[Closed] Sony Vaio Laptops

Please god no... i'm wrinting this post on one now.
God awfull pile of shit. The spec looks good but it runs slower than my 7 year old IBM thinkpad.

No virus issues, just loads of integrated Sony software thats a nightmare to remove.
in one year i'm on my 3rd mouse tracker and front panel and the battery wont charge past 75 %

I'd rather dip my balls in Nitromors than have another Sony laptop.

Are they really that bad? Cant seem to find anything bad about them on the web...

Unless I'm looking in the wrong place

They are horrendously bad. Utter garbage. DO NOT BUY.

Know of 2 people who have had them both went wrong with monotonous regularity.

Hmmmm might give them a miss, style over substance?

what else would you recommend with similar spec? has to be from PC world though as i have a gift voucher to use

I've a Sony Vaio and have had no problems with it

mate £just got one today from tescos £329 bargin and seems to be very good for what i need it for

I'm using wife of Riley's cast-off Vaio,no problems for me.

Ive had a Vaio for the last 18 months and have had no issues with it whatsoever. Half the guys in work also have vaio's and they all run fine.

I've got 2 VAIO laptops, one 5 years old, the other just over a year old. No problems with the older one. The screen on the newer one developed a fault after 6 months & this was very quickly replaced by Sony. Both machines are in daily use & get loads of abuse from the kids. So I can't fault either of them. Don't ask which model of VAIO's they are, I don't know 😯

battery wont charge past 75 %

Possibly due to the the "battery saver" option in the Sony SW. This can be enabled if you don't need the machine to operate for extended periods away from a 240V supply. The charging max's out at 75% & goes no higher.

D.

My OH's mum has a VAIO. It looks good and works fine but I would never pay full RRP on it. Screen and keyboard quality is very good. Not the quickest, which was a surprise, as the spec was pretty good. Bought it as refurbished with 50% off so not bad for £340. Looking at the spec of the Sony and comparing it to other laptops available, you are paying around £100 extra for having VAIO written on it. Also her is the same series as the one you are considering so the case would be the same. Some things I dont't like are: touchpad is a bit too much to the left so it's a pain to use it with your right hand. Next is the touchpad surface. it's not smooth, has some shit dots on it, and it's crap to use. Then there are the speakers, I know the are laptop speakers but they are pretty quiet for that size of a laptop, as it's supposed to be a entertainment laptop. And putting a 0.3mp camera on a £700 laptop? It does it's job but I would like something better at that price range as my Acer has a better video quality when talking on Skype.

Check HotUKDeals, loads of good deals with Core i3 processors for around £300. The Vaio has some crap integrated graphics so for that price is not that great.
If you're not that fixed on brand then check out Acer Timeline X range, really, really good laptops, I have the older one, my brother has a newer i3 one. Build quality is better then my works Thinkpad and on par with my friends £1300 Vaio.

http://www.europc.co.uk/laptops-1.html?cat=1246

EuroPC has some deals on VAIO, and that is where I bought the one for my OH's mum from. Whatever you do don't buy the cheapest one as the VGN series do feel very cheap. VPC are better but again stick to Intel as the triple core Phenom she has in her computer is slow, Intel i3 would wipe the floor with it while using much less energy.

But really check the Acer Timeline X series. Very good laptops and last 6-8 hours on one charge (and that is normal usage, not manufacturer stats).

My experience of the VAIO is that they're good but overpriced - you pay a premium for the brand.

Also, it may have changed now, but getting drivers for an old VAIO following a rebuild was a right bloody trauma.

I'm also looking for a half decent laptop at the mo, need a reasonable spec to play games on it too. Been looking at the dell outlet, seen XPS models with i5/7 and nvidia 550/555 graphics chips for around £5-600. Anything else I should be looking into, they seem like really good value

If it has to be spent in PC world, there's a couple of i5 processor machines around that price at the mo, one Toshiba and a Dell I think, both a lot better.

