Any reason I SHOULDN'T buy a Vaio?

Please let me know if you have any reasons why a Vaio would not be a good choice. My concern is reliability and functionality..

 

Battery drain. There are long threads about it. If you can't deal with it (taking out your battery or always being near an outlet) you may be in trouble.

 

Terrible video card choices. Many users would like something more. (Myself included)

 

If you plan on tossing around your notebook you might be better of with a thinkpad or elitebook.

 

Exuse me, but what does tossing means?

Also, I have no experience with battery drain.

 

I meant throwing it around.

 

Crappy Matsu dvd drives which are hard coded for a single region.
So, if you have USA and UK discs you can only play one or the other.

 

You mean that you can only change the region-code one(1) times?
I can change regions five(5) times on my Matsh*ta DVD.

 

Sony is bad for tossing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1cjYTUz9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8Cy4BOwkM&feature=related

One thing I like about sony is their build quality, I never seen a bad quality sony vaio.

 

Thanks for all your responses.
b|lly - so I gather you own a vaio? no trouble with it?
I don't really need it for hardout gaming. its more for the standard email,wordprocessing,watching movies, and the photo and video editing.
I want the 14" because I need portability. but I just wondered about the brand as I have never owned a Vaio..I will be converting from a very long lasting Toshiba (and I really don't like their new style)

 

The only issue I've had with Sony laptops is the bloatware it comes with and the battery. Other than that, it's been solid and what really surprised me is how quiet and cool it runs. The HDD is idling at 30 and the CPU at 38 while surfing the Internet.

 

Not all Vaios are created equal. I've been pretty impressed by Sony's thin & light/ultraportable offerings, like the TZ/TT, Z, and SR, but their larger laptops (the AW excepted) just don't seem to offer as many features for the price point or anything that would put them over the competitors. For a 14" laptop, I' personally think the best in its class right now is the Thinkpad T400. Solid build, switchable graphics, great battery life, etc.

 

I would rather go for 13 instead of 14. The difference in view is not that big and the resolution is the same.

You can get a pretty good deal with some old SZ models, which owns any newT400 or similar.

 

For the same reliability and functionality, you can buy other brand with lower price.

 

My main complaint with Sony is their pricing, which even though they make good reliable products, I still find it a bit higher.

Other critics people have had with the Vaio have been:
- Speakers are decent, but not anything special
- The battery life isn't as good as advertised
- Bloatware(but nothing different from other companies)

 

I have an SR190. I have the extended battery. While it doesn't go as long as sony say, it manages to get a good 4 hours in.

 

I was actually considering buying the Vaio CS - in NZ they have just released the CS16 - which is lightweight and seems quite ergonomic. I had issues with my Toshiba where it heated up so much that the fan was basically working all the time to cool it down. Noisy and annoying. The thinkpad is a bit over my budget looks like it retails starting from $2.5k NZD where the vaio is $1.8k.

 

Other then expensive, i dont know why you shouldn't get VAIO

 

Not unless you want 64bit support. There are virtually no support of 64bit. And they are very expensive as well.

 

CS should provide the functionality that you are looking for. Reliability should also be good, even though CS is a pure consumer-oriented laptop, unlike Z or SR -- they are dual-purpose and also need to satisfy the more stringent reliablity and durability demand from business users.

I am not sure it would be the best bang for the buck for you, though, since I have no idea how each OEM prices their products in NZ. In US, there are definitely cheaper alternatives that provides equal or more functionality and reliability at a lower price.

 

4 hours on the extended battery?!? Ouch!

 

Ok show me another 13" with 1600*900 resolution.

Or show me another 11" with Bluray and HDMI output.

Or show me another 13" laptop with P9500 that weighs 1.50kg.

Or show me another 18.4" with RGB LED backlight.

Do I need to continue?

 

and after five plays of alternate region coded discs the unit won't play the other regions any more. Whilst this is not a major problem for USA based laptops (as you hardly ever go outside your borders ) for Europeans who use it to travel to the USA and buy very much cheaper dvd's from Region 1 are stuffed.

 

The only issue i have with VAIO for me is the Price. It's too expensive.

 

Only reason is not very good (low) resale value IMO.

 

Crud...surely their Blu Ray drives aren't Matushistu (sorry, I'm misspelling that). Their drives are GARBAGE, and I'd think getting a Sony drive would be one nice thing about getting a Sony system :-(

That's not true, their current models, at least some of them SHIP with 64-bit Vista. In fact I'm trying to make sure I can still install 32-bit Vista on the AW (drivers and such) as I don't want 64-bit.

 

Sony "exclusively use" M a t s u s h i t a blu-ray drives in their Vaio Zs.

 

Oh, that's Panasonic's parent company. That's fine I guess. It's that other company with a similar name that's complete garbage. I've seen a bunch on Apple's hardware, and one on a Dell. Always junk from my experience.

 

I have recently bought a Vaio and its an AR series laptop, everything so far seems fine and the build quality seems very good along with an amazing quality screen. The only thing i don`t like is the fan on my Vaio runs all the time, when you don`t have anything open the fan still runs but on a very slow idle speed but you can still hear it, when you open an application the fan gets louder.

My previous Toshiba laptop was better in this respect as the fan only came on when needed and would be off most of the time, the Vaio one runs constantly on my laptop which is an AR51SU.

 

Large but slow HDD (4200 rpm) on high-end models with better screens (for which you pay a premium anyway).
I cannot understand Sony's rationale for doing this.

 

I have the ATI card and I have the standard 6-cell battery, I get close to 4 hours of battery life, I have wifi on, itunes and firefox on, and brightness on 6/8..
People with the Intel IGP and 6-cell battery are getting close to 6 hours of battery life
People with the 9-cell battery are getting over 8 hours of battery life

Your system must be very cluttered...