Ciao Vaio

[Mermaidman]

Another maker of PC gives up - Sony.
[see Crack's link below]

I remember back in the 80s when Sony and other Japanese brands were the epitome of mainstream home electronics. American brands were laughable (Emerson, Zenith, Curtis-Mathes?) and Korean brands were primordial.

I haven't considered any Sony electronics in the past few years, other than Playstation.

 

[CrackRabbit]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2095...c-business-turns-tv-unit-into-subsidiary.html

Here's a link that doesn't try to get you to go through a paywall to read it.

I've had a Vaio in the past, other than the funky purple color scheme it was an awesome little sub-notebook.

 

[surfsatwerk]

The times they are a changing.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

There's too much of a price premium for Vaios with so little advertising. I love their laptops. They look great but when they start costing even more than a MacBook there are problems.

 

[Blackjack200]

Another maker of PC gives up - Sony.
[see Crack's link below]

I remember back in the 80s when Sony and other Japanese brands were the epitome of mainstream home electronics. American brands were laughable (Emerson, Zenith, Curtis-Mathes?) and Korean brands were primordial.

I haven't considered any Sony electronics in the past few years, other than Playstation.

Even in the 90s Sony was pretty dominant, they fell fast.

 

[ElFenix]

more astounding is sony spinning off the TV unit. no one ever really associated sony with computers (even if they made nice kit from time to time), but sony practically is tv.

 

[Colt45]

I've always hated sony's proprietary bs.

last sony thing i had was a walkman, 20 years ago.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

they looked slick but seemed to break more often than other brands (at least back in the early mid-2000s)

 

[smackababy]

Who didn't see this coming? Sony used to be the top end model of electronic. It cost more, but was quality. Now, Sony is just overpriced. They can't compete with Samsung and the likes.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Mine from 2010 is still going strong. I always felt I got a great value on it!

Core i3
Dedicated AMD graphics
< 3 lbs.
< 1 in. thick
4-5 hr. battery life (when battery was new)
Pretty rugged Al unibody construction
Neon pear green color
$750 USD

Have since upgraded it with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.

Cons of the laptop include its keyboard and low-res 13x7 13" TN monitor.

It's taken a few spills but keeps on ticking. Have nothing bad to say about it really and would buy another Vaio but they have since never offered what I want in terms of an upgrade:

Core i5 or i7 Haswell
Min. 8GB RAM
256GB SSD
Intel HD5K Iris graphics (but dedicated AMD/nVidia preferred)
11" or 13" screen
Min. 19x12 IPS screen
Back-lit Keyboard
802.11 AC WiFi
< 3 lbs.
< 1 in. thick
5-7 Hr. battery
No DVD/BR Drive
Touch screen optional
Price: $1000-1500

 

[Rakehellion]

They should sell to Apple.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have hated Vaios. Proprietary in all the wrong places even a decade ago.

 

[dbk]

Vaio had the aesthetics but was/is overpriced as hell

 

[smackababy]

They should sell to Apple.

Steve Jobs tried to get them to run OS X on the Vaio in the early days and the engineers had spent too much time optimizing for Windows to even consider it.

 

[Rakehellion]

Steve Jobs tried to get them to run OS X on the Vaio in the early days and the engineers had spent too much time optimizing for Windows to even consider it.

Well, I guess they regret that now!

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I have hated Vaios. Proprietary in all the wrong places even a decade ago.

Ah remember the Sony only memory cards?

 

[BoomerD]

I bought a Sony Vaio PC in the 90's. Pretty good machine with lots of upgrade capability.
That thing rocked. Pentium 200 With MMX! OMG! This thing has 32 MB of RAM! HOLY COW! It's FAST!

Of course, one of the first things I did was to make the trek to Fry's (about 80 miles) and buy another 32MB of RAM for almost $100...(my how prices change over time)
Wasn't too long before I dropped in a Voodoo II video card...at $200 to make game play MUCH better.

IIRC, I paid about $2500 for the PC and 15" multimedia monitor (with built-in speakers) in 1997 or early 98.

I still have a Sony Vaio laptop...bought in 2005, but it's getting too damned slow to use for anything except an emergency. Time to upgrade that one as well...or just buy a tablet.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Vaios are overpriced.

 

[BoomerD]

Vaios are overpriced.

How the fuck would you know? You get all your stuff by begging for it.

 

[Triumph]

I miss the glory days of Sony. They weren't high end, but they were well regarded consumer products. The Walkman and Discman of course were huge. Does Sony even sell an mp3 player at all?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah Sony still sells MP3 players. They actually have like a 4" Android based media player. I think its pricey for what it offers. They've had a few others. They actually made some really good players once they stopped all their stupidity. Not sure how many they still offer here, but they actually make a portable headphone amp/DAC now even.

more astounding is sony spinning off the TV unit. no one ever really associated sony with computers (even if they made nice kit from time to time), but sony practically is tv.

That's fairly meaningless as they still own it, although it could potentially be big. If Apple was interested in any part of Sony, it would be that part I would think, with the alleged rumors about an Apple TV. It would give them access to lots of panel production. I don't recall if Sony had cut back on OLED development or not, so that might have some bearing on how appealing or not it is.

 

[MichaelD]

I have a 32" Sony CRT (not flat screen, but the one that's flat top to bottom, but still curved left to right) that I bought new in 1995 or so. It has an S-VIDEO input (OMG!) which was the schiznit for "high quality video" back then. It still works, though the picture has darkened a bit. My son uses it every day to watch his cartoons and play his Wii.

I always thought the Vaio lappys were overpriced for what you got (sum of the parts). But Sony always equaled quality in my book.

 

[UglyCasanova]

I've read that the most profitable part of their company is actually selling insurance. Sad, they used to be the king of electronics.

 

[pbnyc]

My experience with Vaio's were mixed. I hated that when the laptop HD died, finding drivers on their website was non-existing.

All the Executives that wanted Vaio's now have MacBook Pros...

 

[Leyawiin]

more astounding is sony spinning off the TV unit. no one ever really associated sony with computers (even if they made nice kit from time to time), but sony practically is tv.

I had no idea they did that! Last Sony product I had was a 27" Trinitron from 2002. Great TV. Damn thing was hernia bait though - weighed 110 lbs.