are sony vaio's worth the extra money

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:53 am

Angstrom wrote:AFAIK
I am typing this on an Asus with a centrino (dothan) 2.0ghz in, its almost exactly twice as fast as my desktop .. it cost me £1000. I had a Vaio for a while .. which was very nice but double the price.

Styling IS important, as is build quality, you just have to decide how important. I decided that as AsusTek build for Apple and Sony who tout their(!) build quality as the best .. then I simply went straight to the source!!

How the keyboard and the rest compares to Vaio, I need notebook for touring not just studio, most of notebooks are not that solid as IBM or Sony but since you had Vaio you are right person to judge. Dothan is exactly what I want so I am very seriously interested in the model you have.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:01 am

epiphanius wrote:rikhyray said:

It is easy to do
Are saying it's easy to install a clean copy of Windows xp, which you paid for when you bought the machine? If that's what you are saying, please let me know how you got past product activation.

If you are saying you know how to uninstall programs, that's great - did you also sift throught the registry for entries about every single one of those programs, and remove references to all of them? Did you also remove all the .dlls associated with those programs? Clean up the directories? Point 'open with' so that the files are opened with the programs you want to use? It may be easy, but it takes hours and hours...

e.

[/quote]

I didnt do all that on my friends notebook, they are just regular user and actually could use notebook for half that price ( internet and office use)
My own is different story.
Yes it was easy but do not eveb remember is I had to activate. I keep separate partition for internet and tests like Live 5 or Reason3.02, VSTs etc, etc so keeping my music partition clean, nothing goes there unless well tested and prooved to be seriously usefull. I am not even sure if all the tweaking, cleaning is a must ( still did it).

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:56 pm

I am very seriously interested in the model you have.

the keyboard is excellent, the screen isn't one of those 'ultrablack' screens but does me fine. The chasis is pretty stiff compared to comparitive laptops .. also it is a reasonable weight, something my girlfriends 17" Apple is not!

Before I bought mine online I found a real store which had them in stock and went to flex the chasis and compare with others laptops.

realistically I would put the chasis flex chart something like this

Apple
Sony
Asus
Toshiba
Dell

chasis flex is important because stress on the components can cause failures. I prefered the Asus over all the other laptops apart from the Apple 17 and one of the Sony models which was over double the price of the Asus.

Asus are hard to find on the high street
What I did was look in a computer magazine, with those adverts that run for 20 pages - some of those stores will have a real world presence in large department stores. SO I found an outlet relatively near me and started twisting their computers!!

Please dont rely on my opinion - go and find some and torture them in the shop

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:47 am

if you have the money i think the IBM series are probably the best you can buy... they have a really nice keyboard, very tough casing, feel VERY sturdy...... but as i said: quiet expensive compared to f.e. acer or toshiba....

i decided to go with an acer, which is very nice, but qualitywise, doesn't feel like an IBM.....

Olaf

moostapha · Post by **moostapha** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 2:25 am

Every vaio i've seen has sucked. Bad build quality, bad components, and a shiny name plate. that's it.

I've used thinkpads in the past and no one can say that they're cheap computers, but since they're being manufactured by a chinese company (lenovo) now, they suck too.

In my honest opinion as a computer geek, no laptop on the market today is worth buying except the Apples. You will not find a better budget notebook than the 12-inch iBook and you will not find a better "good" notebook than the powerbook of your choice. And American prices compared to Dell, Sony, IBM, VoodooPC, Alienware, Toshiba, and a few cheap brands...the Apples are also some of (if not absolutely) the cheapest.

Unless Intel fails them with their new processors, I'm never buying a PC again. I've been burnt enough times.

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 7:47 am

moostapha wrote:Every vaio i've seen has sucked. Bad build quality, bad components, and a shiny name plate. that's it.

I've used thinkpads in the past and no one can say that they're cheap computers, but since they're being manufactured by a chinese company (lenovo) now, they suck too.

In my honest opinion as a computer geek, no laptop on the market today is worth buying except the Apples. You will not find a better budget notebook than the 12-inch iBook and you will not find a better "good" notebook than the powerbook of your choice. And American prices compared to Dell, Sony, IBM, VoodooPC, Alienware, Toshiba, and a few cheap brands...the Apples are also some of (if not absolutely) the cheapest.

Unless Intel fails them with their new processors, I'm never buying a PC again. I've been burnt enough times.

you obviously have quiet an USA-centric worldvision ....

first: what's wrong with products build in China? All the thinkpad T-series i've encountered felt very good....

second: over here in Europe Apple laptops are much more expensive than f.e. Acer or toshiba ....

Olaf

deckme(N)tal · Post by **deckme(N)tal** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 8:12 am

i got this one....no bad at all...
1190 EUR....really good price in Europe
A similar Vaio costs like 1900 Eur

FUJITSU-SIEMENS
Amilo M1425
Intel Pentium M 725
(1.6 GHz, 2 MB L2, 400 MHz FSB)
RAM 1024 MB
DVD±R/RW Double Layer
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g - S-Video
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128 MB