Sony Vaio blu-ray media PC review

Features
The thing most talked about the RC204 is the Blu-ray disc drive.  This technology uses blue-violet lasers rather than the traditional red, hence the name.  Their wavelengths are shorter than the old version and their precise accuracy means more room for storage. Because the RC204 reads both red and blue laser you’ll be able to play practically any CD on this machine (once you can start buying blu-ray CD that is).  The Vaio RC204 has a speedy 3.2GHz Pentium D 940 processor together with 1GB of DDR2 RAM split into two 512MB modules (with two memory slots spare for upgrading) Motherboard, and there’s a pair of 300GB Maxtor 7L300S0 hard drives.  At the back of the unit are loads of input and output ports, two DVI outputs, component video input and four USB ports (as well as the three up front) a FireWire port, Ethernet adaptor and a pair of PS2 ports for connecting the mouse and keyboard that are provided.  The graphics adaptor uses Sony’s Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT card.  Sony had put in a Avermedia Hybrid A16C TV tuner card allowing you to get analogue and Freeview TV programmes and radio channels (and with all that memory you’ll have plenty of room to save them on).

Performance
This machine is a well turned out product.  With such a fast processor pages are loaded quickly, games refresh at a hasty speed and movie quality is of a great level.  The only let down is the graphics card, but then the RC204 isn't being touted as a gamers PC.

What's In The Box?
Sony includes a Media Center remote as well as a RF touchpad mouse so you can control your PC from your armchair and keyboard.

Overall Opinion
For the price the Sony Vaio VGC-RC204 is a find machine that will look good sitting on your floor.  Apart from the power button being located at the bottom of the carcase and the limited graphics card there's not much to complain about. There's more than enough ports to plug your extra accessories in and possibilities for upgrades.