Anyone have experience with Vaio notebooks?

Sony Sucks. Your only paying a premium price for the name. Go with the Dell. The support alone is well worth it.

Dell is better, but I had two Sony laptops. Not a single problem with either one.

Everything I have ever owned made by Sony has STB on me. Maybe it's just me but I refuse to throw away more money on them. Including the DVD drive in my XPS. it's a Sony

Sorry for your bad luck with them.

Congrats on the Gold. That's impressive!

Thanks, I want another dot. That is a ways off, I think.

While I wouldn't quite put it that way (and I think Dell tends to be only average), I'd definitely agree that Sony notebooks tend to be very expensive and not build very well (or at least well enough to stand up to the abuse I dish out to my equipment). I received one in 2001 that managed to have the battery die completely within months, the screen broke when I lifted the notebook by the sides of the lid (gently, I thought), and it died completely after I partially disassembled and then reassembled it. When it was working, it had a DVD player but not good enough video capabilities to actually play DVDs (which annoyed me to no end), got very very hot when running, and had several other problems that for now I'll attribute to the fact that it came with Windows ME.

The bottom line for me is that Sony puts a lot of effort into making sure their notebooks look good (and they do, for the most part), but considerably less effort into making sure their notebook function well. For the price you're paying, Sony has some of the worst built (although best looking) notebooks with on average the weakest video cards on the market.

As for what to get instead, I'd recommend the Asus U, V, or W series, or the Lenovo Thinkpad T series for very good build quality. The Asus models I mentioned, along with the Apple Macbook & Macbook Pro, also meet or exceed the design standard of Sony's notebooks in my opinion.

Sony is also extremely notorious for using proprietary and weired hardware...that is if your driver cd gets lost...you are pretty much screwed because nothing will work out of the box.

One thing i can say thats good about sony is the screens, on most systems they are real nice.

Sony screen resolution/picture quality is great!

And that is the last nice thing I have to say about them.
I payed 2grand for a VGN-s260 laptop and have regretted it ever since.
Within 6 months the mother board had to be replaced.
When it came back from Sony (it was gone for over six weeks in the middle of the semester) some idiot had put a password on the BIOS.
Sony says "we wouldn't do dat! Too bad. So sad"
Thanks.

And now I've had to replace the HD and have found that the recovery disks I burned (you have to burn them yourself- they're not included in the $2000) won't install on the new HD.
Apparently I'm supposed to bring/ship the laptop to a Sony service center where they will reinstall XP for a not too small fee.
Thanks again.

And so now I'm running Ubuntu and I hate it.
I can take some solace knowing that someday I will take tremendous joy in smashing this little piece of plastic into tiny little bits. I look forward to that day nearly every time I open the lid on this thingy.


I cannot recommend Sony at all. The product is mediocre on it's best days, they are very territorial about their Sony proprietary stuf and the customer service is abysmal.

There's my $.02

not necessarily. Asus, like Quanta, Compal, etc., will design and build notebooks to fit the features and price point desired by the brand with whom they contract. For instance, a Dell XPS M1330 (built by Asus as an ODM) isn't necessarily going to be better than a different Dell built by Quanta or Compal because each ODM is limited by the parameters of the brand.

I have nothing good to say about Sony notebooks. There screens are nice but nothing different then what you would get on an Apple, or higher end HP. Tech support for Sony is like going to the dentist and getting your wisdom teeth pulled with no painkillers. For what your paying get a different computer. Look at the Dell business line, ASUS, Apple. I don't like the screens on IBM notebooks but I have not seen one since Lenevo took over.

My sister uses a Sony. The screen is awesome, but I hate the keyboard. The layout blows. Software wise, it comes with a lot of stuff, mostly Sony stuff.

I must say it is quite a beautiful laptop, but meh, I wouldn't want to use it as my laptop.

Hey,
My roommate has a Vaio FZ. I must say, the screen is really nice and brilliant, except the 1280x800 resolution sure makes everything quite huge looking, especially since my 12" m1210 is running at the same resolution. The case is nice, all magnesium. The fan is quite small and the computer can sometimes get kind of warm on the lap despite being so large. The keyboard is quite firm, but I quite like it. I can't really comment on price because he didn't have to pay for it, but I generally feel sony makes you pay a bit of a premium. Oh, and their support is terrible. But that's just my two cents.