I prefer the sleeve case to larger bags. I want my gadgets to be fittingly protected when carried and I’ll then buy a larger bag and just throw each in.
I use Incase sleeve cases for my laptops and in fact wanted to get their sleeve for the iPad too, but was unable to order because they insist on US-based billing address for the card. In this age, that’s rather stupid and it’s hurting their business, but such as life, they sure have their reasons.

Thus after checking out few other bags, I decided on WaterField’s. They offer several bag options for iPad and after checking out each, decided on Ultimate model. I especially liked the vertical model, as I could see it fitting perfectly on the side and not dangling back and forth as I walk and getting in the way of my hands. I picked up the larger piggy back case as well, shoulder strap.

I had no problem to use my Serbian card, which was great. I was ordering about a week before the date when it needed to arrive. My cousins were in New York and the bag simply had to be there at least a day before so they could pack it up in time. The first hurdle was the email I received from Waterfield – the vertical bag was out of stock and it could be several days before they had them made. Unfortunately, this moved the delivery date past my D-day. Waterfield offered to upgrade the shipping up, with no extra charge, but it still ended up a day short. So I opted for the 2-day delivery which added 20$. As luck would have it, my cousins eventually stayed for another week, due to Iceland volcano eruption. Such as life…

The bag itself is amazing. Just as I thought, the vertical orientation is perfect and sits so good on the side that it does not get in the way at all. The fit is perfect, snug but not too tight, so it’s easy to put the iPad inside. The interior is padded with soft cloth that can wipe the iPad screen; don’t expect wonders though. In the back they added a tight pocket where you can fit a real wipe cloth, a few pieces of paper or something similarly thin.

I had this bag for over a year now, it’s looking great (especially the worn leather look it gains over time) and no defects nor malfunctions.

The bag is really sturdy and re-enforced on the edges. I can’t stress enough how important that is – if the bag is ever dropped, I’m pretty sure it will protect the iPad even from several meters high.

The piggy back case is very simple, obviously aimed for carrying the wall charger and cables and maybe few more simple items. It was one flaw though – the material it’s made from is the same as the sleeve case. When two of these rubs during walking, they make very annoying sound, especially inside the hallways where it’s sufficiently silent environment. Solution would be to have very small piece of velcro on the back of the piggy case that will attach itself to the main bag.
I plan to do this myself, once I have the time.

In the meantime, I’m using my old usual carry around little bag, which can attach to the iPad bag perfectly. This way I carry these two using one shoulder strap and I can detach the smaller bag when needed and carry just it. Perfect combination.

I’m very happy with the bag and would recommend it to any iPad owner. Without the piggy back case though, at least until Waterfield does something about the noise.

In the mean time, being so happy with this bag, I ordered a whole set of bags and sleeves for the laptops. I got the Suede Jacket sleeve case for both mine and my wife’s notebooks and also Vertigo vertical bags (seriously, don’t ever buy horizontal orientation ever).

Could not be happier with any of these and I plan to keep getting their stuff.

The player was long ago out of warranty. Plus, I brought it to Serbia from UK, one of the last pieces the importer had. OPPO does have a “send it to us for repair” service, but the cost of sending to USA from Serbia would be more than the player is now worth. Plus, experience with other companies tells me that prices for obsolete (OPPO does not sell this model anymore) and out-of-warranty parts are outrageous.

So I emailed OPPO support, simply hoping for an advice what could be wrong so I can try my luck with local repair shops. I was hoping it’s simply some part of the power board. That was on Saturday afternoon (CET time zone).

This is where it becomes awesome. First, I got answer in less than 24h. Second, the answer said that OPPO can help me by sending me a replacement power board and a front-end display. Third, the price for the parts is mere $49. And then to top it off, they responded to my follow-up questions on Sunday and Monday (which was a bank holiday in US). I paid and they shipped the parts the very next day; the package reached me by the end of the week (sent by USPS).

Amazing, amazing support service, way better than I expected. I replaced the parts and the player is working as good as ever – silently and awesomely.

If you are in need of an excellent Blu-ray player, do not even think about anything else – buy one of the OPPO players they have on offer. I’m certain they are amazing just as this DVD player is. I mean, just look at the feature set, the customer testimonials and rave reviews they consistently get for their products.

