Vaio Z, the worse laptop I have ever owned!

Honestly if folks at SonyStyle store go to the extent of installing malware processes to cheat hardware detection applications, then, I personally would take legal action both against the store and Sony because, that would be too much. Honestly I don't believe that's the case... I mean, Id find it hard to believe that Sony would have a store open and not know what was going on inside it. if I can, Ill go there sometime this week and test this. Now I'm curious

 

I am sure that I'm very wrong but don't the SonyStyle (physical) stores operate on a franchise type (kinda like McDonald's, if you know what I'm talking about), so they may not actually be "owned" by Sony themselves, no? If that is the case, wouldn't there be a chance that those kind of "funky" business will still happen in SonyStyle stores in China?

 

My 2 cents on the build quality having owned both Z and MBP 13": Sony Z feels like quite a delicate machine to me. I would handle it with a lot of care.

Looking at issues the OP has I doubt he handled it with care (no offense). He'd be better off with a business style Lenovo or aluminium Apple. Or even better a Panasonic Toughbook

I have not seen any proof. I would classify it as speculation. Unless I missed something.

 

I know the one where I live (NYC) is a "real" Sony store. Then again its on the first floor of Sony's building so....

 

Conics.net is Japanese directly from Tokyo, not HK.

There is a new 1.8" SSD from Samsung, the PB22-J (MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB) that has R/W specs of up to 220MBs/200MBs, I think this drive will provide the fastest speed on a Vaio Z when setup up as a 2x RAID. Capacities go up to 128MB so the RAID array would be 256GB total. I can find them for sale everywhere in Europe, Germany, UK, Switzerland and other places but cannot find anyone selling it in the US. It would certainly make the Vaio Z, smoke as far as disk performance goes This thing is seriously fast…
http://www.littlebit.ch/Library/ProductInfo/Documents/SAS-MMCRE28G5MXP-0VB00_PB22-J_DS_E.pdf
http://blog.nabe.jp/archives/000180.html

 

I am sorry. I have no idea about these HK resellers.

 

im not sure about in China, but in Malaysia, SonyStyle is not really franchise by Sony, some of them run by non Sony. its like a license/authority given by Sony to other shop who want to be official Sony product seller. for instance, Best Denki (a electronic shop from Japan in Malaysia) has SonyStyle store. tho, there is no case about poor quality from people who purchasing from SonyStyle. The warranty period is 1 year and 3 months (if you register the product at mySony (Sony Malaysia web). you can extend up to another 3 years.

btw to the thread starter, are you still in warranty? if so, go claim it!

 

I guess u are covered.It pays off to get insurance.

 

When shopping for hard drives, internet access or anything else, forget "up to" figures. Then forget about the average speeds too. Look at the minimum speeds, because that's what's going to limit you (and annoy you).

A drive that can deliver "up to" 200 MB/s or averages 130 MB/s won't do you much good if it gets occasional hiccups of a whole second's latency, and you need to use it for real time music or video or other timing sensitive work.

If you mean RAID0 (striping), you increase the frequency of hitting the maximum slowness linearly for every drive you add to the RAID. Which makes the minimum speed even more important.

If you meant RAID1 (mirroring), then things may be slightly different. For writes, you'll still increase the worst case scenario frequency. For reads, it depends on whether you have a RAID1 solution that emphasizes guaranteed rate IO (reads in parallel mode and discards the slowest response) or one that emphasizes average speed (reads in stripe mode).

Personally, I would never use anything worse than RAID10 or RAID15 with onboard RAM on the controller, but with a minimum of 4 or 6 drives, that's not something we'll likely see on laptops any time soon.

 

Conics.net and Geekstuff4u are not HK resellers. They are based in Japan and resell Japanese units to foreign countries, since you cannot place international orders directly with SonyStyle Japan.

The units they sell are VAIO Owner-Made units (Japanese CTO equivalent), and thus the units are assembled in Japan with no funny business involved. However, both Conics.net and Geekstuff4u may open up your device to replace the OS and other accessories with English or international versions, according to your order.

They're quite reputable, so I sincerely doubt you would have any problems with them. The only downside is that you will have to pay a considerable premium for the "service", on top of the exchange rate. And you will also have to pay for international warranty coverage unless you are willing to travel to Japan in the event of a warranty claim.

 

Sorry to read such story, even more sorry that I had to laugh reading "but I bought it in HK not China".
Asia (except Japan) is "different" universe. Had side job (I am music producer) for major European importer of musical instruments, from South and East Asia. Important part of the work was supervising, personally watching final packing, dispatching, loading and sealing containers. I was paid rather well for that since my very presence, also socialising, keeping in touch etc, etc reduced fail rate from 50% to around 2-3%. As general rule I would suggest avoiding any purchases unless you know very well the product,examine it and dont loose out of sight after that, speak local language, are known to those people, give impression of major grow of the biz in the future- most preferably all those combined. There are so many weak points in the chain that you cant control. It is not about sloppy assembly worker, or night guard at the shop with connection to underworld, but almost unlimited possibilities where something might go wrong.
I would never blame Sony Japan for possible flaws, misuse of the brand name, franchise, since Japanese are even more lost out there then Europeans or Americans, their options of control, supervising are very limited. Some places are better- like Singapore some worse- mainland China and HK, Taiwan somewhere in the middle.
It is not anti Asian ( i am Asian myself) just the way things work (and not work) there.

