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This is the second VAIO TX I bought; the first had XP and ran wonderfully, but since I don't have it anymore, I decided to get this.

The computer, in and of itself, is fine. However, trying to run VISTA with only 1GB of RAM is slow and frustrating.

I went to Sony's customer support site and downloaded the drivers for XP for this computer. I dumped VISTA and replaced it with XP, which went pretty well. Not all the features work, but enough do to make it worth my while.

If you're going to buy this computer, make sure it has XP on it, as the 1GB of RAM is not nearly enough to run VISTA. The computer itself, as mentioned, is excellent. It's small, light, fast (with the right opearating system) and has the added bonus of running in AV mode, which means you can play CDs and DVDs without booting Windows.

I also like the internal dual layer CD/DVD writer.

If you work on the road, even a little, this is the machine for you. Just make sure it has XP.

PS After I purchased this, dumped VISTA for XP and got everything (almost) settled, I saw Clearance Club had THE SAME EXACT COMPUTER with XP on it. Live and learn, I guess.

how do you rate a product if you received it and it does not work?
sorry, but for me it's just 1 out of 5.
The operating system does not load. it dosplays vaio logo, then tries to load windows, it can not, it says that there is a problem with that soft loading.
My undestanding is that this may happened because of the problem with a hard drive. I called sony, they offered, that they send op. syst. recovery cd. Again, I' 100% sure thats the hard drive. I know they will send cd, then they will probably agree that that's hard drive. If you want to have a headache of sending cd's, attempting to install them, then returning or replacing the product - then buy it.
(Note 1. I owned/bought 4 new laptops before, 3 of them vaio, they worked ok, but now there is obviously a problem with sony products. Note 2. I planned to install my own windows xp instead of vista on that model, but still I wanted to take a look at vista, and to make sure that vista is not operable on that laptop model).

I will post an update later about how the things develop about my unfortunate purchase.

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added later:
I exchanged the item at the retailer. made sure windows vista does not work on it (it certainly loads but it's not operable). installed windows xp anew (as planned) (do not forget drivers from sony website, not all of them). works just great! (as initially expected). for whatever reason i can not change my rating for this item but please, note, after i exchanged the item it, by itself, deserves 5 out of 5.

I see that some viewer have rated this laptop very low, with right reason. Sony obviously did not fully test this and see that 2 gig is/should be the minimum for running VISTA. For those that have already purchased this computer. The best thing you can do is downgrade to Windows XP, which is'nt bad. All the kinks have been worked out of the OS and it runs great with pretty much any hardware you hook up to it, even though this is a portable. If you don't want to change to OS, you could upgrade the memory if possible to the 2 gig minimum. Personally I don't know anyone that has adopted using Vista less having it already installed on the laptop or computer they just bought recently. Only a few manufacturers offer XP as an os change, ex Dell.

The Sony Vaio TXN25N ultraportable notebook running any version of Vista was a huge mistake. Windows Vista, in my opinion, is simply not ready for "prime time" and consumers are being offered no other viable alternatives except to purchase a Mac.

This ultraportable had tremendous potential as the successor to the Vaio T350 series until Windows XP was phased out in favor of Vista. I was provided a Vista version of the TXN25N when my T350P (XP Pro) laptop was broken during repair by the vendor's technical support and had to be replaced as part of my extended warranty. Unfortunately, the XP Pro versions had been phased out. The TXN25N with 1GB is perfectly spec'd for Windows XP Pro and is drastically underspec'd for any version of Vista; the operating system simply requires too many resources. In my experience, Core Solo ultraportables can't run any version of Vista without causing owners major frustration. I'd never felt as "hamstrung" by Microsoft as I did being forced to use Vista on a machine that didn't have the resources to run it. Reading Vista reviews painted a rather bleak picture that confirmed my experience.

