Sony Vaio Laptops?

[briholton]

Originally Posted by J Flex 188

Yikes.. two for and like 3 against.. heheh... yeah, the dvd burner in the vaio isnt the most attractive feature, especially considering i could at least get an external for a couple hundred and have no worries about the speed. the reliabilty issue troubles me

I was also considering a powerbook, but the base model closest to what would be ideal is another 150 dollars.. = T.. my family cant get over buying a mac.. i use em in school in media arts and very much like the idea of getting a powerbook, but just wondering, find it easy to cross over documents/apps from a mac based system into a pc world? heheh

thanks for the advice again!

make it 3 to 3. I wore out my first sony laptop after 3 years of HARD use - it is now being used by my daughter, and i am on my 2nd. I treat it like crap, have only turned it off to restart, and am on it when i am not sleeping, teaching, driving, or building things. I vote for SONY, but in the end, you should get what you want/need and not let people's opinions dictate your choice. If you use a mac, love it, does everything you want and more, then get it. Just be ready to spend more for software and have problems cross platform - not as many problems as in the past.... but there are still problems. (my lab is full of macs.....not my choice).

[Joe Ross]

That Sony is big, heavy, and has poor battery life.

The Acer is lighter, which is good, but isn't much better in the battery life department.

A lot of times, people new to buying laptops try to buy them the same as buying desktops. They look at processor speed, ram, and display, and often ignore the fact that the faster processors and bigger displays make the laptops less portable (where portability is a function of size, weight, and battery life). Maybe that is what you want, I don't know.

If you want laptops with good specs, and are also more portable, look at the Dell Inspiron 600m or the IBM Thinkpad R series. I think you should be able to get one in your price range if you sacrifice a few of the other specs.

Also, remember that laptops break much more often then desktops, and you can't fix them yourself. So, make sure you can afford a warranty for as long as you want to be able to use the laptop, or make sure you can afford a new laptop the month after the warranty runs out.

[evulish]

With the Powerbook, it can interact with Windows quite well. In fact, Microsoft makes Office X for the Mac. I'm also quite sure Adobe makes all their products for Mac, too. Most files on a Mac are common. Probably the only thing is the filesystem and compressed filetypes. That doesn't really matter since you can create a SAMBA share on the network or use FTP or something. Also, something like winrar can probably open .sit and .dmg filetypes.

Also, Apple offers a great educational discount. It knocked a few hundred off my Powerbook. (Also, if you do go the powerbook way and are looking at the 15" without the DVD burner.. you'll get a nicer laptop by selecting the 15" w/ DVD burner then in the customization part, removing it. That way, you get the 1.25ghz processor, backlit keyboard [gorgeous], and built-n Airport Extreme (802.11g))

You might try picking up a copy of PC World. I'm pretty sure they have a a section in the back of their top laptops.

[Andy A.]

Im just going to shortly plug Hewlitt packard/Compaq notebooks.

The one I'm on now is an AMD based system with comparable specs to what is being kicked around, and cost me just a bit over $1000 before rebates. The only problem I have had was with the power adapter plug coming loose from the MB, which I was able to fix my self and I hear has since been resolved on new models. It even has a serial port, a rare thing on notebooks, which I have found beyond useful in dealing with microcontrollers. USB converters are a poor substitue for classic 1980's tech.

My battery life is about and 1 hour to 1.5 hours on this battery, which is getting a little tired. But then, the display, processor and optical drive are all very beefy and I see it as a fair trade. Same for wieght and shear size. She's big, but powerful. If you want to work on graphics and video, you can't get a large or bright enough display. Keep that in mind.

I could go on about my system, but I would suggest that you at least take a look at HP.

-Andy A.

[Dick Linn]

Our company has several Sony laptops, and I inherited one. It is HEAVY, though it has a nice display. I did hear that our in-house support people said "No more SONY's!". Apparently repairs or parts are a hassle, so I'd check into this aspect of ownership. Wish I could provide more solid info.

[fox46]

All I can say is I love my Hewlett Packard pavillion ze5185 . I bought it a year ago to replace my desktop, and it has far surpassed all my expectations and needs. 2.4Ghz, 512MB ram, 60Gig hard drive, CD burner, DVD, 64MB video card, 15" SXGA screen, and all the goodies. And best of all, the keyboard, power button, and touchpad are all backlit with blue LEDs! Our team has been using it to do all the animations, autodesk, and programming, and it has never crapped out....yet.

[Aaron Knight]

Originally Posted by evulish

With the Powerbook, it can interact with Windows quite well. In fact, Microsoft makes Office X for the Mac. I'm also quite sure Adobe makes all their products for Mac, too. Most files on a Mac are common. Probably the only thing is the filesystem and compressed filetypes. That doesn't really matter since you can create a SAMBA share on the network or use FTP or something. Also, something like winrar can probably open .sit and .dmg filetypes.

Adobe has stopped making Premiere, but only in relation to Apple bringing competition to their badly maintained version. Microsoft has announced a new release (2004) of Office for Mac as well. As far as cross-platform compatibility, I personally own two Macs and a PC, and have few issues at all going back and forth between them. Aladdin Systems makes a Windows version as well, although all new Macs (using Panther, OS X 10.3) the default archive method is the cross-platform favorite zip files. Macs can read all PC media as well.

Also, Apple offers a great educational discount. It knocked a few hundred off my Powerbook. (Also, if you do go the powerbook way and are looking at the 15" without the DVD burner.. you'll get a nicer laptop by selecting the 15" w/ DVD burner then in the customization part, removing it. That way, you get the 1.25ghz processor, backlit keyboard [gorgeous], and built-n Airport Extreme (802.11g))

The backlit keyboard is awesome, as are the laptops themselves. Good luck with your decision......

[MichalSkiba]

I have a PCG-FRV23.

I bought it for the multimedia capabilities (firewire and video out). I'm not terribly impressed by it. It heats up. The fans seem to alway be running. Whats with the 5 gig mystery partition (the one with no letter, that was sacrificed for SuSE Linux)?

I have a celeron which is both good and bad. Good because the battery lasts forever (3 hr+) when typing or browsing, but premiere chuggs at times, even though theres 512 MB of DDR in it. BTW, the there are two memory banks, both filled with 256 each, so upgrading doesn't seem economical (buying a 512 stick and effectivly only getting 256 MB more for the 512 price).

The hard drive is really slow (seems to be running @ 4.6 MB/s max), however the burner is superb; flawless burns every time.

I've had it since October of 2003 and I've had no need for taking it in, even though it averages about 6 hrs of use every day.

My recommendation for getting more speed out of your Vaio: run Linux!