Sony VAIO PCV-RX850 Desktop (2.4 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB DDR RAM, 80 GB hard drive

Amazon.com Product Description

When it comes to laying down money for a desktop PC under $1,500 that's powerful and loaded with great features and extensive expandability options, the Sony Vaio PCV-RX850 is a rock-solid bet.

The RX850's 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 delivers premium processing crunch for a full range of productivity, entertainment, and multimedia applications. An 80 GB hard drive provides vast storage capacity, and 512 MB of RAM--expandable to a whopping 1.5 GB--enables multiple applications to run simultaneously without a hiccup. An SiS651 integrated graphics card with a Real 256 2D/3D graphics accelerator and 32 MB of shared graphics memory--expandable to 64 MB--provide the video horsepower to deliver a superb viewing experience on any monitor you might pair with this system.

Separate DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives make it convenient to watch movies, listen to and create audio CDs on a pair of included stereo speakers, and rapidly back up data. A Memory Stick media slot enables easy data transfers among compatible Sony products.

Ports are numerous and ultraconvenient on this tower PC, including six USB ports--two on the front and four on the back--and FireWire interfaces both on the front and rear of the box. Also included are a parallel port, two PS2 ports with accompanying Sony Vaio Smart Keyboard and a wheel mouse, a VGA interface, an AGP port, and two available PCI slots. An integrated 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN connector makes networking easy.

Installed software includes Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Corel WordPerfect Office 2002, Intuit Quicken 2002, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Trend Micro PC-cillin. Also included are PictureGear Studio, Sony DVgate and MovieShaker software for capturing and editing full-motion digital video footage and creating movies with transitions and other effects, and SonicStage for Vaio PC.

Product Description

Sony knows you want more out of your desktop PC than a place to surf the Web and send e-mail. Sony knows that you're looking for the utmost in performance out of a computer that corners the market on fun. And that's the thinking behind the VAIO Digital Studio PC. It's Sony's newest desktop PC with an Intel processor and a host of high-end computing options. You've got your TV, DVD player, video recorder, stereo, and computer all working in one compact and stylish unit. Make your own movies, record your favorite programs, surf the Web, and get your work done without budging an inch.The VAIO Digital Studio series includes exclusive options like Sony's incredible GigaPocket Personal Video Recorder software and the Memory Stick digital data storage system. It also supports leading edge features like i.LINK interfaces that enable high-speed connection to your Sony digital camcorder and a suite of top of the line software applications to boot. It's what VAIO PC is all about - integration that brings every aspect of the technology in your life together quickly and easily.

Customer Reviews:

Be careful. Could be low quality!.......2003-02-17

A PC Hardware Fan from Newton, MA USA
I have the previous model from this line of the PCs. I like the slick design. The PC is very noisy, but the worse thing is that my CD RW drive has died. Sony would not fix it under the existing warranty, because I forgot to mail the customer information card.

Sony Vaio RX-850 review.......2003-02-12

First, I was adamant about buying a system cuz I usually build my own. But I didn't have time so I just bought the Vaio and hoped Sony will live up to its reputation.

Here are the machine specs that are not obvious from reading just the documentation:

Motherboard: it was an Asus P4S533VX. This was a good sign cuz I've been an Asus fan since the P55T2P4 rev 3 board using an Athlon chip.

DVD-ROM DRIVE: was a Toshiba 16x drive.

CD-RW DRIVE: not sure what Sandra told me but it was a 32x read / 10x re-write / 40x write burner.

MODEM: Lucent winmodem.

I ran some Sandra benchmarks and the CPU test was very good: 4782 MIPS for Dhrystone and 1332/2986 MFLOPS for Whetstone.

The memory test however was kinda dismal. It was lower than the comparable test from a 2G system. I'm not sure if Sandra is wrong here but it's given me accurate results from before.

The system is very quiet, you have to put your ears very close to the system to make sure it's running. The system upon going into hibernate mode, it turns the square light on the front from blue to orange-- very neat. Once you touch the keyboard, it powers back up without problem.

So far there's no problem as of yet. I noticed the drive is partitioned into two: C drive with about 20Gb and D drive into 60Gb. I guess this is okay so I can install all the stuff into D: drive.

The anti-virus that came with it is a PC-Cillin evaluation deal. I uninstalled it and installed my newly bought Norton Internet Security without any problem.

In summary, this would get a 5 rating but the integrated video (Sis) sharing memory with the system takes it down a notch. But I can probably replace it with an Nvidia or Radeon AGP card to put it back to a 5 rating. I guess this is not really a fault cuz you ought to know this while buying the system.

The Sis video is not really bad. I played Quake3 and Morrowind with no apparent problem. Morrowind is kinda choppy but I just read that it may be due to its copy protection. Quake3 was smooth though.

All in all it's not a bad system. Oh, the speakers are not the best. I would replace this with one of those sets with a sub. For a $... system with a 17" Sony monitor and a Canon i320 printer, this is a good deal.

A Very Nice Piece of Work from SONY.......2003-01-04

This is a very nice hardware with good load of software to make it work smoothly. I specially liked the multimedia software that comes with this SONY. I have used many PCs and this was the easiest to set up. It was fast and without a single glitch. This SONY has a high-speed processor, large capacity hard disk, and huge RAM to last several years, at least for me.

Getting better all the time........2002-10-13

This is the best Sony I've reviewed, again gaining high marks for its value. Doubling its predecessor's DDRAM to 512 megs and adding 6 2.0 USB ports makes this machine's specs good enough as shipped to make 95% of the PC market happy. The other 5% (myself included) would like to have a true game-ready, 64 megs (or higher!) of video RAM. The included 32 meg Sony in-house, on-chip setup here just won't cut the mustard. There is, however, an open 4x AGP slot, so an upgrade can be bought (figure about ... for a very good video card) and slid into place in 10 minutes without any fuss. In addition, there is no monitor included here, so that's another important expense to add (I'd budget about ... for a very nice 17" LCD monitor). Nonetheless, it's a quality machine with lots of great features and it's one I'd be happy to have "as is" for anything but interactive Internet gaming or CAD.

SONY RX-850.......2002-10-03

This is a good computer.It runs fast fast and smooth and no problems!A great purchase.

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