TZ Series - Hardware design issues

Hi everyone!

got my tz 1,5 weeks ago and after some days of carrying it around i am really angry at sony. another sony vaio ultra portable with another series of hardware-design issues.

as i didn't find posts related to this i thought i would post this to see if i am the only one having this problem...?

1st is the swinging screen when you are tiping. that is only annoying! but it does not lead to unremovable scratches.

2nd is also beeing caused by the thin & fragile lcd-case. as the left and right screen frame touches the left and right row of keys there are already small scratches on the keys and on the left and right frame of the lcd.
seems like the entire screen-frame is moving around a little bit having the keys and lcd-frame beeing moved against each other causing scratches.
NO, this is not caused by pressure in a tight bag. simply close the display of your own tz series and use a flashligt to see how the keys press against the screen frame.
this is a mistake in design!

3rd one is also beeing caused by the frame... but this only happens when there's little pressure in the bag on the screen, you can also test this applying some pressure above the "motion-eye" while looking between the upper and lower unit... the motion eye and the fingerprint-reader are getting in touch resulting in scratches of the motion eye which can not be removed.

4th one is even lamer... the housing on the lower unit between touchpad and mouse-buttons gets in contact with the upper lcd-frame under light pressure. resulting in scratches on the housing of the lower unit and the upper lcd-frame.

well done sony. after having a srx-41/51 with the worst and numerous times replaced screen-ankles resulting in lcd-screen falling to back or front by itself, after having 2 t2/t3 series models suffering the scratches on lower screen frame & media-button unit... another expensive sony with serious design issues! (somehow i have to think how i really could be so stupid to spend my money again on a sony...)

so now i put the soft sheet that was in the original package on the screen before closing the tz... imagine how annoying that is & how good that looks on a 2500€ machine...

already contacted sony about that issue, but - guess what - no answer... oh yes, they already got my €2550 so what the heck....

how about the others, what do you think about this problems... shouldn't
you all be suffering from it?

and i'm talking about the tz21vn - but as the housing is the same on every model i think it's the same with all models...?

any clues what to do...?

 

dont put it in the pack cuz that will apply pressure. its a mere 2lb just carry it.

 

so i have to carry my bag and my tz series...? what if i need to make a phone call and have to carry another bag? sorry, but that is a no-go solution.

come on, this is a lame design-mistake by sony. "do not carry it in a bag" is no solution for this. that's like if you put a nail through your hand and the solution is "take some pills to feel less pain but leave the nail there..." - the design issue aka the nail is still there.

in this case it could have been easily solved by having a more stable lcd-frame-part and/or use some more rubberparts...

 

another possibility is to wait. like any new toy, it is obsess over constantly. Wait until the Tz become a normal possession and then u won't give a krap about those issues. kinda like a white pair of new shoes. u obsess where u walk to prevent from smudging it, but over time, u stop giving a hoot and blantly walk it over a puddle of water.

 

The possibility of the screen and the keys touching when the notebook was closed was the reason for the inclusion of the cleaning cloth. Just toss it in when you close the notebook and your screen will look pretty for much much longer.

 

Funny, can you believe that you are the *first* one on this forum to admit what I have already noticed in both TZs I have owned? Those scratches on the palm rests have driven me nuts. And now that you mention scratches on the Motion Eye, I see those now too.

Putting a sheet between screen and keyboard doesn't work for travel because the sheet will turn the computer on in your bag, so you end up with a little portable sauna.

Hey, last night I sat in a restaurant where they had table legs for where your knees ought to be. Clearly, that architect never sat at his own table before finalizing the design. Similarly, Sony engineers probably never traveled much with their prototype TZs either.

 

Just shut it down when you travel and everything will be ok. Instead of waiting 10 sec to open you will wait one minute more (with SSD)...Is not worth it?

I agree that the frame around the lcd is too fragile, I posted similar issue on the TZ's Owner Thread.

 

I like to save about a dozen articles in Firefox tabs for on-board reading and I don't do hibernation, so no that doesn't work.