We need more companies like OPPO. Kudos, masters.

iPad on the other hand has 9.7″ (diagonal) with 1024×768 resolution, which gives 132ppi. John Siracusa said that next iPad will most likely have the same improvement in display rez, meaning it will have 2048×1536 – so the iOS4′ @2x API stuff work the same.
Granted, such resolution sounds ginormous – not even Apple’s latest 27″ monitor is big enough to design interfaces that big. But if that really happen…

…how big the iPad would physically needs to be?

iPad has 1.33x aspect ratio and 9.7″ diagonal display now. 2048x1536 and with 326ppi equals to about 9650in in one very long line, or divide again to get about 29.6in2. From there, the math is easy: 1.33x * x = 29.6, means that x is 4.71in and that physical screen size of the Retina Display iPad would be 4.71 x 6.28, or about 7.85″ diagonal.

Sounds quite possible, does it not?

Here’s a proposal: remove the DVD drive entirely. I don’t know about you, but I have used that thing less than 10 times in last 2 years of owning Macbook Pro. It mostly collected dust and stopped working reliably rather quickly due to that same dust; last few times when I wanted to do anything with it, it spent ages trying to recognize the disk. Or even failed to read it — even Leopard original install disk, which is in pristine condition. Or last night, when it failed to write an empty DVD, which I then burned with no issues on my wife’s Sony VAIO drive.
It’s by far the worst part of the otherwise great notebook.

It’s useless outdated thing, ripe for replacement. It would free up huge space in the notebook for many, much more useful things like:

• integrated SIM card slot
• ExpressCard/34 or even /54 slot
• one or two eSATA connectors
• at least one more USB port

For anyone that needs the drive, they already sell external SuperDrive for Macbook Air and there’s plenty of 3rd party external packages.

What’s not to like? Eh, Apple, how about that?

However, I was quite shocked to see that Apple decided to remove its only expansion slot — ExpressCard/34 — while keeping the FW800 and 2 USB ports, with no additions at all. No eSATA port. No additional USB nor FW ports. No integrated SIM slot for 3G connection.
Instead of EC/34 slot, we get measly SD card reader. Wonderful, it would serve as nice dust conduit.

It’s ridiculous change. On the so-called professional machine, you’re stuck with slow connection methods, you’re stuck with consumer-level card type and you have no means to add what’s missing. Expresscards are not exactly large presence on the market but are by no means non-existing. I own two. Novatel Wireless Merlin X950D for 3G connection and Digitus eSATA 300 card. Both add the stuff pro-level notebook should have outright, but I didn’t mind getting them because the machine itself is great.
These new models are so good, but sadly crippled in the expansion area.

So, if you buy MacBook Pro you’re left with 3 ports and no other option to expand. All that with the portable machine which is a dream to own otherwise – very large hard disk, up to 8GB of RAM (amazing stuff for a 15″ which is my target size), very, very fast CPU and strong graphic card and 80% better battery life than anything else out there. You can do wonders on a machine like that. But if you do video, you’re stuck with FW800 and USB2, both 2-4x slower than eSATA so you’ll be left twiddling your thumbs while things are copied back and forth. Or if you use CF-cards (most hi-end DSLRs do) your best bet is FW-based card reader, instead of EC/34 types which connect directly to PCIe bus and offer much faster transfer rates.

I hope Apple will come to their senses — like they did with bringing FW800 back to all models — and bring EC/34 back. After all, if they wanted to add SD, they could supply simple 5-in-1 card reader that uses that slot — something Sony did with 13″ VAIOs several years back. Those things probably cost few bucks now.

The way things are now, I will not buy a new MBP. I doubt Apple will lose a moment of sleep for that, but if there’s enough of us sending them appropriate feedback, we could have something next year.

The most known product is headphones – UB7. They combine Apple’s cable with ER6i from Etymotic Research.

Which (ER6i) I happen to already have. I also have an iPhone and the stock headphones. I always hated the lousy ER6i cable, but the noise isolation and sound quality is so fantastic that I put up with it. From UB’s approach it’s obvious that the combination is doable and last weekend JeffB’s Flickr photo set gave me enough incentive to try it out.
The biggest benefit of this little exercise is that I now have fantastic buds combined with the best thing that Apple did on their headphones — exquisitely small microphone / switch white thingie. It’s used to answer a call, talk through it, pause or skip a song while playing. Brilliant and very well working.

JeffB on Flickr

It wasn’t hard. Jeff’s images are very good and show the process, here I wanted to give few impressions and important details.

You can’t extract the ER6i driver and save the plastic casing. It must be cut off, no other way to get inside. Thus you’ll to buy a shrink tube to enclose it later on.

To lift that hard white plastic that holds the ER6i driver, use a sharp knife and barely slide it under the top part then pull up. When it’s few millimeters rotated, do the same with bottom part and it will separate.
Separate the wires from the driver, unwind and pull them out.

