Dear All

I received my Sony Z1RA about a month ago. The notebook has been working
fine so far except for a strange problem.

Sporadically, the notebook seemed to be busy with something and the hour
glass just came on and prevented me from using the system for a few seconds.
Most of the time when this occurs, I'm not doing much with the system.
Mostly some light typing in MS-Word, Excel, email or any other applications.
This happens about 3-5 times each hour, each time lasting a few seconds.

From this newsgroup, some suggested it was due to the touchpad. I've
disabled it but to no avail. Sony support suggested that I note down the
time when this occurs and then analyze the entries in the Event Log. I've
been doing that for a week now but this is not helping because no events are
logged when the system "freezes up".

Any suggestion is much appreciated as I'm not sure what else to do. This is
actually my second Z1RA. The 1st one was returned because of a couple of
bad pixels. However, I noticed that the 1st notebook did not exhibit this
strange behaviour (used it for a couple of days). The only difference
between the 1st notebook and my current one is the hard disk manufacturer.
The 1st notebook came with a 60Gb 4200rpm Toshiba while my current notebook
has a 60Gb 4200rpm Hitachi TravelStar. Not sure if this matters but is the
harddisk in a Z1RA replaceable by user ?

Thank you very much
nicole lewis