 

if you get scratches on the motion eye like my brother did All you have to do is by plastix at a local automotive store like autozone you can also get it at wally world. put a little dab on a towel and go back and forth from left to right and vice versa don't go in circle motions. After platix becomes a haze use a micro fiber cloth and buff it. Thats what I did on my brothers TZ90 and it looks brand new motion eye has no scratches what so ever and looks like when he first bought it. Also for the palm rest area you might try some meguilars scratch x I havent had any stratches on mine or his so I couldnt really tell you if it works but it should be able to make the scratch dissappear because I tried it on one of my older notebooks

 

Great tips for cleaning! I should combine them with tips for cleaning MacBooks and create a microsite for lappy maintenance! Too bad I have no time!

 

haha uber you should do that

 

I use a cooskin over my keyboard and a shaggyMAC cloth whenever I close the laptop. It works like a charm. The cloth covers the entire surface of the keyboard, including the fingerprint reader, touchpad, and palm rests. I don't have any scratches on mine and I travel frequently.

I took these precautions when I bought my TZ after reading about ubercool's scratches on his TZ on these forums.

 

No photographers in this forum with a TZ? There's a purple anti-glare coating on the protective glass in front of the camera that will get scratched off permanently over time. Obviously it will also be removed completely using the above process, so wait until the scratches start affecting performance before resorting to the procedure!

Thankfully, the part that gets scratched is not the lens itself (which has it's own anti-glare coating as well), plus it's not like the camera lens is world-class glass anyway, but it's very irritating nonetheless. Thanks for pointing that one out!

 

maybe we should open a shop and offer that service to sony tz owners... well, to expensive-but-still-crappy-notebook owners actually

mine came with a light pink sheet that sticks out like 5-10mm on each side, now i am using it... with hybernation there is no problem about it getting turned on... but still, that is not what i call solving a problem.

@DaniBuy - does sony pay for the materials you need and for the time when fixing this every week...?

grazy world... but hey...
the problem could be solved if we could all visit the developer and bump our tz on his head until they are broken. maybe that was the reason he initially designed this thin frame - so it will hurt less when the angry owners turn back on him...?

if you need help with the table thing let me know, we can dump that on the table designer as well...

a friend bought a cheap acer... guess what? the upper rubber-pad on the display presses the right mouse-button when closed...

i guess i will wait and see if sony reacts in any way to the cases i just opened and then contact the product manager in austria again to get some money back again... and next time, really really, i will not buy a vaio (like i did not buy one the last 3 vaios...) - i swear!

 

the purple coating does not come off its still on there plastix is not a strong abrasive. Also I did not give a solution for the camera getting scratched Im just providing an answer for him to fix what as already happened. Damn im just trying to help someone out next time I will think twice before helping somone

 

DaniBuy - Sorry, for not putting that in my previous post - Thank You!
You are right - you showed up a good way for fixing the already existing problems, instead of saying thank you i was even sarcastic and asked if sony is paying you everytime.
and that was not the way it may have sounded. your solution fixes the problem - sure. and i imagined the time and money it costs every once in a while - still beeing caused by a fault form sony.

so sorry and please go on that way!

about the coating - i actually do not care - as i am a photographer and this "motion-eye" is something i do not define as a camera. if it would not be there i would not care.

yesterday i put a transparent tape (like tesa) on the motion eye and on the lcd-frame where the problems are happening. so this parts are a little reflective not, but if something is scratched it is the tape and note the housing. looks fantastic, maybe i should put that in the shop mentioned above?

i'll let you know if that works out - need to run around and test this out first!

 

A couple of other design flaws that niggle me.

1. Eject button on the DVD temperamental.
2. No volume control buttons like the old series.
3. USB buttons on left so mouse cable has to run around notebook.
4. No TV-out.
5. Network port cover is flimsy - and unnecessary.
6. Not enough contrast on keys. Am I the only one who can't see them in low light? At the price, may I suggest luminous keys?
7. Memory card slots limited to proprietary formats. Who uses Magic Gate anyway?
8. Supplied RAM not enough to run OS.


