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Thanks. Ben and Chippy
Give me a T430u and I will write what ever you want. :P
Greetings,
I picked up the Vizio Thin and Light CT14A1 (i5, 4GB, 128GB SSD) at a Microsoft Store about two weeks ago. The employee told me it had just come in, and wasn’t even on the floor yet. While I had pre-ordered a UX31A on Amazon, I decided I couldn’t pass up the $950 price. Rather than spending 1600 on one ultrabook, I figured I would go cheaper and use the excess money to buy the “next best thing” in a few years if it didn’t work out. Plus, I was able to scam Microsoft into giving me a free 4GB Xbox360 under their “back to school promotion”. All it took was my 10 year old .edu email and I was in there.
Big drawbacks for me were the non-backlit keyboard and small 128GB storage. I also had to get over the hump of accepting the fact that I would need to buy a bunch of peripherals to do what I was used to on my giant 17 inch HP. Memory card reader, ethernet cable, external hard drive, optical drive etc. However, I rationalized that it was worth it to have a small form factor most of the time, with access to the rarely-used stuff in my laptop bag.
My first surprise, in an unpleasant way, was the power connector. It is a weird plastic elbow shaped piecce. Hold on a second, I was just reminded of my second surprise. Notice how there are two “c”‘s in “piecce” up above? The keyboard has the unpleasant habit of double striking the c key. Very unfortunate when you think about how often you type “.ccom”.
Okay back to the power connector. It sticks out at a weird angle, and flops around quite a bit. Leads me to believe that it will eventually either a)fail to make a good connection or b) rip itself to piecces. There’s the c again.
The power connector also has a light-up LED that is on whenever the power cord is plugged into the wall. So you have a green nightlight in the room whether the computer is plugged on or not. The color changes to orange when plugged into a charging computer, and flashes green-orange when plugged in and fully charged. Pretty stupid.
The touchpad took a little while to get used. The good thing is that it isn’t massive, thus you won’t accidentally palm it and move our cursor. However, the left-click and right-click buttons are more in the center of the bottom portion. If you try and click on the extreme left or right, it will seriously flex and feel cheap. Oncce you get used to it, it is fine.
The other bullet on the box was for Microsoft Signature. I really enjoy the lack of bloatware. However, when I tried to call the phone number I was told to wait for a representative. And transferred. Then told to call back during regular business hours. But not told what those hours were. Seems like they could refine their “Signature” service to make the user feel like they are actually getting something.
The screen is not matte, but the reflection is not too bad. My external LG blu ray player runs fine on battery power and only takes up one USB port (although the cord that came with it had two, leaving me to believe that older computers required two USB ports to power it?) Blu Ray movies look fantastic on the “HD” screen (1600×900?) , so Vizio did a great job there.
For all of my gripes, I am really happy with this ccomputer (c!!!). With the money I saved over a topped-out Asus I can buy a Stupid-fast-bridge or whatever they are called in two years with a 1GB SSD.
-John