Never, ever get a Sony Vaio. What computer should I get?

[Neroon]

I've had good luck with Dell laptops since 1997. But I'm probably just a statistical anomaly.

Most likely. From what I've seen these things come in cycles. Dells were among the best for awhile, then they slipped and were passed by other manufacturers. Then Dell seemed to make a comeback of sorts. Now they may well be back on top, but how long will it last?

 

[Plecostomus]

IBM/Lenovo. This laptop I am typing from bikes everywhere with me and has had some epic falls and still works.

Should mention it's an old X41, about 5-6 years old. Replaced a noisy HD, new battery, MOAR RAMS and it's still "good to go" for most of what I do.

 

[bigdaddy]

Never ever buy a Sony product.

Sony Bravia TVs are good.

My grandpa spent $7000 on a Sony TV 4-5 years ago and it's broken. I have a 15 year old $500 TV from some no name company and it works great.

Sony is a piece of shit network that makes shity fucked up products, and every year they get worse and worse.

 

[Mr. B]

I couldn't agree with the OP. I've owned five VAIOs over the years and loved them all.

 

[Neroon]

I'm sure we could find a Packard-Bell around somewhere.

 

[Santaman]

I've got a 2004 Compaq Presario laptop which also works fine, its build well and it never even had the slightest overheating problem, my current laptop is a Dell which I've got a year now, its solid all around and works well.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Never ever get a Acer...

 

[Danoz]

I couldn't agree with the OP. I've owned five VAIOs over the years and loved them all.

Laptops?

I must have a bad model. It was RECALLED first and foremost for overheating, which they supposedly "fixed," but I've had problems with the thing since I purchased it.

 

[Amaris]

I'm a fan of the Netbook/Desktop combo. Dell's new 9/10" models are a solid choice for the former.

Dell always seems to give you more bang for your buck. I had great life out of a desktop computer from Dell for 4 years with absolutely zero problems (of course, it died right after the 4 year warranty was up ). Is it conspiratorial to believe that all of these companies create parts designed to break after the warranty?

It is not at all conspiratorial. Believe me. Speaking of limitations, keep that in mind if you own a Dell or Lexmark printer and have to purchase ink.

That being said, you can't go wrong with a Macbook Pro, and you can't do bad with HP or an IBM/Lenovo model. I'm convinced IBM laptops will outlive us all.


J.

 

[RoJoHen]

My last computer was a VAIO laptop. It lasted me 5 years.

Hell, the thing still works just fine. It's gotten slow over the years, but if I cleaned it out and got rid of all the spyware and other random things that are no doubt hiding in it, I'm sure it would run great!

The only reason I bought a new computer was because I wanted to switch to a Mac.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I had a refurbished HP Pavilion. Had it for 2 years. Now i have a new Dell Inspiron. Good machine, that.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

Perfect timing for this topic. I'm in the market, as well. I have had laptops through work since about 1997. Had a few Dells, and always had good luck with them, so am leaning in that direction. Unfortunately, I currently have a 2 1/2 year old IBM T42 that is the biggest piece of SH*T I've ever owned. In less than 3 years it's gone through 3 motherboards, 3 hard drives and 3 keyboards. I've heard people rave about them, along the lines of what J. Allen had to say, so I can only assume I must've gotten a lemon. But, I've been sucking on that lemon long enough to turn me off of all IBMs at this point.

I really like the 13" Dell Studio XPS, except for the constant reports of overheating and blue screen of death right out of the box. However, I understand all you have to do is install all current BIOS and other updates, and it works like a champ (you'd think they'd just ship the thing with the most current software, but what do I know?)

In any event, it's supposed to be very fast and stable (after the updates), I like the fact that it has a backlighted keyboard, is light, has firewire, supposed to be incredibly fast (after software updates), etc. It gets absolute raves from people who've done the updates.

Any chance anyone here has any experience with this machine?

