Sony VAIO VGN-BX540B

Sony’s line of VAIO notebooks has long been known for its keen multimedia features and eye-catching designs, and the new BX family of business laptops is no exception. You get a lot of flexibility when it comes to sharing accessories among a corporate fleet of BX systems and a generous helping of IT-friendly features for the money. Unfortunately, the system’s abysmal endurance with the standard capacity battery and mediocre wireless performance detract from an otherwise solid offering.

The BX540 is housed in an attractive black-and-silver magnesium case and weighs a manageable 5.1 pounds. The sharp 14.1-inch screen offers a 1400 x 1050-pixel native resolution with a good viewing angle. The panel uses Sony’s XBrite LCD technology, which features a glossy antireflective coating and enhanced backlighting to produce a brighter, more vivid image. A tiny Motion Eye webcam embedded in the top bezel of the display makes videoconferencing from any network hotspot easy; just don’t expect high-grade video quality from the 0.3-megapixel camera.

The full-sized keyboard is responsive, with well-spaced keys, and it offers plenty of wrist room to accommodate even the biggest set of hands. The inclusion of both a pointing stick and a touchpad means you don’t have to compromise mouse control, and you have the option of disabling one or keeping both active.

Sony’s AdaptivePlus Technology helps position the BX540 as a true business notebook, providing a range of security and communications features across the entire BX line. In addition to an integrated biometric fingerprint sensor located above the keyboard, the BX540 contains such IT-friendly security features as a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip for enhanced client/server integrity and BIOS power-up and hard drive password capabilities.

Integrated 802.11b/g and Bluetooth adapters provide plenty of connectivity options, and the system also has a built-in Gigabit Ethernet adapter and a 56K modem for wired communications. The included wireless WAN radio taps into Cingular’s EDGE network (100 to 150 Kbps), which is better than nothing but not nearly as fast as those systems with integrated EV-DO modems (400 to 700 Kbps). We recommend getting an EV-DO PC Card instead.

A dual-layer, multiformat DVD recorder drive occupies the MultiFunction bay located on the left side of the system, but you can order a variety of drive units to use in the bay, including a CD-RW/DVD combo and an additional 80GB hard drive. Best of all, the drive units are compatible across the BX line. They can also be used in the optional Multi Bay Docking Station ($299), which provides a battery charger, four USB ports, a drive bay, and digital and analog video outputs (also compatible across the BX line).

With the exception of the Ethernet and modem jacks, all expansion ports are conveniently located on the right side of the unit, including three USB ports, a FireWire port, a PC Card slot, and a 15-pin VGA monitor connection. Two audio jacks are on the left side of the system. A shiny portion of the front bezel contains the Wi-Fi On/Off switch, SD Card and Memory Stick slots, and LED indicators for power, hard drive activity, and wireless LAN status. The two speakers integrated into the front bezel are adequate for low-volume music, videoconferencing, and system sounds, but they tend to distort at higher volumes.

The VAIO BX540B is powered by Intel’s 1.73-GHz Pentium M Processor 740 and 512MB of DDR2 533-MHz memory. Sony offers a choice of four processors for this model, and you can populate it with up to 2GB of SDRAM. Our system came with a 5,400-rpm 80GB hard drive (you can get up to 120GB) and used Intel’s 915GM integrated graphics controller, which was fine for most business applications but definitely not up to running many of today’s 3D games. The ATI Mobility Radeon X700 video card option costs $140.

The VAIO’s MobileMark score of 198 was about what we expected from this class of machine, but the system’s 1 hour and 55 minutes of battery power with Wi-Fi enabled was very weak. Turning off the Wi-Fi adapter yielded a paltry seven extra minutes. The typical thin-and-light notebook offers nearly four hours of endurance. We recommend picking up the extended capacity battery for $100, which is supposed to increase the BX’s runtime by as much as 50 percent. Wireless signal strength scores of 8 Mbps at 5 feet and 5.4 Mbps at 50 feet were lower than we expected.

The BX540 comes with InterVideo’s WinDVD player application, Microsoft Works 8.0, Sony’s Click to DVD, and Roxio’s DigitalMedia SE software for creating, editing, and burning DVD projects. Other bundled programs include trial versions of Microsoft Office Small Business Edition (60 days) and Norton Internet Security 2005 (90 days). Sony covers the BX540 with a one-year warranty, including on-site service and 24/7 toll-free telephone support. Business customers can also tap into Sony’s VAIO Care Program, a premium customer support hotline.

The Sony VAIO BX540 has the performance, flexibility, and security business users need, but not nearly enough endurance. Don’t even think of purchasing this system without the extended battery.