But all of this pales in comparison to the monumental pain in the arse that is Microsoft Vista. The system was utterly unusable, thrashing constantly, until I turned off all the indexing, Restore, Defender, uninstalled Norton, reverted to Classic View, etc. Even with all that I'm still getting Explorer crashes with the out of the box config.

TT

 

TT,

except for 4 which i would replace as 4a with "only analog vga output" and 8 - this depends on the specific model where i would still call 2gb as enough -full ack on all points...

about the pain in the arse... use win xp and you are fine

 

Since when have SD cards been proprietary? My TZ takes Memory Sticks, MS Duo's / Micros / SD Cards and SDHC. It also reads MMC cards.

 

These are the only two "design flaws" that bother me, because I have a non-DVD model, so I have an extra USB port on the right and have not had problems with the eject button on the first model. But here's another one:

3. Power button flashing light: It's impossible to see when the power is running down, so often the TZ will just shut down since I missed seeing the flashing light.

 

The screen frame should not come into contact with the keys on either side of the keyboard. When closed there should be a very slight gap between the keys and the frame. The rubber feet around the frame help to prevent contact. You should be able to slip a piece of paper in between. I've tested this on my TZ.

There is a certain amount of flex on the frame (this I noticed) but it should not contact the motion eye camera or the touchpad/buttons under normal usage. You would have to apply quite some pressure to make it come into contact.

It is possible that you may have a unit that was not well assembled. Maybe you should take it back to the shop.

 

Wouldnt it be easier just to put a screen protector on the LED Screen and cut a small one for the motion eye camera??

 

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but it still does touch and leaves nasty marks on palmrests.

 

exactly... i just got a response from sony about the case i opened... asking if any of the rubber-pads are removed or something else could be broken... so i basically wrote the same again stating that this is a new unit that has no faults in it's hardware, but faults in it's design... also reffered to this site...

this leads me to the point i already asked once... did anybody else contact sony about this problem or do you all accept the design-flaws even if you consider that we did not buy cheep stuff like an Eeee pc but spend some more $ to get quality?

 

Oh yeah, here's another flaw.

It comes with Vista, Bluetooth and 1GB of Ram.

1, Vista won't really run on 1GB Ram. So much so that by popular demand they've had to put downgrade drivers on the support site. (Can you believe that?)

2. If you upgrade to 2GB Ram, which you should, you can't just add in another GB, you have to buy 2GB, leaving you with 1GB you don't need and can't use. What a waste of money.

3. The Bluetooth drivers that come supplied with the machine are Vista incompatible disabling drag and drop in Explorer. It's not acknowledged by Sony and the upgrade path direct from Toshiba isn't supported.

Nice one, dicks.

TT

 

Wow! You've sure had a lot of problems I never experienced on my TZ190N. I saw the image of the keyboard on the screen from the outset and realized the tolerances are too tight so I just used the cleaning cloth like others have described -- no further problems. I don't recall seeing any scratches on the palm rests but maybe I just didn't notice them (I've sold the TZ so I could afford to upgrade to the TZ198.... not sure if that will ever get here, though -- shipping probs in Canada).

As for the other criticisms -- after cleaning up the bloatware I never had any problems with Vista (seemed to run better than on my T60p) -- I did have 2G RAM though -- initial prob with BT drivers were resolved with updated drivers -- I did find the DVD eject button flakey -- in general, I felt I got what I expected but the 32G SSD was just too small for my needs.

 

1. You are blaming Sony for a Microsoft problem. Windows XP just runs faster in a smaller space and is much less of a memory hog than Vista, but we all knew that going into it. Sony has merely responded, as did Dell, to user requests for the ability to go back to XP.

2. Ditto. Most manufacturers use the cheapest way to get to 1GB, which is two 512MB sticks. Yes, you have to discard them, or sell them on eBay, but this again is not a Sony "fault."

3. You are the only one to have this Explorer crash problem, so again, it's not Sony's fault that you're experiencing this. I have no such problems and have had two TZs. The stack does misbehave occassionally, but as I understand it, that's due to Vista's increased "security" protection.