Sony 17" Advice Needed

Okay, everyone. The sad day has come.

My Sony Vaio AR770 will beep three times (one long, two short) when booted, signaling a video card failure. I got it in 2008, making the timing unfortunate, but not wholly unexpected. Thankfully I've been doing regular backups in anticipation of this. The battery going bad was an early sign of difficult times ahead.

Now the conundrum: I can build myself a very comparable EC series laptop for about $1500, much less than was spent on my $2300 AR. The problem is that Sony's not offering 2nd gen Intel chips in their stuff at the moment. Not to mention there's no SSD option either.

This leaves me with three choices:
1) Pay ~$300 to get my AR fixed (I'm leaning towards this)
2) Get the EC series
3) Wait for Sony to upgrade their 17" laptop, which I don't want to wait for, as their largest model get upgraded last so who knows when that'll be.

Thought? And thanks.

 

People should to an extent be thankful that Sony ain't shipping with Sandy Bridge chippies at the moment (they might be in Japan at the moment I think; my knowledge on the VAIO portfolio is a few months out of date...).

SB chippies are faulty and can cause speed / reliability issues down the track. Yeah yeah, it's limited to a SATA2 ports and isn't applicable with most laptops, but heck, it's still faulty nonetheless. For all I care Intel might improve / add something on the second batch of (fixed) SB chips.

Sony's largest model at the moment is the F series at 16''. Not too sure how that's priced where you're from, but it'll be a decent bit more capable than your AR, you'll be sure of that.

If you are not in too much of a hurry and provided you live in the States, you could try holding out till the Thanksgiving sales (maybe that's too far-fetched though...?). By then Sony's next generation models will have (probably) leaked, and prices will be undoubtedly cheaper; just more options if you take this path.

Now, the important part of this post...
The AR series is part of the free graphics repair program (see the sticky on this forum). Well, it is for the States, so you could try phoning in your local Sony Service center to ask whether you are eligible with your model and country. Don't phone some random old computer store mind you; they'll charge you silly. The AR you have is not a slow machine, and seeing the specs on the net it'll be able to take on some i3 and lower-end i5 machines.

 

I called Sony and they're saying my unit isn't covered. Because of the beeps (one long, two short) when it's booted, apparently that indicated a POST test failure not related to the actual nVidia chip, but something else video related (Uh...yeah, okay). And so they aren't covering the repair cost. To get it fixed, I have to go here and pay up to $600 (!!) to get it fixed.

Um...no.

 

Note the 17" EB is a more budget line, compared to 16.4 F. I have F, have seen the EB in the store... not in the same league, cheaper plastic, etc. I would expect Fs to get SandyB long before EB does.