To open Apple headphones, you need to separate the covered part. I used ordinary pliers and just twisted and pulled – it came off clearly.

You need to remember how are pins connected on the ER6i, so you can later connect the cable correctly. The orange wires from Apple’s cable should be connected exactly like ER6i orange wires. And also remember which one is left and what is right. Right cable has mic switch on it. :)

Here are both left and both right earbuds:

The most time-consuming part is push the Apple’s cable through the tiny hole in the Etymotic casing :) – it’s hard to go through. It took me at least half an hour for both ends. After that is easy.

At the end of January, I finally had a chance to go to UK, for four days. As soon as I got there, I called Sony support numbers and got online with CS guy who was a pleasure to talk to. After hearing reports that other companies are using off-shore CS, it was nice hearing a person speaking excellent english.

Initially, he told me that batteries are not covered under warranty and that the only thing I could do was to buy a new one. I said I’m fine with that (I read the warranty terms and knew this) but was worried that there was nothing actually wrong with the battery and that notebook itself was the problem. My concern was that if I buy new battery and it dies too, I’ll be £200 down for nothing, essentially for their fault.

The reason I thought this is that notebook was, with all possible updates installed, showing this:

I suspected that never-ending charge actually destroyed the battery. My wife’s old Dell did not have this shown, nor any other notebook I have seen:

The support guy acknowledged this and ask me to stay on hold while he checks that with supervisor. After a close to ten minutes, he came back and said: we are happy to offer you an exchange, as I was just told that there are suspected problems with batteries on entire SZ series. Thus we are doing an exchange on everyone having problems.
Quite a nice turnaround for me. :)

As at the time I was in north England, I asked them to send a replacement to London, to my company’s HQ. He said that due to the fact that batteries are ordered from Japan, they will arrive on Monday at best (it was Wednesday). Having no other option, I said fine, I will leave the old one in the office (they needed it to be sent back, probably to investigate what happened).

Nicest part of the surprise is that when I got back to London on Friday night, the DHL package from Sony was waiting for me. Even though it said on the box “do not deliver unless exchange package was given back” it was still left there. Inside, I found my brand new battery, and bunch of stickers for sending the old one back. I re-packaged everything and left it there – I assumed that DHL people will come back to pick it up.
In the end, all finished better than I expected – not only I got new battery, I got it ahead of my return flight on Saturday.

The problem with constant charge was still present though. Worried, I asked Sony (over online support) to explicitly confirm is it safe to keep the battery plugged in while computer is on AC power. They confirmed, but I was still suspicious, because they first asked me to install the latest BIOS from support page – R0083N0 (which I did months ago).

Thus I was pulling the battery out when working on AC power for longer periods. By accident, I saw a message in notebookreview.com forums (great resource for notebook owners) where a guy said that Vista-related BIOS update (R0092N0) fixed the problem.
And it really did:

I’m puzzled why Sony does not put this BIOS update to SZ1XP/C with WindowsXP support page. It clearly fixes a previously reported problem.

Whatever the reason, I’m now very happy with the VAIO laptop: works fine, very quick and runs cool although fan runs most of the time…probably because I really put it to hard work, always having several big apps running at the same time. It’s not noisy though..
I would be sorry to part with it in summer – but I have decided to switch to Mac OS X and will be getting a MacBook Pro once Leopard is out. I’m certain that SZ1 will still be worth a good price then and will offset that new purchase quite a bit. The SZ1 is, hardware-wise, waaaay better than MacBook and there are no MBPs in this form factor…but such as life.

On those partitions, there’s amazing amount of software installed, both Sony’s own and from partner deals. Adobe, Symantec, Office 2003 trial, lots of other shareware…Out of all of that, I had use for…none. I don’t need security-encrypted folders, I don’t need biometric login, I certainly don’t need Norton’s crap etc.
The only software that seemed to be of some use was Intervideo WinDVD for VAIO (v5.0). It would be useful if it wasn’t 2-speakers only edition. :( Since I have 5.1 speakers connected to VAIO over Creative Live! 24bit sound card, this was useless and I de-installed it.

It really is shame that Microsoft is not providing DVD decoder for the Windows. For all you MacOSX owners out there, if you didn’t know – Windows can’t play DVD movies on its own. You need to purchase DVD player that has the decoder: Cyberlink PowerDVD, Intervideo WinDVD and lots of others.

To cut the story short – I decided to reinstall Windows, remove the hidden partition and resize the C and D to what I like. Heh…not a small feat to do.

