Sony Support and Design

First, I love my Vaio SZ. It is almost the perfect computer for me. I have now owned three Sony Vaio's after a string of Dell's, HP's and a Compaq. I have shopped pretty thoroghly each time and returne to the Vaio S Series because of a weight and performance combination I have not seen matched elsewhere.

That being said, I think that as illustrated with the VISTA release, Sony does a pretty terrible job of maintaining their support website. Sony always appears late with driver releases and updates. Then when they do release the updte, most of the time, they have not actually troubleshot the installtion process and the directions provided are only "part" of the story.

I think that this stems from the fact that Sony integrates their software "price reducing" bundle so tightly into their machines. The result is that when new software or drivers are released, the Sony almost requires a unique installation process to force the update through all of the old fluff.

I would estimate that half of the time my Vaio updater runs, it cannot determine what updates are needed and install them without crashing and then I have to follow up manually.

What I would like to see is a dynamic and up to date Sony Support site that had current drivers or links to Sony approved drivers, the installation tools, and a comprehensive BETA site with links to driver BETA's that Sony is working or reviewing for impleentation, for those of us that are trying to run cutting edge software that may require unique bluetooth stacks etc.

Sony Computers are sold as cutting edge, but the support simply cannot maintain the pace and is absymal for the most part. This forum and others like it are the only saving grace really.

The Protector Suite upgrade I ran today, is smething that I have been looking for a solution for for four months. How can Sony not have fixed this on their support site by now? Thank you to this forum and all of you participating readers.

Oh, by the way, I am buying a new computer any day now. And I will probably buy another Vaio SZ. Terrible support, but what are the options out there?

 

You are looking for Vaio SZ competitors?

Dell m1210
Asus W7j
Toshiba U205
Macbook 13.3" (well, not really - different OS)

Lots more. Search our forums to see what people are talking about.

 

The closest competitor to Sony light weight and sleek design without sacrificing too much performance is Panasonic Y5. http://www.dynamism.com/y5/main.shtml

But the CPU is only C1D 1.83 GHz, not C2D 2.16 GHz. No gaming card, no firewire, max HD size is 120 GB. DVD burner is single layer only. Notebook is slightly thicker but lighter and screen is bigger.

Note that Y5 is Japanese only notebook. You have to use Japanese driver which could be a problem if you don't speak Japanese.

IMO, Sony SZ still has the best balance between features and performance against weight and size.

 

I agree that Sony has the best balance here. I just wish they would support their equipment better on their support site. It would be very easy and inexpensive for them to keep that thing up. And the divedends it would pay for them would be significant.