Using a laptop from 2007 in the current day: A review

Hey all!

For the past few days now, I’ve been using an old Sony VAIO laptop as a sort of secondary computer, and the experience has been pretty nice! I put a fresh install of Windows Vista (which it originally shipped with) on it, and it’s been surprisingly smooth!

The laptop in question is a Sony VAIO VGN-TZ37GN, a higher-end subnotebook from 2007. My unit came equipped with a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7700, 2GB of DDR2 RAM running at 667MHz, and a 120GB 1.8” HDD by Toshiba. It’s also quite compact, with an 11.1” screen at a resolution of 1366x768 that still looks great to this day. All this makes for an enjoyable experience on Vista (even if the integrated graphics bumps the Windows Experience Index down to a 2.0). As for other hardware features, it has a DVD RW drive, two USB-A ports, 4-pin FireWire 400, Ethernet, and an SD/MS reader. The keyboard has a nice feel, with a decent amount of travel and a satisfying click. The touchpad leaves some to be desired though, with a rough tracking surface and no multi-touch support.

It was pretty easy to get it up and running, with only a couple drivers for networking and the like that had to be installed. After that, I installed some useful software, such as r3dfox (a modern web browser compatible with Vista), and the Windows Vista Extended Kernel (a third-party project that allows modern applications to run on Vista). For the heck of it, I also installed a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 (obtained through… dubious means @_@). In fact, I’m composing the first draft of this blog entry with Word 2007! I also downloaded DiscordMessenger, which is a third-party Discord client which works on versions of Windows as old as 2000.

As for why this isn’t my primary machine, I personally do a lot of programming, so that stuff requires a modern OS and machine. But for everything else (writing stuff, browsing SpaceHey), I find this machine to be a more enjoyable and simpler alternative: one that gets rid of all the distraction and lets you focus on one task at a time (mainly because it does kinda slow down when you get a bunch of things open T_T).

But yeah! All in all, this machine is a joy to use, and packs a solid Windows Vista experience in a small form factor. Bye for now!