People buy that Sony cos it says Sony on it. The reality is it is a cheap nasty pastiche of their more expensive laptops... And being a Sony comes choc full of bloatware...

Anyway, buy a Mac, everyone will in the end! 😉

Not sure on the newer models, but mine is used a lot and has been since 2005... the only 'problems' have been the OH spilling tea over is (new keyboard) and the battery no longer holding charge. She has had 3 in the time I've had this, and her third no longer works.

Ive had my f-series vaio for just over a year now, it has been completely reliable. I picked mine up as an end of line discounted model and it is very highly specked for the money I paid. Yes there is a lot of bloat ware pre installed, but it didn't take me too long to remove anything I didn't want. I would have rather had a mac, but I couldn't justify paying twice what I paid for the Sony to get almost the same specification.

Hey nasher, I'm not a computer expert but i bought a sony vaio (and am typing on it just now). I use mine for video editing, watching HD vids, running a local webserver so I can work on my website, photo editing, and all the stuff I need to do like that. I've had it a year and a half and it's been fantastic. Mine is this: Sony VAIO EC White - Core i5-430M.

I'm not sure about them being overpriced. I got this one 'cos it was really heavily reduced and I couldn't find anything with the same spec on the web.

I have been looking at the Sony ,same price in Sony shop but with 2 year warranty !

Ive had a sony for 4 years and no problems. Its was slightly more expensive than similar offering from Dell, Acer etc but I think the extra money is worth it due to how nice the sony is to use.

My sister bought the same model a few months later and hers broke a year later. I think it was due to overheating and the graphics card was fried but probably due to using it in bed and the duvet covering the vents.

I'd buy another one but have a look at lenovo website - dad has one and its very nice.

I like Sonys but replacement batteries are shocking expensive when it comes time to replace. I used a 'compatible' battery instead but a firmware update from Sony stopped that working 🙁

I got a vaio from PC world this time last year, primarilly as I busted my old Dell and I needed a new one pronto as I was off to Brasil for work the next day and had to have my own laptop.
I hate it with a passion, it is supposed to be fairly high spec but is a slow as a geriatric slug, mainly from all the utterly useless sony crap installed on it, most of which once uninstalled seems to stop the bloomin thing from working. It takes an age to start up, internet explorer regularly crashed (this might not be due to the fact the laptop is a sony), it regulary wont recognise the security dongle I need to run some of the software I use for work, there is more but I may lose the will to live if I start thinking about how much it anoys me.

Just bought the same as the OP was looking at but from the sony shop with the 2 years warranty. I'm pretty sure it will be fine for her and will be nice to use.

Agree about the sony software - I took most of mine off.

lucky i stumbled across this !!!! havent been on here in a while and was looking for some reviews before i buy a Sony Vaio VPC-EL2S1E/W.

think im not going to now, i want a laptop i can do most things on, bit of gaming, music producing/storage, photo editing and connecting it the tv to watch films/tv

i have £4/500 what do you think i should get, im not a brand whore but would like it to look nice

Been offered this [url= http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-series-3-np300v5a-a04dx-15-6-laptop-blue-11296515-pdt.html ]Samsung[/url] for £440.

Any good?

[url= http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g6-1241sa-15-6-laptop-red-11361456-pdt.html ]Hp laptop[/url]

Bought one of these two days ago, looks very good for the money, also available in pcworld.
Was recommended by a few on here after I posted asking if it was any good.
[url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/is-this-any-good-laptop-content ]Original post[/url]

Seen that one, but I need a numeric keypad as i do a lot of data inputing.

There's a nicely specced Fujitsu i3 on Ebuyer for £350

Anyone had issues rebuilding a Vaio with 'Vanilla' Windows 7? I'm contemplating that as a clean way of removing all the Sony software but am slightly concerned about the drivers and such like. Model in question is a 'VGN-NW20EF'.

Not convinced now that it was such a good buy but I'll probably do what I can to speed it up with extra memory and poss an SSD hard drive from creative.