Considering Sony and an SZ

Right, another SZ thread, sorry about that.

I'm not set about which laptop manufacture to get yet, I'm considering Sony, despite many telling me they're bad for various reasons.
So please be honest (Sony lovers and haters) will buying a Sony machine (either an SZ or an FE) be such a mistake for me? I just love the way they look.

Is the support really that bad ? repair service etc... doesn't matter to me as I'm buying it in the US but am bringing it over to Israel, is the online support bad too ? I mean getting new drivers (vista...) and such.

Now about build quality, how bad/good is it really ? I'm not going to hike with it in the mountains, I'll be taking it with me to College 3 days a week (a 10 minutes drive from home) and to work for the rest of the week (15 minutes drive), so I don't need a tank, Is the SZ premium build quality really better than the regular edition ?

All in all, I'm just looking for a laptop that looks good (a bit of a design nut, it's a problem I have) that will have a good GPU and be kinda portable, nothing too radical, the rest is pretty much same for most of the brands, I know price is higher with Sony, but that's something I'm willing to pay.

Before anyone mentiones the Asus w7j, I'd be all over it if it didn't have a 512mb of ram soldered to it, and also from what I understand Asus would take a while to refresh their models with Merom (did I mention I'm waiting for that?) or I'd be considering the W3J also.

Sorry about the essay, and thanks to anyone who got this far...

 

Great info so far guys, keep it coming...

 

Well Yair I have the SZ160 premium model and I really like it. I don't have experience with Sony's customer service (I hope I never need it) so I can't speak to that but my SZ160 seems built pretty well. I really bought it for the fabulous display and the looks which is very sleek yet subdued. As far as the difference between the premium and non premium versions I know the displays are quite different. other than that I think it's more the color you prefer, the non premium SZ's being silver and the premium versions charcoal gray. I also think the premium version weighs slightly less due to the very thin display.

 

Thanks for your response, but my main concern is lack of 'software' support, i.e drivers/updates/fixes etc... could you or anyone else that has any experience with Sony on that matter comment?

 

I know that Sony is working on supporting VISTA and providing it's users with drivers that will support the hardware when it comes out. On their esupport.sony.com I've seen a ton of software updates, patches and BIOS updates for my systems over the last few months so I'd say they are continuing to help their users out.

 

Sony does update drivers but they are certainly not the best when it comes to this. For instance it seems you can't do a true clean install of XP and expect everything to work correctly, see the semi restore thread that tells of the problems.

 

I remember the semi restore thread, but what if I simply decide to just uninstall whatever bloatware I don't want to keep, and do a registry clean afterwards ? how would that run ?

Edit: is the recovery partition the only thing i'd lose if I do that semi-restore "plan" ?

 

Yes, there is a recovery partition, but the problem with the Sony SZ is that it is a nightmare to perform a complete reinstall (their driver's page is not complete, etc...)

 

I think I'll go with the FE after all, that's assuming Sony won't bring out an updated 14.1 model, which will suite me perfectly to be honest.

 

A clean installation of Windows XP is entirely possible and it's an easy process, provided that you already own a separate copy of the OS. I did one myself when I first purchased my SZ by following these directions: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=46619 and so have many others. All of the required drivers are located at Sony's website for the US/Canada models and for the international models, the missing drivers are provided in the thread above.

 

Do I get an XP key with the laptop? (never owned one before), so I can use a different XP cd with my new key to re-install it ?

 

BTW, I'm assuming anything you say about re-storing/installing XP on an SZ would work with any other Sony model, am I wrong here?

 

Yes, I believe Sony has all the required drivers on their website to perform a clean installation for all the recent Vaio models. You must install them in a certain order, however, for everything to work properly.

Regarding the cd-key question, yes, a key is provided with the laptop but it won't work with the standalone version. You don't have to worry about that anyway, because the standalone version comes with its own cd-key.

 

I know any XP version comes with it's own key, I was just hoping that me having the key would enable me to take someone else' CD and install it with my own key, and I don't mean just technically, but legally too, guess I was wrong.