The good: Incredibly light; sturdy carbon-fiber body; great battery life.

The bad: Only a core solo processor; tops out at 1.5GB of memory.

The bottom line: Sony's latest business-centric VAIO is a wonder of sturdy construction, ultralight portability and enticing design. At the same time, it's not exactly an inexpensive number-crunching beast.

Read full review of the Sony Vaio VGN-G118GN »

By Alex Kidman, CNET.com.au
Apr 23, 2007

For a incredibly long time, if you wanted a tough notebook, you bought a Panasonic ToughBook. Sure, it costs the earth, weighed about half as much and it looked like you were carrying around a Hummer under your armpit, but ToughBooks were the gold standard for a tough notebook. That gold standard is still true, but with the introduction of the Vaio G series, it looks like Sony's attacking all of the rest of the ToughBook's places in the robust notebook market, while still retaining one of the core characteristics of the Vaio brand--that is, notebooks that actually look pretty darn spiffy.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com.au. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. We will have more details after the official launch next week.

Design
The Vaio VGN-G118GN is an ultraportable notebook in a very small form factor--just 277 x 23.5-25.5 x 215mm and 1.15kg with the battery installed, making it a good pick for business types who travel a lot--or anyone who doesn't want a whole lot of back strain from lugging around a notebook all day. The Vaio VGN-G118GN also comes with a truly minute power adapter--for reference purposes it's about a third the size of the Wiimote, which in notebook terms is practically invisible. The keyboard features laser-etched characters on it; Sony claims this should increase the durability of the notebook, as it's less prone to "wearing out", something we've seen with plenty of notebooks over the years. We were lacking in review time to sit there for three years rubbing a slightly grubby thumb over the keys to see if Sony's claims were true, so we'll have to take that on faith.

	It may be slim, but the Vaio G manages to integrate an optical drive. (Click for larger image)

Features
For a system with an enticing design and impressive chassis, we were surprised to discover that the components underneath the Vaio VGN-G118GN's body are best described as average. Your S$3,799 (US$2,740.78) investment scores you only a 1.2GHz Intel Core Solo U1500 processor and 1GB of memory. That'll run the supplied Windows Vista Business Edition well enough, but not in a spectacular fashion, and for those thinking of adding some grunt, you're also stymied by the Vaio VGN-G118GN's top level of 1.5GB of onboard memory, thanks to a soldered 512MB memory module and a single memory slot to play with. Graphics are provided by the onboard Intel Media Accelerator 950, which will snatch up to 224MB of memory from the memory pool. The display is a 12.1-inch 1,024 x 768 TFT in 4:3 aspect ratio. Networking is handled via a 10/100 Ethernet port, inbuilt 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth wireless and, oddly enough in this day and age, a 56Kbps modem. That's presumably there for the high-flying business type who finds himself inexplicably stranded in Swan Reach without broadband.

In practical terms, the VGN-G118GN is a notebook for number crunching, not games playing or video editing per se, although Roxio Easy Media Creator is oddly bundled with the Vaio VGN-G118GN. Impressively, for a notebook this light and thin, Sony manages to cram in a Super Multi DVD burner on the side, putting it ahead of similar thin-and-light notebooks such as the Toshiba Portege R400. Security concerns are covered by a biometric fingerprint sensor and TPM module, while physical damage concerns are covered by inbuilt HDD shock protection, something that's becoming very standard across high and even middle-range business notebooks.

Performance And Battery Life
Sony makes a big claim with the Vaio G in terms of its battery life; up to 11.5 hours is the proposed figure, and that's with the battery supplied in the box, not a supplemental model. At the time of writing, however, none of our standard battery benchmarks would operate under Windows Vista of any flavor, so critically assessing battery life in a repeatable fashion was impossible. Certainly, our adhoc testing suggests that Sony's not telling too many porkies, as we comfortably got through a working day with the Vaio VGN-G118GN on a relatively light workload, and it would at least make sense of the inclusion of the ultra-low voltage U1500 processor. From a practical work viewpoint, you've to put up with the classic problem of ultraportables--the keyboard's not very big, so fast-touch typists will struggle for a while.

As with the battery benchmarks, few of our test suite of applications are currently fully Vista compatible, although we were able to drag a PC Mark CPU score of 2,012 and memory score of 2,054 out of the Vaio VGN-G118GN, and a 3DMark score of 155. None of those figures were surprising; the Vaio VGN-G118GN simply isn't a high-end productivity workhorse given the limited processor, graphics and memory options on board. Having said that, it's also targeting a very specific niche: Business users who want a stylish portable machine with plenty of battery life.

Service And Support
Sony Vaio notebooks have a one-year local warranty. At Sony's support Web site, Vaio owners can download the latest drivers. For simple problems, the company offers an online knowledge database for troubleshooting. Should the unit require further diagnosis or repair, the customer will have to send the unit to the service center. For an additional S$94.50 (US$68.18), consumers can purchase the Vaio Overseas Service package which provides a 24-hour call center for repair requests and international warranty coverage at designated countries.

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