Laptops Arena

All Sony VAIO laptop reviews generally speak about the amazing multimedia performances of this series of notebooks. In a more personal opinion I believe there are better multimedia notebooks, like the HP Pavilion HDX Dragon for instance, with greater performance levels than a Sony VAIO.

While reading Sony VAIO laptop reviews we came across the Sony VAIO NR series, the VGN-NR160E to be more exact. With a starting price of $799, this is one of the most affordable Sony VAIO laptop models available on the market. It uses a 1.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 processor and 1 GB of RAM which can be extended to a maximum of 4 GB.

The hard drive can store 160 GB of total files and the graphics card is the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 which uses up to 251 MB of shared video memory. The VGN-NR160E has a total of 4 USB ports, an Express Card slot, a VGA port, a FireWire port, an SD card reader, an Ethernet port, a modem port, a MemoryStick Pro reader and the headphones plus microphone jacks.

The 15.4 inch display has a native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and it has 8 levels of brightness and quite attractive colors with good image quality. The horizontal viewing angles are good which means that movie watching is now possible even if you have some friends coming to visit. The keyboard is nice. There is nothing particularly special about it but there is nothing wrong with it either.

The keys appear to be flatter than they really are but typing is pleasant and the keys have excellent travel and offer positive feedback. By looking at the keyboard I find it to be small, maybe because the keyboard bezel seems so huge. The touchpad has a responsive surface so you can use it without having to worry about the urgent need of an external mouse.

Above the keyboard you will notice the external speakers and this is excellent location as the sound is projected straight up, rendering a much better sound quality. The speakers are not the best you can find on a 15.4 inch laptop and that’s too bad, because they should be. Sound and video are supposed to be the most important aspect of a multimedia laptop in order to provide great experiences while listening to music or watching movies and clips. If you surf the internet via a wireless connection and set the display’s brightness to medium level, you will get about 3 hours of battery life. Not the best performance, but not the worst either.

Overall, there is nothing particularly attractive about this laptop and I am still sticking to the idea that there are better multimedia laptops out there, not necessarily Sony VAIOs. The screen is quite ok and so are the specs. A more powerful processor would have been nice and maybe at least 2 GB of RAM as well. the keyboard is also good. too bad the unit comes with a lot of useless preinstalled software.

Wireless internet for laptop is a different manner of gaining internet access with literally no wires. A wireless connection is ideal when you live inside a big house or apartment or when you need to share the same internet connection between a big number of laptops. In order to set up a wireless connection at home and get wireless internet for a laptop, there are 3 main things that you need. First of all, you must buy a wireless router.



The wireless router converts the internet connection into signals similar to radio signals. In order for your laptop to get these signals, it must have a wireless card inside the unit. The last thing that you need is the regular internet connection, that cable which has to go inside the router.

Next we are going to explain the easy steps of setting up a wireless connection at your home or office. The wireless router has to be connected to the modem and the modem needs to be connected to the internet. After you make sure that there is something that connects the wireless router to an actual internet connection, you can start configuring your wireless router.

The configuration process depends on the manufacturer and model of the gadget. When you buy a wireless router, it usually comes with a CD or instruction manual that teaches you how to properly configure it so you can gain wireless internet access. Generally, when you have to configure a wireless router you need to open up an Internet Explorer web browser and go to a specified IP address where you must login with the given username and password and start setting up the connection.

After you log on, you will be able to set up a name and a password for you wireless connection. The password is not mandatory but it is essential for security reasons. If your wireless internet connection does not have a security pass, this means that every laptop located in the signal area can gain access to the internet using your wireless connections. This brings 2 main disadvantages.

First of all, the laptops that use the same wireless connection may display information visible to each other and basically means exposing the private information on your laptop to a stranger. The second disadvantage is that the speed of the wireless connection is divided amongst the number of computers which are using it, slowing down the speed of your internet connection.

Another way of gaining access to a wireless internet connection is though the wireless hotspots. These hotspot are nothing more than publicly available wireless connections which can be found around institutions like schools, universities, coffee shop, hospitals, police stations and sometimes even in malls and parks. The speed of such connections is awful because there are a lot of laptops using these hotspot wireless points of access. The advantage of having a wireless internet connection is that you don’t have to mess around with cables that get in the way all the time.



The HP Elitebook 2730p notebook pc is another HP unit designed for that business man who wants to have a portable and powerful unit.

The HP Elitebook 2730p notebook pc has a resistant plastic case which seems to be hard to scratch. With an excellent construction quality and an attractive gray design, this notebook looks beautiful. With only 11.24 x 8.35 x 1.11 inches in dimension and 3.74 lbs in weight, this unit is categorized as a very slim and light business laptop.



If you open the lid you will find a solid keyboard which doesn’t show any signs of flexing.  The keys are flat, large and very responsive so you can write on them easily. The most attractive aspect is the backlight of the keys. This unique feature is not only very helpful when you are typing in a dark room or during the night, it also gives a nice touch to the overall aspect of the unit. The touchpad is pretty large, responsive and has double buttons.

But if you want more accuracy, this notebook has a Pointing Stick. This is not a new feature for the Elitebook models, but it proved to be very helpful for fast writers. The solid feel and the sharp finish make it much more responsive that the touchpad, so you will feel very comfortable using it.



The 12.1 inch Illumi-Lite UWVA WXGA display is very nice and clear. With anti-glare and digitizer display features, you will receive bold, vivid colors and great quality of pictures. The viewing angles are great and there are no signs of color bleed.

