Comments on: Do Sony Vaios really suck, or is it just me?

By: Charles C Malloy

Charles C Malloy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:05:12 +0000

My experience with VAIO computers certainly runs counter to yours. That being said, I have avoided using VISTA like the plague. I have two Sony computers and if you count my SE 990i - three. The VAIO media center is thoroughly put thru vigourous use by my children, my daughter is an aspiring film maker and uses the MC to cut and edit short films with ease, again I repeat “NO VISTA”. My laptop is an overeclocked 2 yr old single core workhorse that I have used worldwide and as a plug for Sony 3 friends have the same worry free machine.
I too will look at another laptop near term and like the MAC book pro , however I will be using my current XP set up on it.

By: Leland Hendrix

Leland Hendrix — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:36:16 +0000

My hp dv6800 series notebook absolutely rocks with vista. I remember two days ago, it was recording a tv show in the backround while watching another on a second display, I was burning a dvd, and recoding recorded television, all while I was running music production software Sonar in the background to play virtual instruments from a firewire interface.

And that’s with a dual-core 2.0ghz amd with 3gb ram, a budget computer at $599

I would be REALLY TICKED if I paid what you did for that VAIO and got such sucky performance.

Good luck man

By: Robert Di-salvo

Robert Di-salvo — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:04:57 +0000

Jeremy,
I caught this article a while back but have been too busy to respond to it until now. I have a VIAO VGN-FS745P/H. That has been used pretty much to play EVE Online, I’m hardcore with that game and run a corp there. I will share my experience with the Viao. Within the first year the hard drive and the ram went. Both times Sony sent a service rep to my home to fix my Viao, both times to my surprise within two days free of any charge. Two months ago the well worn keyboard and when I say well worn, you could not even see some of the letters anymore.. Since the Viao was under extended warranty at this point I had to mail my precious Eve viao in, and that really sucked! Two weeks till I got it back.

Now I have a brand new keyboard now. I really don’t know how this little Vaio thats starting to look a lot fatter these days like a chunky dell has put up with all the abuse. It burns red hot under my right wrist while playing. The heat coming out the exhaust fan might as well be a torch and I often wonder when that video card will catch fire..

My desktop Viao is another story, I lose the hard drive at least once a year and I have traced it to a motherboard issue that can never be corrected. I have tried the Mac the OS is way to foreign for me im one of those guys that created a BBS back in the 80’s and ran Fidonet networks as well as other pioneered work.

I’m pretty sick of buying over priced junk that I cant fix myself. In that past I have been able to repaire my own cell phones and other assorted crap however I am now seeing a trend to sealed systems and I really don’t like it.

By: James Shorten

James Shorten — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:02:46 +0000

I bought a vaio in 2005. 1 year later (just past the warranty perriod) the backlight on the monitor broke. It cost about ZAR2000 (+- $650) to replace, luckilly the insuarance paid out but it took sony about a month to get a replacement part. The next laptop I buy will deffinately NOT be a sony.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:41:52 +0000

You have the situation farily well encapsulated. I bought a Vaio back in 2002, preinstalled with XP Home. Could I upgrade it to XP Pro?

Not on your life as the drivers were tuned/restricted to work exclusively with Home. An upgrade to Pro meant the modem (which was crucial to me at the time) just didn’t work. Roll on two and a half years and the thing refuses to boot. Me being forgiving thinks it is a crashed hard drive. If only it were true but the reality was the hard disk controller on the motherboard had developed a fault and no end of coercion was bringing it back to life.

I also had a Sony camera that at about the same time developed epilepsy and refused to take photos.

So I swore of Sony cameras and laptops at the same time. I went out and bought a Toshiba laptop that does great service. Recently a neighbour gave me an ‘old’ Toshiba laptop of about the same vintage as my former Vaio. I was able to get all the drivers for this Toshiba for XP (any variant) Windows 2000 and Windows NT. I replaced the camera with one from a camera company and the laptop from a computing company.

Never again will Sony get my money.

By: Arthur Haglund

Arthur Haglund — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:13:21 +0000

Sony does suck!
I was about to buy a Vaio, but, my experience (personal and vicarious) with Vista is that it is JUNK!!!
I am convinced that MicroSoft has decided to ruin/rule the world and they do not really care about the end users. NEITHER DOES SONY!
i contacted sony about drivers for XP for their new systems. No go! they not only will ship their new systems, but they refuse to make XP drivers available to the public and they will not give a component list to customers who wish to hunt down drivers on their own.
I figure that it will be 5 years until the whole of computerdom is even Vista compatible, and then another 3 until a switch will be needed. Until then, no Vista and definitely no Sony Vaio for me!!!

By: JimR

JimR — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:59:58 +0000

I run Vista on a dual core HP nw8440 business class notebook with 2GB RAM, and it rocks. Especially with Vista SP1.

I’ve also run it on a three+ year old HP nc6000 notebook, which doesn’t even fully support Vista, and, while it didn’t rock, it worked plenty well enough to be usable. I’ve even tried it on a really old laptop with a 700MHz processor and less than 512MB of RAM. That wasn’t pleasant, but really no worse than XP on that system, and it could be used, provided one had patience while launching programs.

By: tivoboy

tivoboy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:58:36 +0000

So, i’ve decided to go macbook pro, not being able to handle the glossy of the macbook (which I LOVED and recommended to YOU) but no idea what it was - even though #1 1K GF thinks it is what caused the Bells Palsy!

But, my plan is the go MBP, and since I need windows so much for my consulting work, I’m going to run another virtual environment but doing it in a full bi-polar way. I have to connect do corporate exchange servers, corporate client network drives, INSIDE corporate networks, being able to share PPT, MPT, DOC, XLS, and other wintel version documents, i will be interested to see how it is going to all work. I’m run the virtualization for more than a year now on my home imac, but only for a couple things and usually for limited scope. (move over hear, use quicken and do something, update, close program, close virtual environment, move back) We’ll say, heck, mabybe I’ll do a 30 days in the life of a schizo mbpro