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So, long time readers of this blog may remember that I got a new Vaio laptop for Christmas but I haven’t gotten a chance to let you know what I think of it. I love it! Of course, what’s not to love? It is one of the most elegant computers I have ever owned. I love the feel of the textured surface, the screen is bright, crisp and clear, and the color is a nice, warm earth tone instead of the shiny silver that I always seem to get. It is a really nice computer. I was amazed by how much sharper the screen was than my Toshiba, the Toshiba appeared dim by comparison.

About the color of the laptop, it turns out that it’s brown. When I bought the laptop the box for the Vaio was marked black and the Vaio looked black in the store and at home, so I thought it was black until I took it to the library and noticed that the touch pad was brown. Not only was the touch pad brown but the speakers were brown and then I realized that the whole laptop was brown. Pretty silly but the Vaio isn’t as light as it appears in the picture on Sony’s website. (BTW, the color is called, “wenge” and it’s considered a “rich brown color with subtle copper accents that shine through in angled light.”)
And though I thought I would hate Vista and was trying to figure out a way around it, I actually love it!! I know, I’ve been assimilated by the Borg! I know I’m going against the crowd but this is a very visually pleasing OS. I love the way the windows pop up. I like the look and feel of it. I love the way it handles the file system and I love the 3D icons. It does have its problems though. Standing still with nothing running, it was using 840 MB of memory, so getting the second gig of memory is a must. I haven’t had any major issues except for installing Norton 360 but I was able to work through the installation with a tech via a chat session.
One of the upsides of moving to Vista meant that I had to find upgrades to two software programs that I use a lot: Bibleworks and the editor for my Sony digital recorder (for taping lectures at Westminster) and both programs have added features that have improved them considerably. Bibleworks has added a translation of the LXX (the Greek translation of the OT) to their list of translations, moved the lexicons to the summary window, included Old Testament pseudepigrapha and New Testament apocrypha. Plus many other additions that I haven’t even gotten a chance to explore.
The Sony digital recorder upgrade will save me tons of time since it now converts the audio file from a proprietary format to MP3. I used to have to do the conversion myself using another software program and it was very time consuming. Now just a click of the mouse and it’s converted.
I also decided to upgrade to Office 2007 Student and Home edition. I liked the new interface and I think it will be much easier to use once I get over the learning curve. I like that I don’t have to pull down all kinds of menus looking for the command that I want to execute, the icon for the command is visible on the toolbar. I’m happy Microsoft included OneNote with Office. I’ve been using it for blogging and for organizing my classes for seminary (more on that in a separate post).
Everything about this computer is an improvement over my old one: it takes me less time to load the Internet pages, I can watch Bones on the Internet now without it stalling (I’m still having trouble with CBS though), typing is much faster (the keys aren’t as raised as my Toshiba). I can copy MP3 files to a SD card much quicker because there’s a drive for the SD installed in the laptop. Very convenient!
I decided to upgrade the memory since I was afraid that once I really started using the laptop, it would bog down. I got a glimpse of this when I wanted to save a piece of text quickly because I was in a hurry and had to wait F O R E V E R for Works to load. Yech! Annoying! So, I took it to the store and had them install an extra gig. Well, they don’t actually install a gig they remove the gig you have and install two gig chips and then they don’t give you credit for the old chips. When my husband found out about that he wasn’t too thrilled. I suggested he sell them on ebay but he told me to do it. Yeah, that’ll happen. But then he decided to use them in his laptop (I was surprised that he only had 512k) and was so happy with his improved speed. He put the other chip in Sarah’s computer and so my upgrade paid for the improvement in three of our computers. Pretty good investment of $95! ?
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