The new laptop ended up unused on my desk for months after continuous frustration with Vista even after I disabled all the Vista security features and graphics features. In truth, if I had wanted all the features that make Vista such a graphically beautiful interface, I would have purchased a Mac. My main bones of contention included 10 hours to back up 30-40G of data, and the computer's inability to run more than one program at once; Windows Explorer froze constantly requiring closure of the running program.

I decided to give the laptop one more chance but the last straw occurred when a 6G backup took 4 hours and configuration of Windows updates took over 2 hours. Fortunately by this time Sony saw the light--it now provides Windows XP drivers for download on its website, with the usual disclaimers (although the XP recovery disc is no longer available for purchase) along with truly excellent telephone support to revert the TXN25N to Windows XP provided the user has a legally obtained copy of Windows XP Pro.

I purchased Windows XP Pro, backed up my Vista-based system on an external hard drive (in case I had to put it back to factory settings), installed Windows XP Pro, installed the drivers, got Sony phone support with a Bluetooth glitch. The glitch was the result of having installed some of the drivers out of order. A week later, my Sony Vaio TXN25N notebook runs the way I believe Sony had intended it too--at least it operates as advertised on the Sony datasheet for the TXN25N. It's fast, it has more than sufficient resources to run almost anything I have to. It's an amazing ultraportable. It weighs 2.7 pounds, runs 4-5 hours on a single charge thanks to what appears to be a high capacity battery, has an integrated DVD burner,a sharp, crisp display and many upgrades from the T350P that make it a pleasure to use. My only complaint is that it runs hot underneath the left side so I do daily backups of my PCMCIA-adapted 8G CF card to keep my data safe.

Data backups, transfers and downloads of books, music, movies and data take literally no time thanks to 1G of RAM. I haven't compared it to the newer TZ model running Intel Core 2 Duo but even if I do, I think I'll still keep my TX25N.

This is my second Sony 11.1" screen laptop - I replaced my old TX650 that had been rained on, dropped, kicked, and generally abused for almost 2 years when the HD started getting flaky and the 60gig capacity was full.
The old TX650 stood up well.

I think that the reason that it lasted so long in such an abusive environment - was it's sub 3 lb weight and strong, carbon fiber based case. I think one factor is that it's so light, that it "hurts itself" less when set down "less than elegantly".

I've dealt with Sony's service dept. for a few years and they've always been realistically prompt, attentive and have delivered on what they've promised in the time frame that they estimated.
For reference, I'm in the the service industry and they've always treated my problems in an objectively decent attitude.

I've bought "way too many" laptops of different brands for employees over the years and eliminated many brands for their general driver quirkiness, weirdness and proprietary goofiness - stuff than made it a requirement to contact Tech Support. FWIW, 99% of the time, the Tech Support depts were "generally" good ans well meaning (oh, there was one exception... :-).

So.... I bought a TXN15P with an 80gig HD and DVD burner, refurbished. Imaged my old TX650 HD onto the new 80gig. Sorted out a few driver wrinkles at the hotel one night and it's been great ever since.

Oh - Boot Speed?
I bought the TXN with XP Pro - and NOT with VISTA.
Boots up, well, about like XP Pro boots up. About 5 times quicker than Vista........ but not as quick as Win 3.1.
Vista, even at best, is slow booting.

I read around about Vista problems and bloatiness before I bought and also had already listened to my next door neighbor for 3-4 weeks who "just had to have dual core Vista "power" in his new desktop computer.
After he send his computer back, twice to Dell, with hardware and Vista / hardware clashes. They did what they could do and eventually fixed all - but Vista / hardware clashes seemed a big part of it (oh, and that one time when the smoke came out of the case, was the other issue - but they were good about fixing it).

Back to XP - XP Boots up even quicker after I started deleting the uneeded HP printer and scanner talkback communications programs and installed ONLY the HP printer drivers.

As far as Sony as a company? I'm sure that they have their problems, but, after buying IBM, HP, Compaq and Dell - well..... Sony has done a good job for us. Now, if they'd just lower their prices.....

AND - I still have my TX650 that's waiting for that 100gig HD I bought and haven't installed, yet.