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Sony SR7K Super Slim NotebookSony SR7K is the smallest and lightest notebook computer currently selling in US market and capable running Windows 2000. At the weight of merely 2.98 pounds and the size of a US letter paper, SR7K is really a portable power horse: 600MHz Intel PIII CPU with SpeedStep technology that's faster than most people's current desktop PCs. I don't know why I have no overall comments about it: neither the praise of Panasonic CF-M32, nor the disappointment of Casio Fiva (regarding its standby and Win2K problems). Therefore I just give some insight pictures with some comments here for you to make your own judgments. One thing worthy to mention is the battery --- it really lasts 4-5 hours at 500 MHz and darkest screen playing online video streams. At 500 MHz, it plays 300K full screen MP4 video streams very well (to find these cool video streams such as Back Street Boys, open Windows Media Player and click on the "Music" button)! Feel free to email me if you have specific questions or post them to my Cool Talk.
Notice in above picture that SR7K is sitting on a US letter paper. Fiva is the same size of Libretto 100/110.
The keys are huge compared to those of Libretto/Fiva/CF-M32, but stiff. The mouse pad cannot compare to Fiva's (Fiva has the best mouse pad ever, although it is tiny). The palm bay is roomy but hot! The small delete key is at the far right up corner. The screen quality is the same level of Fiva's but much bigger though (1024x768).
SR7K's case is very easy to open. The hard drive is sitting right below the palm bay and that's why the bay is hot. The two 64 MB SDRAMs are not standard SODIMMs and, even worse, you have to throw them away and buy two 128 modules if you want 256 MB. Bad Sony! Instead of putting a standard CF (Compact Flash) slot, Sony put its own memory stick at the left side. Bad Sony!!
Like Toshiba did with Libretto 100/110, Sony also uses thermal pipe for CPU cooling. The CPU fan is quite annoying: it turns on very often but only spins for one or two seconds! While, it is very easy to mechanically turn it off as showing in above picture --- just unplug the fan plug. Warning: you should not try this, I am only pointing out to you this possibility. MS Word 2000 crashed once while the fan is unplugged, but I have not confirmed that it is due to the fan. Now, comes my tip for SR7K: When SR7K is running, it takes away more than 100 MB memory and it has almost no free memory left for you to run your own programs! This is ridiculous as Windows 2000 usually needs only (!) 56 MB to run. We have to remove all the junks from starting every time you turn it on. The #1 junk is the anti-virus service. Can any AV service really protect you PC? No, it simply consumes your precious resources --- CPU time and memory. Even worse, it causes many troubles --- cracking you hard drive all the time, always making false alarms that just confuses you, slows down everything and crashes your system often. When a new virus really arrives, it guards nothing. Have you heard any AV service that kept the LOVELETTER out of your reach like your grandma did? Simply put: AV service is just like an enabled car alarm system. Disable it, please, and don't let it bark in the middle of night. 1) Here is how to disable the AV service. Run "regedit" and open this key (warning: export a key to a registry file before make any changes. You can then recover it if needed): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AvSynMgr] Change "Start" value from 2 to 3. "2" means automatic start and "3" manual. Now the AV service won't start automatically and you still can scan virus whenever you want. 2) Now let's remove other junk. Still in regedit, go to this key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "Synchronization Manager" is installed by default of Win2000. If you have enabled some offline files, this synchronizes them every time you login. You can leave it there as it only runs once and will not stay in the background. "Apoint" is the enhanced mouse pad driver. It sucks, but you do need it if you need the scrolling feature. "HKSERV" is for you to define and use hot keys and I simply delete it. As you see, "JOGSERVER2" is for the jog dial and I delete it because I don't like the jog dial at all. I wish Sony will replace this jog dial with a MP3 play button that let's us play MP3 while driving. Also delete the "Smart Label OServer" and "SBWatchDog" but leave the "PRPCMonitor" which supports Intel's SpeedStep --- slows CPU speed from 600 MHz down to 500 MHz that consumes only one watt. 3) If you want clean even more, click Start, Programs, Startup and delete the Battery Meter and any other stuff except the Power Control Panel if you want it. Now your SR7K consumes only about 60 MB after reboot and you'll have plenty of memory to run your own applications. It runs much smoother, cooler and more stable. The above 1) - 3) procedure also applies to other laptops and desktops running Windows (95, 98, 98SE, NT and 2000). Actually I do it on all the PCs I touched and they since became trouble free and efficient. The last thing, I tried Libretto's floppy drive (which works fine on Fiva and even bootable!) but SR7K crashed to death of blue screen whenever I insert the card. As you guessed, I typed this article on a SR7K. [12/25/00] To open the keyboard, use a flat screw driver and follow the four steps showing in the picture below.
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Xin Feng Company
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