 

[Lindley]

the battery is pathetic

Regarding batteries, you may not know about this aspect of Li-Ion batteries:

At a 100% charge level, a typical Li-ion laptop battery that is full most of the time at 25 °C or 77 °F will irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year. However, a battery in a poorly ventilated laptop may be subject to a prolonged exposure to much higher temperatures, which will significantly shorten its life. Different storage temperatures produce different loss results: 6% loss at 0 °C (32 °F), 20% at 25 °C (77 °F), and 35% at 40 °C (104 °F). When stored at 40%–60% charge level, the capacity loss is reduced to 2%, 4%, 15% at 0, 25 and 40 degrees Celsius respectively.

So depending on how you stored your laptop, that alone may explain the short battery life.
Personally, I store my laptop with a battery charged to 50% because of that, topping it up when I know I'm going on a trip where I'll need more.

That's interesting. You know what would be really useful, then? A switch to toggle a laptop into "use external power without charging" mode. Besides popping the battery, I mean.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Most of the time I'm using my ASUS EeePC, and have an older laptop (Gateway tablet!) that sits stationary, hooked up to auxiliary drives.

Over the years I've owned Vaios (not bad, just pricy for what they are), Acers (good little machines, not sure why people hate them so), IBMs (pretty much what you expect from IBM: a no-frills workhorse), Dells (ditto like IBM, but less reliable), Gateways (decent hardware but poor physical construction, in my experience), and HPs (ditto).

I may go for a slightly bigger netbook next time but the one I have is just about perfect for what I'm usually doing with it.

 

[Iasius]

That's interesting. You know what would be really useful, then? A switch to toggle a laptop into "use external power without charging" mode. Besides popping the battery, I mean.

My laptop (Compal JHL90 variant) came with a software where I can set it to charge to 50%, 75% or 100%. That setting even works when the laptop isn't on.

Which results in this:

That program is Windows only it appears. I haven't yet tested whether booting Linux (my alt. OS) changes that setting by itself or whether there are compatible programs for Linux/MacOS/etc.

 

[Sephiroth]

NEVER get a Dell inspiron 9300, the power supply sheaths tear open and the wires fray ever 3-4 months, and they run so hot (even with a cooling dock underneath) that the power supply port will eventualy de-solder

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Well i dunno what Inspiron i have, but i do not have any problems with it.

 

[Warp Coil]

I just bought a new 17" MacBook Pro. Yes, it's a ridiculous amount of money. Yes, I probably could have settled for something cheaper. But I love it. It replaces my 4-year-old PowerBook which only recently started acting up a bit (it ran solid for over 4 years and despite a couple of issues works fine, it's just a bit slow handling the newest versions of software and I couldn't really put anything too memory-intensive on it).

 

[nevermore]

I'm a fan of the Netbook/Desktop combo. Dell's new 9/10" models are a solid choice for the former.

Dell always seems to give you more bang for your buck. I had great life out of a desktop computer from Dell for 4 years with absolutely zero problems (of course, it died right after the 4 year warranty was up ).

I've never used a Dell desktop, but I use Dell monitors and had an XPS M1210 notebook a while back, no complaints there.

I have the XPS M1210 now. I will say that in the first few months, I had to have the motherboard and the screen replaced, but you get the gold-plated warranty with the XPS line and both issues were fixed withing 2 or 3 days. Of course, it was bought for me by work, so the IT guys dealt with the repairs, so I have no direct experience regarding the customer service.

I've had no problems since.

 

[Holdfast]

*shrug*

I had no end of problems with a Vaio I had some years ago. Swore I'd never own another. I switched to Dell Inspirons. First one was great. Second one gave me problems. Ended up buying another Vaio on impulse a couple of years ago (bored in airport + duty-free shopping = fiscal stimulus), and touch wood, no problems since.

All laptops, by the way.

I don't think these things are particularly predictable. Sometimes you just get a lemon. QC on laptops generally seems poor.