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Yesterday I went out a bought a new notebook, I wanted to spend less than 1,200 and I accomplished my goal.

I purchases a Sony VAIO VGN-FS920

Here it is

How did I do fella's?

Sony's quality control is pretty bad, unfortunately, and their customer support isn't very good.

I, personally, would never, ever, buy a sony computer again.

I see this kind of thread all the time, and it always irritates me somewhat. If you're willing to go to the trouble to post here and tell us about your purchase, couldn't you have just as easily asked whether something's good before you went and bought it?

phongn wrote:Sony's quality control is pretty bad, unfortunately, and their customer support isn't very good.

If your benchmark for "isn't very good" is "utterly fucking dire" anyway.

Sony are the biggest bunch of tightwads when it comes to any warranty repair. You get no warranty at all on the battery (most manufacturers give you one year), and if during any service intervention they decide that the cause is customer induced damage, they will refuse to even send the laptop back without the customer paying carriage charges. (most manufacturers will simply send units back unrepaired for cid). Plus they charge per incident for all support calls, only reimbursing that charge if a call results in a warranty repair.

Even Apple aren't that bad, and they're the only ones in the UK with a carry-in warranty, rather than RTB via courier.

Sony kind of sucks when it comes to general all around quality. You would have been better off going with something like an HP, an Averatec or even a lower-model Thinkpad. For what you spent, frankly you got taken somewhat.

I love IBM X41 Light and pretty good operating time.

My company uses only those, we got a good trade in deal for all the other notebooks.

If you went out and bought it from a local store, and it has a return policy, i'd actually recommend returning it while it's still in working conditions. The VAIO line is by far the one i've seen more problems with (other than the old Compaqs, back in the day, before the merger), and Sony's custumer support might as well be "your computer your repair costs".

If you're shopping in retail stores like Best Buy or whatever and the IBM's are too expensive, Toshiba is the next best in my experience.

One client of mine who was a former manager at Dell has repeatedly said that back in the mid 1990s, Compaqs were by far and away the best engineered systems. I have a low-end Compaq desktop from 1997 (that I haven't touched since 2004) and never had any hardware malfunctions with it, and only one tech support call, (it was caused by a virus that screwed up Windows 95, not a problem with the system), a far better performance record than what I've had with any other computer I've owned before or since (my ThinkPad had a cracked LCD once and just last week blew its speaker, my Dell 8100 has had two drive failures, my Dell 9150 had an Windows software glitch that I suspect was caused by Dell-installed background apps, and my Toshiba Satellite tablet PC had a dust contamination problem resulting from a stupid design flaw).

As far as the VAIO goes, I know a lot of people who love them, but after Sony's recent problems, I wouldn't touch one. The VAIO I don't think is anywhere near as bad a computer as some of the HP/Compaq and Gateway stuff on the market, at least from a design perspective: their systems are reasonably clean, elegant, thin, and lightweight. I would consider buying a VAIO, but Toshiba is probably the safest bet as far as Windows laptops go these days.

Hey everyone, well I don't think its necessary to post a whole new thread for this so I'll just ask in this thread for your opinion on this notebook pc I may buy for university. It's a HP Pavilion dv5040us Notebook PC

linky

I won't really be playing games or doing anything that will require to much power on it, would it be a good choice? I decided to go with an hp laptop because I should be able to get a small discount as I know someone who works for them.

Thanks in advance

Was talking about the late 90's, starting with the Presario 1230 all the way till the merger, Compaq's became pretty infamous for their ability to almost inplode unto themselves, the problems ranged from DOA CD's, to stupidly malfunctioning screens, and the oh so popular touchpad that shocked you, i literally know about a hundread cases, and im not even a costumer support guy or work for compaq, i only know one from that period that still works, and it had to undergo maintenance at one point, as well.

RThurmont wrote:One client of mine who was a former manager at Dell has repeatedly said that back in the mid 1990s, Compaqs were by far and away the best engineered systems. I have a low-end Compaq desktop from 1997 (that I haven't touched since 2004) and never had any hardware malfunctions with it, and only one tech support call, (it was caused by a virus that screwed up Windows 95, not a problem with the system), a far better performance record than what I've had with any other computer I've owned before or since (my ThinkPad had a cracked LCD once and just last week blew its speaker, my Dell 8100 has had two drive failures, my Dell 9150 had an Windows software glitch that I suspect was caused by Dell-installed background apps, and my Toshiba Satellite tablet PC had a dust contamination problem resulting from a stupid design flaw).

Compaq had fine desktops in the 1990s - and their servers were (and are) legendary for their quality, but their home laptops were of mediocre quality (that said, I know of not a few Armada laptops still happily running). I remain fond of the ThinkPad line - an aunt and uncle have T23s running very nicely, and I have a T22. HP/Compaq's corporate laptops are based on Compaq's business laptop lineage.

As far as the VAIO goes, I know a lot of people who love them, but after Sony's recent problems, I wouldn't touch one. The VAIO I don't think is anywhere near as bad a computer as some of the HP/Compaq and Gateway stuff on the market, at least from a design perspective: their systems are reasonably clean, elegant, thin, and lightweight. I would consider buying a VAIO, but Toshiba is probably the safest bet as far as Windows laptops go these days.

From a design perspective, VAIOs are nice, but from an QC and support perspective, it's best to stay away from them.