 

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. I agree with you 100% in your observations!

 

It's a bit odd how you rant about the low quality of the Z and trying to convince us that it's across the whole line of products.

If the Z really was so badly built, don't you think this forum would be flooded with posts? And how many posts are there on this forum about the bad quality of the Z?

 

I'm not really sure if you can generalise your personal experience to the whole of Asia. Don't forget that China and Asian countries in that region are called the factories of the world. If all those countries had such bad failure rates, how come so many electronic devices we buy in "the West", are produced there and still see a lot of happy customers?

If it really is so bad, don't you think customers would already have given up on those brands?

 

Rave? Rant? I merely posted my obviously unusual poor quality of my unit including a few pics of some its issues. Its clearly I got a lemon and even clearer than my unit might have been bought from less than legit people in Hong Kong (not SonyStyle) that sold me a product as "new" that possibly had been worked on, used or even mishandled/modified before the sale. As for your knolwdge of "Asia" and how it operates, its clear on this blog some people have expressed their views based on far more experience than you have (and myself included) on the matter. I have actually learned a lot with much that has been said here and respect the people that know more and have more years in these dealings than I do

 

Did you even read the post title? The OP said the Vaio Z is the worst laptop HE'S ever owned. He didn't say it's the worst laptop ever made.

 

I don't think aviray meant that devices made outside of Asia are "the best quality" and that devices made inside Asia are the exact opposite. As mentioned, perceived quality does vary from country to country, and more importantly according to what each country has historically produced. For instance, Japan has a strong consumer electronics legacy (TVs, game systems, portable audio, etc). Taiwan excels at components manufacturing (namely, motherboards) but is relatively new to system assembly. China's strength has been in smaller household electronics (kitchen appliances, toys, etc). Hong Kong has never been a production city (maybe fishing); it is first and foremost a business center, and as such dealers are primarily interested in earning money.

The other factor is the associated legacy of after-sale support. Western-made products may not always be better quality, but consumers demand strong support and so Western companies deliver. On the other hand, if our Chinese-made toaster or blender breaks, many people just throw it out and buy a new one; we seldom expect any "customers first" treatment for "small" electronics. They do fail, but for $10 electronics we just don't care.

It's not that you should never buy anything from China; companies like Lenovo and Apple are helping China's tech scene improve with their high standards. It's just that you can't ignore that many asian business practices aren't exactly about "putting the customer first". And really the issue isn't about making generalizations about groups of people, it's about making sure you aren't cheated out of your money.

 

My VGN-Z92DS arrived at the beginning of July, and so far the machine runs pretty well smoothly~
T9900+4G RAM+256GB SSD+BD Writer+WWAN...
I would like to switch the SSD to Intel X18-M G2 160G*2 though...

 

Let me quote you from the OP:

It could be that you were in a bad mood...

You know nothing about me, yet you do know that the people in this thread know more about Asia than I do.

Let me give you a small clue. I own a Z36LD and I didn't buy it in Oz or NZ.

 

Because the West do not mind to close their ears and eyes and do not care for condtitions of the workers while taking advantage of ridiculously cheap prices. Be it worker or salesman, if underpaid, will look to get piece of cake some other way- swapping some parts and resale could be one source of extra income. We shouldnt condemn them but rather take precautions not to be part of the "compenstation" for being exploited- like our friend was with his messed up Z.
The failure is calculated. For example German company Beh....er(music electronics) does not even ask for kind of failure ( not the end customers but tech departments of stores where defective units are returned) and just send new unit. They do not spend a cent on development,manufacture only in China just copy devices of leading brands and profit from slave like labour, getting goods so cheap that it is not worth to repair them ( the company was fined millions in US for rip off of well known Mackie mixers). Not just some switches or cables but units retailing at hundreds of Euros.
The changes, progress is amazing though, 20 years back they could make AK 47 and ball pens. In music industry 10 years back main land Chinese companies were in some corners at trade fairs showing their knock off trash. Now many work for major players, slowly bring their own ideas, sometimes silly, sometimes brilliant. In 10 years they will probably be major players themselves.

 

erm its hot in here
anyway, to VeEuzUKY, i think you just unlucky to get lemon product from Sony. srsly, i bought mine in Malaysia (South East Asia) and until now no a single problem encounter.

as for Made in "Asia" *China mainly, Malaysia, Japan, Korea), nowadays all electronic parts (cpu, ram, harddisk, lcd) are made from here. and its common to have faulty part in one huge production. thats why we have warranty for every purchase. nothing is perfect. we cant predict what the outcome will be in the future.

