2.0GHz Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of
In our most recent Grand Openings survey, we noted that last year's freefall in PC prices had slowed or even, in the case of some under-$1,000 models, reversed. Here's more evidence: Last weekend, while we were testing the Sony Electronics Vaio RS100 desktop that had just reached us after some delay with the evaluation loan request, the $800 system abruptly disappeared from Sony's Web site in favor of a new RS220 model priced at $1,000.
So we must apologize for this review's poor timing. But while we don't usually urge readers to rush to their local retailers in search of closeout specials, some of you might want to see if the corner superstore still has RS100 models in stock. Why? Because while the RS220 makes several hardware improvements for its higher price, they don't strike us as critical -- or, to put it another way, they don't fix our biggest complaint with the system.
DVD Burning on a Budget
The PCV-RS series is Sony's entry-level retail desktop, but its big sales pitch isn't pinching pennies so much as making movies -- home videos recorded to DVD, thanks to a 4.7GB DVD-RW instead of merely a CD-RW drive. Rival HP's lowest-priced DVD-burning desktop, the Pavilion 754n, combines a DVD+RW drive with the same 2.53GHz Pentium 4 processor and $1,000 price as the DVD-RW Vaio RS220. (More costly Sony systems offer a format-bridging DVD+RW/DVD-RW drive.)
To bring DVD recording down to $800, the RS100 model here makes do with an Intel Pentium 4/2.0A processor (with an up-to-date 512K of Level 2 cache, but the older 400MHz rather than 533MHz front-side bus). It also has a frugal but adequate 256MB of DDR266 memory and 60GB hard disk, along with plenty of USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (i.Link in Sonyspeak) ports, a standard 56Kbps modem and 10/100Mbps Ethernet adapter, and well-above-average software bundle including Sony's cool Click to DVD semiautomatic DVD creator.
Before you turn up your nose at the computer's mere 2.0GHz of CPU speed, please note that the Pentium 4/2.0A will kick the stuffing out of the weenie-cached 2.1GHz and 2.2GHz Intel Celerons still appearing in plenty of economy desktops. While setting no speed records, the Vaio posts a perfectly perky score of 162 in BAPco's SysMark 2002, with 238 in Internet Content Creation and 110 in Office Productivity.
Its FutureMark PCMark 2002 numbers are 4,788 for CPU; 3,228 for memory; and 771 for the hard disk -- the last snappy enough to help make the system feel a bit quicker than comparable 2.0GHz mobile Pentium 4 laptops, which executives still consider to be high-performance status symbols.
Events
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
