Sony Vaio vs Toshiba - Pros and Cons

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From what I know of Sony, they seem to have a great LCD screen (XBrite)
but short battery life. The A190 that I looked at seems slow (but again,
beautiful).

Toshiba typically has lower screen res, but higher battery life. The
equivalent CPU seems to respond faster (perhaps due to changing less
pixels?)

Is there a consensus on strong and weak points for Sony vs Toshiba...
or others? Reliability? Build quality?
 
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_Geo wrote:
> From what I know of Sony, they seem to have a great LCD screen
> (XBrite) but short battery life. The A190 that I looked at seems
> slow (but again, beautiful).
>
> Toshiba typically has lower screen res, but higher battery life. The
> equivalent CPU seems to respond faster (perhaps due to changing less
> pixels?)
>
> Is there a consensus on strong and weak points for Sony vs Toshiba...
> or others? Reliability? Build quality?

If you have followed Toshiba for any length of time, you knew that
Toshiba manufactured most of its laptops in its own design/manufacture
facilities in Japan. Early this year, Toshiba, under pressure from its
financial partners to fix its very costly laptop business, announced the
closure of its own design/manufacture operations and is outsourcing to
the same set of original design manufacturers in Asia, Inc. that every
other laptop vendor uses. Toshiba II is not the same vendor that it was
last year and IMO, the jury is still out on the change.

Sony's laptops are largely manufactured by Quanta (it is reported)
alongside many of the new IBM laptops (it is reported). Quanta has the
reputation (try to prove this!) of being among the best, if not the
best, original design manufacturer.

Sony is a least consistent in its design standards, but that says little
about performance and reliability. Toshiba and Compaq practically
invented the notebook/laptop, and neither IMO is a quality/reliability
powerhouse any more. Maybe IBM has good service, but they purchase
their notebooks from whoever they sold their manufacturing facilities
to, perhaps designing their own, perhaps not.

It's really a gamble as the entire laptop business sorts itself out,
especially since there is *no* third party independent research into the
key questions of brand/performance/reliability/service issues. All of
the recent fundamental changes in the laptop business invalidate even
last year's reputations.

Q
 
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>From what I know of Sony, they seem to have a great LCD screen (XBrite)
>but short battery life. The A190 that I looked at seems slow (but again,
>beautiful).
>
>Toshiba typically has lower screen res, but higher battery life. The
>equivalent CPU seems to respond faster (perhaps due to changing less
>pixels?)
>
>Is there a consensus on strong and weak points for Sony vs Toshiba...
>or others? Reliability? Build quality?

They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
Bad things about Sony:
1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
not.
2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
outragous labor and parts charges.

Good things about Toshiba:
1.Toshiba will fix almost anything under warranty(within reason), with
no fuss.
2. Toshiba parts are for sale all over the web. You can build a
notebook from parts if you have a lot of time(and money). So a small
part going bad outside of the warranty is not a catastrophy like it is
with a Vaio.

Bad things about Toshiba:
They piss all over their PPC customers which has really damaged the
Toshiba name for me.

-----------------------
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If you give a little they give a lot
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco
 
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_Geo <_Geo@rge.com> wrote in
news:h7r4e0dls4q127hilr34o8m4schoqffrjl@4ax.com:

> From what I know of Sony, they seem to have a great LCD screen
> (XBrite) but short battery life. The A190 that I looked at seems
> slow (but again, beautiful).

I didn't like the XBrite, to be honest. I bought a Vaio and returned
it a couple of days later. The screen contrast was fantastic, but the
gloss on the screen reflected every overhead light in my office and
made it rather difficult to read. I much preferred Fujitsu and
Toshiba's high-contrast screens.

Geo
--
George Mealer
geo*at*snarksoft*dot*com
 
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On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 18:36:01 -0400, AndrewJ <andrewjBBR@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
>Bad things about Sony:
>1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
>claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
>not.
>2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
>no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
>outragous labor and parts charges.
>

I agree on 1 but not on 2 - I've ordered stuff from the Sony Parts
and Accessories Center lots of times, including the service/technical
manuals for each of my laptops. My gripe is availability of older
parts - once a model is discontinued it's almost impossible to order
parts for it. Not used to that after dealing with IBM for so long.
Emanuel
 
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On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 18:36:01 -0400, AndrewJ wrote
(in article <u0obe0p9m7t0ppabtcv7cp09joimhvar8e@4ax.com>):

>
> They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
> Bad things about Sony:
> 1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
> claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
> not.
> 2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
> no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
> outragous labor and parts charges.

Wow ... this doesn't make Sony sound "great" in my mind.

In fact ... it's enough to frighten me from the brand.
 
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>> They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
>> Bad things about Sony:
>> 1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
>> claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
>> not.
>> 2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
>> no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
>> outragous labor and parts charges.
>
>Wow ... this doesn't make Sony sound "great" in my mind.
>
>In fact ... it's enough to frighten me from the brand.

That's what happened to me from reading this group. My $1100 Vaio was
perfect from day one and still is. But I got very nervous. One
gentleman got the same one I did. A few weeks later the PCMCIA slot
wouldn't work. Sent it in for warranty work and they said it would be
something like $1300 to fix it. The guy freaked. They will not budge
and no group, agency, or legal letters will ever get them to back down
or change their minds.