 

It's a shift in expectations. In traditional European culture, the expectation is that every single part is individually inspected before being sold. If something doesn't work when brand new, it must be because of damage done by the retailer, who also is the one responsible for the customer getting what he paid for, i.e. who handles the warranty for the lifetime of the product.

Now enter Far East production methods, with high yield and low price, and American consumerism, with "profit is king", "caveat emptor" and "all sales are final". And laws adapted to consumerism, where the retailer no longer is responsible for the product they sell, but can send the customer directly back to the factory. There's no onus on the retailer to ensure that the product actually works, and for the producers of goods, as long as increased sales due to lower price is higher than decreased sales due to low quality, all is well.

But all is not well for the consumer who expects the old world system, where the seller stands up for what he sells, and every part is inspected before sold. And an expectation that things work.

 

I actually experienced the same problem with the left mouse button a couple of months ago. It just broke after regular use, and I even 90% of the time use my bluetooth mouse.

Send it to my Service Center(was sent to France, Europe) and first received quotation for the repairs at over € 300. They had to change the whole palmrest and a few parts for the touch pad aswell according to the specs. But luckily after a couple of days, the computer was sent back to me repaired at no charge.

Bought it in Hong Kong with Vaio over seas at the flagship store in Causeway Bay.

 

Wow, we bought it almost at the same place. Just like me, I usually dont even use the the left mouse button on the laptop as I have an external mouse connected (that also went bad too). I bet our Zs where from the same batch most likely. Happy they fixed it for you at no charge

 

Actually, that's one thing that isn't really true of Sony. A CTO model is inspected before being sold; only the pre-configured models are mass-produced with only one pulled here and there for a check. And, in the U.S. at least, all sales are not final for 30 days, during which time you may return the unit without a restocking fee for full refund. This is generally not the case for most of the industry.

For the rest, well, the thing that bothers me and friends is the whole "extended service warranty" gig. When you read the fine print for Service Net, Sony's out-sourced provider, it seems as though those warranties will be counting every penny's worth spent on repairing the item toward the total purchase price of the item -- after that amount has been reached, there is no more real warranty left.

I recently explained this to a friend who is asking Sony to confirm this for her directly. I'm recounting this because, you see, it is in the customer's best interest to send the unit back to the factory and take a new unit (no matter how many units it takes) rather than to have the repair done under warranty on the item by the local retailer or other provider of a Sony warranty under this ESP system.

Each time you get a new replacement unit from Sony, they start the 30 day clock again. But when you get it repaired instead of exchanged, the clock is running, and so is the total tally toward the limit of your purchase price. Suddenly you realize that, under this system, the money you save on a purchase price deal comes back to bite you if/when you need the computer repaired/replaced....

To be fair, this is, I believe, how all extended service plans work, at least in the States. It's the only chink in Sony's armor, leveling it to the same playing field of ESPs. On just about everything else, though, Sony is head and shoulders above most of its competition.

 

Not true. Only Sony (& maybe 1 or 2 other companies) is like that in terms of extended warranty claims. If you get an Apple & or a Dell notebook, you can send it in for service & they'll repair everything (even after the total cost of repair has gone over the original cost of the notebook) as many times as needed during the course of the warranty period to fix any problems that may arise. Furthermore, IMHO, the warranty prices for those 2 companies are even lower than what Sony charges.

 

I actually don't agree with sniper sung and others who have stated that Hong Kong sells "counterfeit" products at official stores or that China has the "worst stuff available".

First off, Hong Kong is an international city of high standards. Yes, Hong Kong is deemed as the "capital of piracy" at times, but if you ever come to the city and look around, you'll see that the city is filled with real, authentic large brand. How do I know? It's because I live in Hong Kong, and my VAIO Z came from it.

Now, regarding the Z, which I also purchased from Hong Kong's Sonystores, it's definitely the best laptop I have. It's great performance-wise, and is amazingly light for all its powers. I also don't have any of the problems you noted, and the comp. itself runs brilliantly.

I personally think that you simply had some bad luck and received a build which was unsatisfactory - something which occurs to every company. After all, everybody makes some mistakes at some point, and the same would apply to any company. It certainly isn't "America gets the best and China gets the most horrid" - sure, China maybe susceptible to horrible artifacts and events at times, but that's just in the minority which the media hypes and exaggerates. And I can definitely assure you that Hong Kong is a fantastic city which houses a large amount of foreign residents and famous brands, all of which are of the top standard and quality, including Sony.

 

I agree with everything that you wrote here.

 

I'm not saying Hong Kong is not good. Indeed Hong Kong is the best place to buy electronics, e.g. sim-free iPhone 3Gs. I'm saying the quality of electronics sold in mainland China is poor. (which can be supported by much personal experience) Furthermore, stores in mainland China can't be trusted as those in other countries. (as I know someone who used to get involved into this)

If OP's laptop was bought in HK then it's not the case I mentioned. It's just that OP was not that lucky.