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When PCs began to break the beige-box trend, Sony was one of the first to herald a new era of design with its VAIO computers. These days, VAIO is usually associated with notebooks, but Sony is still thrashing out its desktop range of the same name.
The PCVRS502 is a budget desktop computer that doesn't come with a monitor but is packed with some media-focused hardware and software. Powering the system is a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512Mb of memory, which will ensure everything ticks along.
The 160Gb hard disk is big, and will store plenty of material recorded using Sony's GigaPocket software, which handles TV recording and helps organise your music, video and image files.
GigaPocket is Sony's version of Windows Media Center. Connect a TV aerial to the back of the VAIO and you'll be able to watch, record and play back TV shows. It's not a digital TV tuner, so you'll only be able to get terrestrial channels. You do get a remote control, though, and the TV-out port of the 128Mb Radeon 9200 graphics card means you can connect this VAIO to a television.
The aforementioned Radeon 9200 is a run-of-the-mill graphics card that will play all the latest 3D games, but not at their maximum quality settings. It wasn't astounding in our tests and it's a shame that Sony has overlooked the graphics with another one of its desktop VAIOs.
In keeping with its penchant for digital media dexterity, this VAIO has a recordable DVD drive capable of writing to all the most popular disc formats, and a second DVD-ROM drive for disc-to-disc copying. Sony has included its own Click To DVD software, which makes disc creation (CD and DVD) quick and easy.
On another positive note, the VAIO is packed with a whole range of connections. The usual suspects, including an audio optical-out socket, can be found on the rear of the case, while a few more are concealed behind a flip-up panel on the front. Pop the hatch and you'll have access to three USB 2 ports, mini-FireWire, slots for three memory cards and sockets for connecting an analogue camcorder or video recorder.
The PCVRS502 looks slick but not revolutionary. Its grey colour-scheme and rounded edges look neat, but the flip-down DVD drive coverings feel as though young hands could remove them easily. The keyboard, mouse and stereo speakers are basic, but the luminous blue VAIO light on the front is cool.
Getting inside the PC isn't so easy. Three screws must be taken out of the case before the whole hood can be removed. In its favour, or not, there's no real need to get inside the case as there's little room for upgrading; only space for another hard disk drive, extra memory and a PCI expansion card.
The amount of software supplied is reasonable. As well as Microsoft Works, you get an Adobe collection including Photoshop Elements 2, Photoshop Album 2 Starter Edition, a cut-down version of Adobe Premiere and Adobe Acrobat Elements 6. GigaPocket also includes its own applications for digital media. Windows XP Home is the operating system.
A comprehensive set-up poster is also bundled in the box, so newcomers should be able to get the VAIO up and running in no time.
Contact: Sony 08705 424424
www.sony.co.uk
See also:
A PC designed for the living room that can satisfy all your multimedia needs 01 Feb 2005
A very capable desktop computer built around AMD's low-cost Sempron processor 24 Nov 2004
A compact PC that comes with lots of software but is that enough? 17 Aug 2004All Desktops
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