Sony VAIO sucks! | Go Back
Oh my God! It’s my fifth time reinstalling Windows XP on a Sony VAIO that just got released (VGN-TX770P). When I received the laptop it had so much crap on it (such as AOL, various Sony utilities & trial versions of Norton, MS Office, Anti-spyware, etc) that I decided to wipe out the system and install clean Windows XP Pro. Guess what…wireless drivers including cingular adapter for this stupid laptop were not present on Sony’s support website. I called Sony and they told me that I had to run a restore procedure from their restore DVD, which by the way, doesn’t even come with the laptop. So, I ended up purchasing their restore DVD for twenty something bucks including shipping. I received the DVD in about a week, booted up from it and let it reimage the machine to the factory default. Took me about an hour to uninstall all the Sony’s crap and I thought everything was back to normal. As soon as I rebooted the machine, Cingular wireless stopped working! I went to Sony’s support site again to see if there were any driver updates and everything is now available for download! Aghhh…
Oh well, I thought, screw Sony with their support and started downloading the drivers from the website. Reinstalled Windows XP, went through all drivers just like it was instructed on their support page, step by step. Everything seemed to be OK, except when I rebooted the machine all of a sudden it started freezing. CTRL+ALT+DEL -> Task Manager showed “smartwifi.exe” eating up 99% CPU time. Reinstalled all of the drivers from scratch, reboot - same thing. OK, I thought, maybe I screwed up a step during driver installation and did something wrong. Reinstalled OS again, installed drivers and damn it! The same darn thing - the process was eating up 99% of CPU. Called Sony support. As usual, an idiot technician picks up. Makes me change the process priority (duh)…tries a couple of different things and puts me on hold. After about 30 minutes of making me listen to stupid music on hold, picks up and tells me that my configuration is not supported by Sony because it’s not Sony’s image. I got mad and simply hung up.
After all unsuccessful customizations I decided to go back to Sony’s image. I had to wait for three goddamn hours for the imaging to complete on it. And guess what - right after the imaging was done I got another error from Sony’s connection utility. I’m extremely mad and frustrated about this laptop right now and I’m ready to send it back. Sony sucks, their software sucks, their hardware sucks. It’s almost like in the old days when I hated Microsoft for their Windows 95, I hate Sony for their VAIO laptops.
Read Part 2 here
Just waited 40 minutes on hold to get a tech support person, after he started talking to me he started saying he can’t hear me, and hung up, are you fucking kidding?
SONY DOES SUCK MAJOR COOKOO DONG
STAY AWAY
I completly disagree - This i now my 6th Vaio and never had to call the Vaio line but Iam sure there support is very good. Just because you dont know how to troubleshoot s/w problems and you also seem to have issues with the O/S’s which are manufactured by Microsoft
OK… a few hours later, I’ve actually tossed the piece of shit in the trash. No bullshit. Free is free, no money out of my pocket. If I had actually dropped a buck or two on it? I’d be pissed! Don’t waste your money!!! Even Dell’s entry-level laptops are superior… sigh… Sony? YOU SUCK ASS AT LAPTOPS!!! Good thing you make good TVs…
I just received my new Sony Vaio VGN-NS140E/S and am going through the same irritation. It came pre-installed with SO much crap (on top of the lackluster Vista Home Premium), the only thing for a normal person to do is re-install the OS from M$ CD/DVD media (not Sony’s recovery crap which they don’t provide by default and even if you purchase just puts back the same bloated crap). Sony, you f*****g idiots need to facilitate a functional driver repository. WTF??? Dell and HP, among many other vendors, make this easy for even the non-IT savvy person. Why do you need to re-invent the wheel into a square? ‘Download Taxi’? C’mon already!!! What is it, a toddler video game? I’m glad this POS laptop was free from Marriott Rewards. If not, I would actually lose sleep over Sony’s stupidity. Want my opinion? Spend the $$$, buy a MacBook Pro and install Windows Vista Business or Enterprise (if you don’t like the Mac OS). I have, and IT ROCKS and is COMPLETELY STABLE, and the hardware and monitor quality is second to NONE. You get what you pay for… or what you don’t, in my case with this freebie Vaio. The only good thing about this Sony is that it sucks so bad if it falls off the desk and breaks I won’t give a shit… I’ll just go back to the living room and watch a Mac commercial on my AWESOME Sony 1080P LCD TV… go figure!!!
I always found Sony products worthwhile but your comments are giving me jitters because i have bought a new Sony vaio and if you guys are right and the quality has gone down and not what it used to be tneeeeeeennnnn.
I got my “Pain”(that’s Sony Vaio)in Costco about 4 years ago - No more Sony for me. Every software was installed trial version and with in 3 to 6 months was expired, even Word I got to pay to install again. Computer cost me $1600.00. And after 6 months another bunch of money. When I called technical support about frame work problems, person on the other end was not helpful at all. He wants my name, my adress, phone number and so on, at the end he said he can’t help me becouse - can’t find reccords of this computer bein sold. It got 2 hard drives, one is full, the other one is empty and nothing I can do to make it work. This is a worst machine I ever have. Constant problems. Stay away from Sony Vaio!!!
I have two sony notebooks, a small vaio tx and a 17 inches vaio AR, which I bought on january 2006. So far, these work fine but I must agree that Sony software is crap. I also bought two Apples, a MacPro and a Mini. I think Apple notebooks are better. However, Apple software is also crap. My advice is to buy a Mac and use bootcamp to install Vista or XP on it. My MacPro with 4Gig and XP installed is the best computer I ever had in 25 years!
I have two Sony Vaio FS740/W’s and in three years have never had any trouble with either of them. Perhaps its the operators not the computers.