-----------------------
All lower case to respond by mail.
If you give a little they give a lot
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco
 
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On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 13:19:21 -0400, AndrewJ wrote
(in article <vdege05ngltmoh8975pj00dl6gguhdd7ut@4ax.com>):

> Subject: Re: Sony Vaio vs Toshiba - Pros and Cons
> From: AndrewJ <andrewjBBR@gmail.com>
> Date: Today 1:19 PM
> Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops
>
>
>
>>> They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
>>> Bad things about Sony:
>>> 1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
>>> claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
>>> not.
>>> 2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
>>> no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
>>> outragous labor and parts charges.
>>
>> Wow ... this doesn't make Sony sound "great" in my mind.
>>
>> In fact ... it's enough to frighten me from the brand.
>
> That's what happened to me from reading this group. My $1100 Vaio was
> perfect from day one and still is. But I got very nervous. One
> gentleman got the same one I did. A few weeks later the PCMCIA slot
> wouldn't work. Sent it in for warranty work and they said it would be
> something like $1300 to fix it. The guy freaked. They will not budge
> and no group, agency, or legal letters will ever get them to back down
> or change their minds.

It sounds like it's best to avoid that brand at the moment.

The only companies that I've ever had GREAT (not good) customer service from
are:

IBM (several years back)

Dell (Several years back, but negated by horrific customer service more
recently.) <-- These guys did a 180 degree shift.

Apple (Who continues to give me incredible customer service)

I have no personal experience with Sony. Only what I'm reading here. (Which
doesn't sound great)
 
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On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 12:05:13 -0400, SinghaLvr <singhalvr@charter.net>
wrote:

>On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 18:36:01 -0400, AndrewJ wrote
>(in article <u0obe0p9m7t0ppabtcv7cp09joimhvar8e@4ax.com>):
>
>>
>> They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
>> Bad things about Sony:
>> 1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
>> claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
>> not.
>> 2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
>> no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
>> outragous labor and parts charges.
>
>Wow ... this doesn't make Sony sound "great" in my mind.
>
>In fact ... it's enough to frighten me from the brand.

Me too. I was gonna buy a Sony Vaio till I read all thse posts. No
way does a company with such contempt for its customers get my bucks.
 

Harry Tuanqunin

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On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 12:05:13 -0400, SinghaLvr <singhalvr@charter.net>
wrote:

>On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 18:36:01 -0400, AndrewJ wrote
>(in article <u0obe0p9m7t0ppabtcv7cp09joimhvar8e@4ax.com>):
>
>>
>> They are both famous for great screens. I have both.
>> Bad things about Sony:
>> 1. They won't repair under warranty, but send an outragous bill
>> claiming you're to blame for the damage. They do this more times than
>> not.
>> 2. You can not get Sony parts anywhere. They won't sell you the parts
>> no matter how small. You must send them the notebook in and incur
>> outragous labor and parts charges.
>
>Wow ... this doesn't make Sony sound "great" in my mind.
>



Outch! just purchased my Sony Vaio C-series this morning together with 1 ASUS laptop. my first choice before hand was the toshiba satellite L625 but since someone told me that the Sony Vaio is better, thats why i selected it.
Now, it'l be my problem when return to phillipines if my PC have trouble on where to order the parts and also where to claim that warranty (3 yrs)

>In fact ... it's enough to frighten me from the brand.

Me too. I was gonna buy a Sony Vaio till I read all thse posts. No
way does a company with such contempt for its customers get my bucks.
 

Harry Tuanqunin

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i'm just curious about this sony viao c-series which i had just purchased. and the future problems that i may encounter with it.
 

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From what I know of Sony, they seem to have a great LCD screen (XBrite)
but short battery life. The A190 that I looked at seems slow (but again,
beautiful).

Toshiba typically has lower screen res, but higher battery life. The
equivalent CPU seems to respond faster (perhaps due to changing less
pixels?)

Is there a consensus on strong and weak points for Sony vs Toshiba...
or others? Reliability? Build quality?


Well, I bought a new Sony Vaio laptop, and I can hardly watch one movie on the battery. I am very disappointed that the battery life is so short--just over an hour depending on what you are doing. One month after I bought it, the DVD disc tray quit working, and I called Sony and talked to somebody in some other country who could not speak English well enough to communicate with me and with a very bad attitude. I finally got the part and installed it myself. But as I removed the old tray, I could see that it was a flimsy contraption built in China, and no wonder it did not work right. The new tray is the same and does not work smoothly. Vaio=very poor battery life and poor service from Sony. I am so fed up, after paying almost $1000 out the door, that I am thinking of selling the damn thing and trying a Mac.
 

Harry Tuanqunin

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Wow! Mine also sees to be mulfunctioning already. Sony vaio c-series with core i5 processor ( 2days old ) hung up with multiple application opened. With all those comments that I read, im planning to swap it to toshiba stellite L625 model.
 

Harry Tuanqunin

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what do you think is better and faster? a lap top with processor core i-5 (2.3Ghz) - thats for Sony Vaio c-series or the one with core i-5 (2.63Ghz)- thats for toshiba L-625?
 
Exactly which models of i5 CPUs are you talking about? Does either of the model numbers have 4 digits plus the m?
Like Core i5-460m 2.63 GHz vs Core i5-2410m 2.3Ghz?
Does either of the laptops have a 7200rpm HDD? Or are they all 5400rpm?
 

Harry Tuanqunin

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yeah the L-625 has 480M i think while the c-series has 2400M. i dont remember about their rpm. i'm at the office right now hahaha!
this is a problem for people like me who knows litle about this technologies haha!
can i ask you something WR2? why is it that everytime that i shut down my lap top (c-series) a warning alway occur telling me that the pc is updating some like 40 programes? it also tells that i should not un-plug the computer during this update. thanks! ^_^
 
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