Richard Stephens enjoyed the tiny Vaio TZ both at home and away


Laptops are like shopping: no matter how light they are at the checkout, by the time you reach the car the bag will be cutting through your fingers.



Somewhere, there is a dream laptop: the screen will be big enough to do sensible work on, the device will be light enough that you can forget about it in your bag, as with your BlackBerry you will be constantly in touch, and the battery will last long enough to have you working a whole flight to Australia.



Of course, that laptop does not yet exist, but there are some contenders. One such is the Sony Vaio TZ21WN/B, which has an internal socket for a SIM card. T-Mobile is providing the network side of things. This is a 3G SIM too, and the Sony allows HSDPA for super-fast 3.6Mbps downloads.



This technology does not come cheap, however: there are several models in the range, and for this laptop you could pay in the region of £1,600 - it is not the sort of laptop to leave on the train.



I am already a fan of the Vaio range, and currently use one of similar size. Initial impressions of this laptop are very good - it is jet black, very thin and gorgeous. In fact, this sort of good looks could have clients questioning your fee rates. And it isn't plastic: it is built on a carbon fibre frame, which as well as making it strong makes it light too - only 1.24kg.



Typical of the Sony Vaio range, the screen is bright and colours are vibrant. In practice, I found no difficulty working at it for an extended period.



Of course, the screen is small at only 11.1", with a resolution of 1366x768. This may influence some lawyers who, unlike many in business, tend to work at long documents and who in general need more screen real estate. I remember one meeting where I had my similar-sized Vaio and the client leaned over to look at a document. 'I can't read a thing on this tiny screen' she said, 'where's its mummy?' So you might want to use this more as a travelling companion than a serious working tool.



The processor is only so-so (1.06GHz Core 2 Duo U7500), but there is more than enough memory (2 GB DDR2 RAM). It ships with Vista and a vast amount of junkware which Sony, like so many manufacturers, insists on pre-loading when you buy a PC.



The result is that performance is not exactly sparkling on startup. You see the progress bar fairly soon, it is true, but after nearly 60 seconds I was still staring at a black screen and had to wait nearly two minutes before the bloated Vista operating system crawled on to the desktop and longer than that before the Vista equivalent of the hourglass disappeared. These things are important in airports. After that, however, running ordinary office apps is easy.



The TZ also has Wi-Fi and an array of ports - two USB ports, a Firewire port, Memory Stick and SD card ports, ports for Ethernet and modem, and sockets for microphone and speakers. There is also a built-in DVD writer, so getting things in and out of the device is easy. The keyboard looks rather odd, with the keys separated from each other and standing proud of the surface, rather like blackened pieces from a Scrabble set laid out in rows. However, it is comfortable to work at.



I didn't get the chance to use the TZ on a fast-moving train, where I have in the past found it hard to use 3G, but the reception seems very good - showing a healthy signal even when I took it to the basement of my office, where I can barely get a signal on my mobile.



Battery life seemed outstanding too, and it is definitely the sort of device you could take out of the office without having to take the power adaptor with you every time. Like my current Vaio, you can get up to about six hours of ordinary use out of it.



For business people on the move, this is a good device - though I suspect the first step would be to get rid of the junkware and try XP instead (assuming the drivers and communications apps work with XP). For lawyers, the same comments apply - though be certain that you could manage with the sub-notebook-sized screen. It is an expensive gadget as we go into credit crunch, especially for a laptop that would easily allow you to download and view movies, but might not let you comfortably edit that 100-page document.





The guinea pig:


Richard Stephens is an ex-City partner specialising in IT law and registered CEDR mediator. www.lorsonline.com



The kit:



Sony Vaio VGN TZ21WN/B

Price: £1,300-1,600

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.06GHz

Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11a/b/g and 3G module

1GB DDR2-533 SDRAM

DVD RW/R DL/RAM

100GB hard disk

11.1" WXGA (1366x768)



Sony Vaio VGN SZ61VN/X

Price: £1,600-1,800

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz

Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11a/b/g and 3G module

2GB DDR2-667 SDRAM

200GB hard disk

DVD RW/R DL/RAM

13.3" WXGA (1280 x 800)