Preparation

Sony does not provide any CDs with the notebook. Everything is located on the recovery partition and if you want to reinstall, you start the particular Sony app which restart the machine and reinstalls from there. Another option is to backup the recovery partition to 2 DVDs (or 9 CDs) and boot from disk 1. Actually, one of the systray apps that Sony sets up is constantly reminding you to do that backup. For £1,550, I should have received that in the package.

Ok, with two DVDs ready, I rebooted and started the process. Sony’s disk management app that greets you is very nice. The only restriction it puts on you is that C partition can’t be smaller than 25GB presumably so that software heap I described has enough room to install. It’s clear and straight forward, at least for me. I was quickly done here, removing recovery partition and creating C (25GB) and D (rest). That’s my usual setup – I keep all my files on D, which is nice for backup purposes.

The US version of this software allows you to pick each application you want to install. The UK version does not (and I assume all other european versions too). You can’t pick anything, restore simply starts. Regular Windows setup, nicely branded with Sony graphics (I wonder how much this kind of deal costs). Restart and then it continues with the disk 1 still in.

After it finishes…

At some point, it requested for the second disk, but I declined that and killed the restore application. I guessed that all the bloat is on the second disk.
Well…

• Adobe Acrobat Elements
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
• Adobe Reader Update 7.0.3
• Adobe Reader Update 7.0.2
• Adobe Reader Update 7.0.1
• Adobe Reader 7.0 restart?!
• Google Toolbar for IE
• Norton Internet Security 2005 restart
• Norton Security Center (offensive piece of sh*t)
• SafeGuard PrivateDisk 1.00.6 Try and Buy restart
• Yahoo Messenger 8.0
• Several wallpapers in 20 different sizes
• Intervideo WinDVD for VAIO

That’s what’s installed from the first disk only. I removed all of those and noted which of them asked for restart. Adobe Reader asks for restart. Reader. Just an ordinary reader. Has Adobe bought Real Networks program managers maybe? And the fact that each update is separately listed in the Control Panel… Utterly disgusting. Pure example of how absolute monopoly often leads to bad software.

VAIO apps

Along with bloatware, a whole bunch of small utilities are installed. SZ has two buttons, two switches, integrated camera at the top, lots of Fn-key-combination (mute, volume up/down, brightness up/down, display picker, zoom, sleep). All this is supported through a series of small utilities.

Most of these are best left untouched, believe me. I tried to remove some of them and ended with half of those functions not working. I tried for two days to somehow restore just the stuff I removed, but no chance – another reinstall was the only option. Anything that even remotely smells of utility or driver – do not touch.

How it should be

I have no problem with Sony offering all these apps. Really. The fact that I don’t use them does not mean that someone else wouldn’t. The issue I have is with the restore app. If I’m reinstalling, it should give me the clear and easy choice to pick what I need. Easy.

If this option exists in US version, why not in all versions?

The good

13.3″ is a great choice of size and in my opinion ideal for the portable notebook. 12″ is smaller and more portable but leads to lower graphics options and basically less options to choose from. The dual-graphics thing is, I believe, impossible on 12″ form factor. 13.3″ is still small just enough so you can open them in airplane or a bus, something you can’t with 14″ or higher. A centimeter makes a huge difference when you need to use the laptop while traveling. Also, with limited graphics options, 12″ could not possibly be the one and only computer in the house, as this laptop is, for me.

Left side ports

I bought another GB of memory from Crucial for £90 and am really enjoying it. I usually work with several programs open and the 1GB is almost always enough, but where second GB is very helpful is when I open virtual machines through VMWare Player. I give the VM a 1GB of memory available and this really leads to guest OS working wonderfully while VMWare Player is dynamically giving it what it actually needs, thus the memory is not wasted. Not to mention that Alt-Tabing is instanteous even in this case.

With the Intel graphics active and 3/8 brightness and all wireless off, I achieved a maximum of 5h:20min of working on the standard battery (one that comes with laptop). But usually, when I’m not confined with battery life (meaning: I can charge it as needed), I work with nVidia + 6/8 brightness and Bluetooth on (for the mouse) and this gives me 2h:20min of battery life. All in all, standard things I would say. Another thing I noticed is that, when nVidia is used, wireless LAN is off but Bluetooth is on, then the indicator is showing 2:09 on full battery charge. Turning wireless to completely off changes it to 2:19 then to something like 2:42. So, that’s give you an idea how much is wireless pulling out – half an hour more juice.