I have hated SONY VAIO since 1998 and i would NEVER buy one, but unfortunately i’m stuck fixing one and their support has gotten worse. scrwe SONY computers stay away!!!
I’ve foolishly been using Vaio for the last few years and every single one has broken. Why didn’t I learn earlier?? Most recently the hinge on my Vaio AR series has snapped after about 18 months of normal use and no drops. I’m now housebound until I can get my hands on a new MacBook. Don’t buy Vaio - they are way too expensive, are loaded with crapware and will inevitably break down.
Hey! A Sony POS website! I am not alone in my hate of Sony JUNK! I own a Sony Vaio laptop VGN-385. Had to return the thing numerous times in under 4 months for warranty repair and is quickly going to become a projectile. Owning a “NEW” computer, I never thought I would feel such frustration or hate for an inanimate object. I even went so far to write all over my laptop SONY P.O.S. so ALL will see the CRAP I purchased. Buyer beware, DO NOT PURCHASE a Sony Laptop. The products are cheaply made, feel like they are made of cheap plastic, inferior, feel as they they could break upon dropping. Stay away from Sony computers, they will cause you nothing but grief and CONTINUAL frustration.
If you must buy one buy it at Fry’s with an extended warranty and then Fry’s LOANS you a new one every time and so they loose all this money having to provide new loaners to people who bought shit Sony’s - THEN the stores will start telling Sony they won’t take their crap - that is the way to effect change. Fry’s in Renton Washington NOW KNOWS Sony Vaio are crap as they have to loan all these machines to Sony Vaio owners… you should see them roll their eyes when we come in. Right now Fry’s in Renton may very well dump Sony and start carrying Lenovo…
THAT will teach Sony a lesson,
buy only with an extended warranty including a loaner and let teh stores deal with the manufacturers dealing in crap.
Sony you suck!!
I have a Sony piece of shit Vaio too - bought with an extended warranty and it has gone back to the factory FOUR times in the last 9 months which means I had it the first 34 days and that’s about it… it comes back and dies again within a few days… what a piece of crap… I have been buying notebooks since 1992 (Microexpress) and this one is utter crap.
Yeh I got a vaio in 04. Runs pretty hot about 45 C. Battery blown sooo bought a ray o vac at battery world. Sony not detecting battery and cuts off the instant I unplug it. ARRggghhhh!!
!@@#$@Q$%#$^
Even an obsolete USED Macbook probably better. and let’s not talk about the byootiful malware in ALL PCs.
thing is Consumer Reports LIKED the Vaio
I am on my second Vaio TXN series and it is crap. They both worked well enough for 18 months and then began slowly dying. I get constant Program Not Responding errors and have to perform hard shutdowns constantly. Pages load by scrolling from top to bottom or in sectional pieces and you can’t run more than one program at a time.
I sent the first to Sony and they claimed a bad hard drive. They replaced it and charged me $299.00. After reinstalling all my softward and removing all their crap, SAME PROBLEMS.
I sent it back to Sony and put small pieces of tape over the screws that access the internals. They claimed the Motherboard was bad and charged by $799.00. When I got it back, the original tape was intact! They never touched a thing. Having used my AMEX card for the purchase and repairs, AMEX credited me the cost of both repairs and replaced the computer. Unfortunatly, AMEX requires the replaced computer be the same make and model (or the most similar currently available modle). So here i am 18 months almost to the day and SAME CRAP!
This one is going back too. AMEX will replace it but I am going to find a way to NOT replace it with another VAIO. Stay away from this POS!
indeed Sony Vaio sucks
Windows Vista sucks harder
Well, I agree with you to some extent. I recently bought a Sony VAIO AR series, it’s supposed to be their “best” laptop. And I have a few things to say about them.
1- Build quality is just OK, they keyboard gets easily stained and the LCD becomes loose very quickly.
2- Their customer support personnel depends on when you are calling, one time one of their agent helped me solve a complex registry problem in a matter of minutes, he knew what he was talking about. And one other time, some Indian (no offense to anyone) took 30 minutes to figure out that they can’t upgrade my laptop’s DVD drive to a Blu-Ray one.
3- The crapware they install is just horrendous. Once I restored my C drive using their software, it installed Vista first then started installing this crapware (which took 3 hours), it took me almost an hour to get rid of it. A few days ago, I installed a clean version of Windows using someone else’s Vista disk and my SN, got the drivers from the Sony website and had no problems.
4- Well that’s pretty much all I have to say, but I guess I would buy VAIO products again. But their only problem is that they’re too freakin’ proprietary!!!!!
Yes it completely sux!
I bought a Vaio 2 years ago, and it’s been nothing but trouble. My professor in our computer department said that Sony is, in fact, outsourcing to China.
I have an iMac that runs beautifully.
I posted 2 times about a year ago. And this will be my last time. My 1600 euro Vaio, having worked for 3 weeks, was never repaired by sony under warranty.They simply refused. After paying THey changed the harddrive once cuz they claimed itys was broken. That new one DID break for real 2 weeks later, and the old one i had checked after that by another technician and he said there was nothing wrong with it. He is even STILL using it in his laptop after more then 1 year!! So in one last attempt, a friend who is a computertechnician, tried communicating with them. After about 3 months of him calling and mailing without any reply…he finally got an answer saying they knew exactly wich part was broken…but that certain part was no longer being made. (1,5 year old laptop!!!) Then i received a nice email from them praizing their latest new models. I immediatly send them an email back to remove myself from their mailinglist. But these bastards now keep sending me emails over and over. They even send me 2 times a list of questions about how happy i was with my vaio…all possible answers made it impossible to say you are NOT happy.
My blood is still boiling when i think about the 1600 euro I lost. Sony, I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!!!!!!!!!