after all Vista provides you with this information. That’s not it though, we also have a slots for reading SD cards and MagicGate memory sticks as well as both headphone and microphone ports.

The left side at first seems quite simple with two USB 2.0 ports an Express Card Slot and a Kensington lock slot. However, with a closer look, we see there’s a little flap just near the left hinge, under which lives a modem, Ethernet and IEE1394(Firewire) 4 pin 400Mbs ports, on the side of the hinge is the power cable socket. To the right is the DVD drive – with that annoying button – a VGA port and the power button.

And there's more. Above the screen can be found a Motion Eye camera, perfect for those video conferences on the move and a must have in this day and age. It was slightly disappointing then to find that this camera only has a resolution of 640x480 pixels – a whole 0.3 megapixels! And while probably fine for quick face-to-face calls, at this resolution the image would be horrendously pixelated and full of artefacts particularly at, say, full screen, so you can forget holding something up to the camera to show it off.

Sony have also been good enough to throw into the mix quite a bit of software, most notably Adobe Elements 5.0 and several VAIO branded programs mainly focusing on media controls, and there's a 60 day software trial of MS Office. For a full listing of bundled software and specifications http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProduct.action?product=VGN-TZ21MN%2FN&site=voe_en_GB_cons&category=VN+TZ+Series.

One thing lacking however is backlighting, something that this notebook could really have done with: It’s not easy seeing black keys on a black background when in the dark, Sony please take note. Another thing I noticed is that the keys have a slight rubber feel to them, something that reminded me fondly of days-of-old, when I sat in front of my telly waiting patiently for a game to load up on my Spectrum.

Talking of patience, it is something you’ll need when uses the TZ21MN, it’s slow and I mean, sloooooow. It really shouldn’t be. The hardware’s of a respectable spec., so the only conclusion I have been able to come to is that it’s good old Vista that’s to blame. Something it confirmed for me when I quite unscientifically timed it booting up, a process that took so long I was able to leave it, make a cup of tea, a sandwich and it was only just loading up the desktop as I got back to it – not good – and something that could be incredibly frustrating, if not embarrassing in a business environment.