Right side ports

What mainly impresses me with this model is how cool it runs. Comparing it to MacBook, this is cool as fridge. The fans are quiet and barely hearable. Sony has found the perfect balance between fan use, airflow and size. MB is a bit thinner, but few mm more that SZ has are meaningless compared to amazing coolness of its enclosure. In fact, I once made a stupid mistake and packed the fully ON laptop inside the Incase laptop sleeve, put it all in the backpack and went to work – all in all it stayed inside for about 40–45 minutes. When I arrived at work, it was so hot that I thought it would melt or burst into fire – instead it took just 5 mins or so to cool down completely. I dread to think what would happen if this was one of Apple’s laptops notebooks.

Speaking of stupid mistakes, that Incase sleeve is worth every penny of £20 I payed for it in Apple store. I dropped the laptop (while inside the sleeve) from about 1m to concrete floor and it fell on the edge, between the desk counter and iron bar. This was on my third day of ownership and I was…well, words fail me. What happend is…almost nothing. Laptop works just fine and the only consequence is the scratch on the screen, caused probably by the impact of the screen versus touchpad area. The matrix of the screen is intact, and the scratch is invisible during regular work, only when the screen is off and thus dark black. Even that would not happen if I kept the thin layer of screen cover that came with laptop – I do that ever since and never pack the laptop without that cover between the screen and keyboard.

The bad

DVD drive is regionally locked

Enough with good stuff, there are some things I would very like to be changed. First and most important is the choice of DVD drive. It’s Matshita UJ-832D. On the outlook, it looks fine: DL DVD/RW drive, all fine and dandy. But this is RPC-2 locked drive and from the company which drives are notorious for its impossibility of flashing them with RPC-1 firmware. Actually, if you look at the www.rpc1.org list of firmwares, there are none for this model, not even RPC-2 ones. The problem with this is that it renders my collection of 50 Region 1 DVDs unusable. The problem is very serious because this Sony is using 9.5mm drive, and it seems that the only drives of this size are made by Matshita. So there is no choice at all but to acquire the external drive to be used for the movie watching.

Second thing I would emphasize is the graphics output. Why in the Earth are manufacturers still using VGA in the world where LCD/TFT monitors rule the world. DVI-I is the logical choice, covers both DVI and VGA (over adapter) outputs. Even mini-DVI that Apple is using is just fine, but not VGA shit. This was the sole reason I bought docking station for the laptop, so I could run large external monitor.

Docking station is s*it

Speaking of docking station, Sony VGPPRSZ1 is the probably the shittiest of all. It has: 3 USB ports, 1GB Ethernet, DVI-D, VGA. See something missing there..? I see plenty, especially for £150+. First, it has no legacy ports at all, not even PS/2 for the keyboard. It also has no audio outputs of any kind, so you are still limited with headphone output on the laptop itself, even though the laptop has HD Audio implemented. Computer is the center not only of my work but also my media center – I watch movies on it and have 5.1 speakers for that purpose.

So, there were holes to fill in. I first used PS/2-to-USB converter for my beloved IBM ModelM keyboard (one USB port down). Then I looked for external sound card and bought Creative Live! 24bit which actually proved to be fantastic – for £50 I have amazing sound, much deeper then SoundStorm from my old desktop computer. That was second USB occupied. The third one is obviously going for the external DVD drive. So, I spent all 3 USB ports only to full-in the gaps and lackings of the machine itself.

Thus, this all proves that your spending is far from over with the laptop buying itself. But if you ask me, the benefits of having your entire work fully mobile are far above all that.

The ugly

Very ugly.
After mere four months the standard battery died. Completely. One day it simply stopped being recognized by the laptop, with Windows’s Power Meter showing “not present” icon.

Since I’m far from UK at the moment, I will have to wait until I get back to get a new battery. So far, Sony support has been so-so. They told me to try holding Power button for 15s while the battery and AC power are off, then to reinsert all back. Did that, no effect nor I have any idea what good would that bring in any case. After that they advised me to try with another battery or contact service.

Scouring through the forums at notebookreview.com yields more cases like mine, which is not very comforting. What is also worrying and might have something to do with the battery death is that laptop never stops charging the battery, even when its capacity is showing 100%. Or at least that is what Windows is reporting.

It’s not that much of a problem for me since I’m mostly working at home. But it is far from trust building experience for the Sony brand. Considering other properties of the machine, it is very unfortunate that this is happening. At least it is not exploding.

Verdict?

I would say 4.2/5 stars, 3.5/5 if you include the docking station into the picture.

But that is just me. There are many people all over the world completely satisfied with this machine. I realize that very few people would buy such small laptop and expect it to be development powerhouse (which is), media center (which is not) and highly portable (which is). The laptop itself is very, very good – again apart from battery, where I just got bad luck, as it seems.