Sony Vaio's

[Vcize]

Why do I never hear mention of Sony Vaio's? The local Best Buy seems heavily stocked on them.

Are they unreliable or something?

I only ask because this offer seems almost too good to be true...

 

[GizmoFreak]

I personally kind of like them, but some common reasons you might hear

1) issues with proprietary software/drivers/os install
2) underpowered graphics card
3) overpriced at times


EDIT: also, regarding that link, that is a decent deal but far from too good to be true. You could get a Centrino Dell for around that price.

 

[p0ntif]

Sony's can be very expensive, but I really like their subnotebook line. Just purchased a Sony PCG-U3 from dynamism.com. Pics will come when I get it! Hopefully soon!

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: Vcize
Why do I never hear mention of Sony Vaio's? The local Best Buy seems heavily stocked on them.

Are they unreliable or something?

I only ask because this offer seems almost too good to be true...

I have that notebook. Bought it at Best Buy in March right when they came out. (and had the $150 MIR)

It's never crashed on me. I use it in its stock configuration though. It won't let you install nvidia's drivers, so you're stuck using the ones supplied by Sony, but I don't game on it anyway. I wouldn't call the Geforce4MX Go420 completely underpowered, it only has a 16MB frame buffer, so you aren't going to play return to castle wolfenstein on it (like you'd want to anyway).

Check out the cnet user reviews for it. I think its 100% recommended. Sony doesn't really advertise the FR130 (dunno why, maybe because it uses an Athlon XP-m chip, or only has a 14.1" screen?) but it's not "too good to be true." Its the real muthafockin' deal yo.

Because I only really use mine for typing papers, and surfing the web, I get about 3 hours battery life.

I mainly bought it because it used a mobile AthlonXP-m chip, had a built in combo dvd/cd-rw, had a floppy drive (yes i still use them), and the 14.1" screen at 1024x768 w/ Cleartype on, is good enough for me. It may/may not be right for you. But sure looks a helluva lot better than an Inspiron 1100...

 

[JackHawksmoor]

Anyone know what chipset Sony uses in their Intel notebooks?

 

[Armoth]

I have an SuperSlim R505TS. It's the best laptop I've ever had. I bought it when I was in school because of its size and speed. Yeah, they are some proprietary things which are a little annoying. The hotkeys work fine in winxp (once they released the installs), not in Linux obviously.

To each their own I guess.

 

[eastvillager]

Do they have good build quality nowadays? First couple years of vaio notebooks were pretty flimsy.

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: eastvillager
Do they have good build quality nowadays? First couple years of vaio notebooks were pretty flimsy.

they're about as good as any other notebook, most of the casing is plastic. my notebook feels sturdy enough in terms of build quality. the 505 series have traditionally used a titanium casing though.

 

[GizmoFreak]

Originally posted by: pukemon

Originally posted by: eastvillager
Do they have good build quality nowadays? First couple years of vaio notebooks were pretty flimsy.

they're about as good as any other notebook, most of the casing is plastic. my notebook feels sturdy enough in terms of build quality. the 505 series have traditionally used a titanium casing though.

I was under the impression that Sony was using magnesium in a lot of their notebooks.

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: GizmoFreak

Originally posted by: pukemon

Originally posted by: eastvillager
Do they have good build quality nowadays? First couple years of vaio notebooks were pretty flimsy.

they're about as good as any other notebook, most of the casing is plastic. my notebook feels sturdy enough in terms of build quality. the 505 series have traditionally used a titanium casing though.

I was under the impression that Sony was using magnesium in a lot of their notebooks.

you know what, you're right. the metallic purple was magnesium, kinda like whats used in mag-lites. IBM used titanium in the T-series (and painted it black). so, i stand corrected.