Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (
More info?)
_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