This reviewed HP Elitebook 2730p notebook pc comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 processor and 3 GB of DDR2 RAM memory, which is excellent for a business laptop. The 120 GB Toshiba hard drive should be enough for you to store your files but if you want more, for some extra money, you can upgrade this to a maximum of 380 GB. Since it is a business notebook, the graphics card is not that good. The integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 HD is poor in performance, but in combination with the processor and the RAM memory, you can play some mainstream games which don’t require powerful graphics.

Being a business laptop, this HP also has many connectivity options. The HP Elitebook 2730p notebook pc has two USB ports, a 1394a port, a RJ-11 and RJ-45 port, a docking connector, a VGA port, a 56K modem port, an Express Card slot, a SD card slot and the indispensable headphones, line-in and microphone jacks.  The Wireless adaptor and the integrated 2 Megapixel Webcam allows you to stay in touch with your friends by making video calls, or simply chatting on internet. The integrated speakers offer you a loud and clear sound but because the speaker is placed on the bottom of this laptop, the sound can be muffled if you put the unit on a desk.



The 6-cell battery is capable of keeping this notebook on up to 6 hours and 30 minutes in standby mode or 3 hours and 50 minutes in stress conditions. These values are great for a portable business laptop like the HP Elitebook 2730p. The HP Elitebook 2730p has proven to be a great business laptop, with a good balance between power and design. So, if you need a notebook capable of handling your basic tasks like surfing the internet or checking emails, for only $1,800, this unit can be a great choice.

If you are looking to replace a HP Pavilion laptop keyboard, you should look first for a suitable replacement. No matter how good care you take of your keyboard it will eventually deteriorate in time. You could postpone the changing date by cleaning it once a weak and using a can of compressed air to blow the dust accumulated between the keys.



If bread crumbs fall under the keys, it could stop the keys from being pressed all the way to the bottom. You don’t have to be a tech specialist in order to replace a HP Pavilion laptop keyboard. The tools that you need are a small flat head screwdriver, a Philips head screwdriver and a box or any recipient where you can store the screws to make sure you don’t lose them.

Before messing around with the unit, make sure you have removed the power cord from the laptop and also take out the battery so you can make sure there is no electrical power running through the notebook. After making sure that you are completely safe, it is time to start opening up the laptop and learning how to replace the keyboard. Using the flat head screwdriver you must carefully pry up the area located above the keyboard but be very careful as plastic tend to crack or brake so we don’t want you to start replacing the keyboard bezel as well.

Removing that plastic cover could reveal some screws which need to be removed. The screws help keep the keyboard in place. After you have removed these screws, use your fingers or a flat head screwdriver to lift the keyboard away from the main body of the laptop. Remember to put all the screws in the box we told you to get as you will need them to put the laptop back together again.

When you lift the keyboard be careful as there is still a ribbon cable which secures the keyboard to the motherboard and if you damage that cable there is a chance you will need to replace the whole motherboard so try to be as careful as you can. After you lift the keyboard, place it gently onto the palm rest area and the touchpad. The ribbon cable needs to be disconnected from the keyboard but it has to remain attached to the motherboard. Now you can install the new keyboard. Connect the ribbon cable to the new keyboard and then take all the steps backwards.

After you’ve solved the cable problem, you can put the keyboard back in its rightful place and then put all the screws from the box back into place. Place the cover above the keyboard and press it gently until it is in the correct position and now you can put the battery back inside the unit and connect the power jack as well. Turn on the laptop and check if your keyboard is working. If there was something that went wrong in the installations process, normally there would be errors in booting the operating system.



While trying to find a good Asus notebook to review, we came across a very interesting model. Why is it interesting you ask? Well, because even if it only has a 13.3 inch display, it is considered to be a desktop replacement. Reading the review, we have decided it’s worth dedicating one of our articles to the Asus F6Ve.

Our configuration of this Asus notebook cost $1,300 which is the same as the starting price of this unit. Based on a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 processor and 4 GB of RAM, this notebook seems to have the specs necessary to cover most mainstream computer tasks. While moving on, we discovered that the Asus F6Ve has an ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 graphics card with 512 MB of video memory.  The storage capacity of the hard drive can save files up to 320 GB and this is one more reason for us to believe that this notebook makes a great investment.



The 13.3 inch display has a native resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels with sharp and vibrant color that improve the overall quality of the images. The horizontal viewing angles are good for a 13.3 inch notebook. The keyboard is fully sized and the texture of the keys makes it very pleasant to type. There is a bit of flex noticed in this area but the keys have great travel and good response. The touchpad has an ok size and there is no significant lag registered here.

The left and right mouse buttons are easy to press even with your thumbs. As for the selection of ports and features, the unit comes with 3 USB ports, one Ethernet port, one HDMI port, an Express Card slot, a 5-in-1 media card reader, a modem port, a VGA out, a Kensington lock slot and the headphones and microphone jacks. I have to admit that is quite a great selection for a laptop which only has 13.3 inches in diagonal.

We expected to find good performance when it came to the battery of a 13.3 inch laptop. The results were not that encouraging. With the display brightness set to 70%, the wireless card enable and the Windows Vista power management profile set to “balanced mode”, the battery managed to keep the laptop on for 2 hours and 55 minutes. It’s too bad that we didn’t get a better battery life performance but since this is a desktop replacement, battery life may not be such an important aspect.



If Asus worked more on the design part, we would have performance and beauty on the same unit but apparently the specs were more important than the looks. You have to admit that the unit provides great performance for the 13.3 inch category. The keyboard and the touchpad are average but an external mouse is a better choice in most cases. The design feels a little dull and it does not have the best built in construction quality. I would give it a 3.5 out of a maximum 5.