Biggest Mistake buying notebook... SONY Vaio S Series VPCSB28GG

I had a choice of buying a notebook and went for Sony Vaio S Series VPCSB28GG, approximately 880 pounds.
Purchased a little over 1 year ago and It was the biggest mistake i have ever made in purchasing anything.
I should have forked out the extra 200 or so and gone for a Apple Mac but my budget was already stretched as it was.

This notebook has been nothing but trouble since day 1.
It is EXTREMELY SLOW, has some 150 background processes running, mostly with Vaio itself and its crashed numerous times from Windows Explorer..

Its frustrating beyond belief and the last one year with this notebook has tested patience to new levels.
Now i'm looking to Mac and its a matter of time before i get rid of this piece of 'junk'.

I would strongly advise that the SONY VAIO S SERIES is a mistake and better to look elsewhere

 

Did you ever do a clean install of Windows?

 

darn good question, Sony is possibly one of the worst for consumer laptops for putting on bloatware ( maybe behind HP Pavillions ). just download the proper ISO image from Microsoft ( assuming windows 7 here ) and fresh load the OS and drivers and then the laptop tends to work fantastic ( even better than a Mac actually )

 

Not just on laptops, Sony phones are stuffed with junk. Clean install or at least uninstalling all the junk would seem like an obvious solution.

 

I can only speak for more expensive machines but I have no such issues. All of my Sony notebooks purchased in the last 2-3 years have had their full complement of Sony-own-brand bloatware. I do remove Norton, etc but that's it.

The broader lesson is:

The more clueless you are about how exactly your system should behave especially in the tablet age, the more you should stretch your budget to include an SSD. Apple knows this, which is why at this point in time only one machine they sell has HDDs.

There endeth the lesson.

 

Not just Sony, every single consumer PC that comes preloaded with Windows, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Dell, ASUS you name it...

I don't see why people bash on bloatware.. it keeps prices low, and doing clean installs are amazingly easy.

This being said, if you have 150 tabs in chrome, adding a SSD will not help. you will want a faster CPU and more RAM.

Clean installed Windows systems are amazingly stable, as KCETech pointed out.

 

... except that from what I see here, more software issues experienced by users seem to be after clean installs where they aren't actually sufficiently capable to install them in the correct sequence / download the right ones. It's also not a panacea, especially nowadays.

 

1. Install OS
2. Download all drivers from manufacturer, install them
3. Ninite
4. Enjoy.

 

It depends on the laptop and what exactly the software is. It could be a problem but you take a risk when you have more freedom , right? The Mac OS is more restrictive so you don't get all the choices in the place first.

 

People want things to be cheap and be optimized. They don't want to pay extra for optimization unless they are buying a Mac.

If you looked at the article that I point out before at forbes.com, you would notice that some guy who is supposed to be qualified to write about consumer technology doesn't even know what a clean install is (read the comments).

 

Have you bothered to uninstall the bloatware? Something like Revo Uninstaller and CCleaner could do wonders for you.

Or, as already suggested, you could just do a clean install. So easy a caveman can do it

 

Similarly to Vogelbung, I didn't have any bloatware-related issues with (high-end) Vaio laptops and never felt the need to do a clean install. Actually, I'm super satisfied with the Sony laptops I had. Apparently, some series are filled with annoying software and an easy clean install can do wonders.
But the OP is right in the sense that when you buy a brand new laptop, you shouldn't have to go through this unnecessary hassle. This does more harm than good to PC manufacturers (people want Apple, because it just works). Moreover, clean install may be piece of cake for most of us here, but there are plenty people out there who can't even install MS Office by themselves.

 

Not knowing how to pop in a disc (or USB drive) and following simple instructions on how to reinstall an OS shouldn't be an excuse to buy higher-end computers alone these days. Sort of like using the lack of basic cooking skills as a justification of only eating at restaurants all the time. Ignorance is a terrible excuse for incompetence.

Plus, bloatware subsidizes that for of bargain-bin hardware, which is nice in its own way.

 

Hmmm. Incompetence. You know I did the core engineering behind my own compute fabric ?

No, knowing when you don't need to clean install is the sign of real competence

 

I've regretted my S13 purchases at times due to the lousy screen (tempted to try the IPS mod, but that thread is full of photos of broken screens and taped-up bezels!). But the machine's performance has been great.

I do have an SSD and 12Gb RAM in mine, though. And did a fresh Win7 install when I installed the SSD.

 

Many people I know simply don't want to deal with stuff like that. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to do it easily, they just don't have time, don't dare, find it annoying, etc. You can call it ignorance, but from another point of view, they look at computers as tools that they just use to accomplish stuff, not as something they should invest time & effort in to make it work as expected.

How much cheaper can a laptop be due to the bloatware? I think it would make sense only for the really low-cost laptops, where every dollar counts.
Btw. Vizio allegedly don't have any bloatware on their laptops.

I'm not sure I get the point (due to the first part)

 

I use my computers as mere tools as well, though I do take the time to properly set them up. You don't buy a car and never touch the seat controls, steering wheel adjustments, mirrors, etc, right?

Mind you, I'm pretty car stupid (I don't even bother changing my own oil), but I can do at least that much.

 

I completely agree with you, one should set up a computer properly, so that it works as expected. But what I'm saying is that in my opinion for the average Joe (most of the active NBR members are not in this category) a clean install on a laptop - especially if you have to install drivers in a specific order - exceeds the standard computer set-up level.
For the non-computer-savvy people seat/mirror/steering wheel adjustment would probably be equivalent to changing the wallpaper, setting screen brightness, installing updates and some programs, copying their music/movies/photos, etc.

 

But do you rebuild the engine when you buy one? And when you do, like many enthusiasts do you fit those air filters which do absolutely nothing?

 

In fact, OP just post his question and run away.