I have been a fan of both sony Vaio's and Apple Macs - had a Sony
desktop earlier, and have now switched to the new iMac with LCD. Love
the Mac OSX as an operating system, and the general design and
usability considerations of Apple over anything Windows supports.

Now here's my dilemma - am looking for a laptop to add to my resurces.
No computational use - I don't want to bring work home. I'm thinking
of one that will be easy to carry around, will be light and thin, will
allow me to watch movies in a flight without running out of juice.
I've narrowed down to 2 machines - the Sony Vaio PCG-TR2A subnotebook,
PIVM 1GHz/ 10.6" LCD / DVD / 512MB at 3.11 lbs, and the Apple
Powerbook G4 1GHz / 12.1" / DVD / 512MB at 4.6 lbs. Both of them boast
5+ hours of battery life (with the disclaimer about actual use), and
are light enough to be easily portable.

Would you care to share your opinions about these two machines, on a
side by side pros and cons basis? My greatest cons with the sony are
the stick-out DVD tray and the bogus windows operating system, while
with the G4 it's the extra 48% weight as compared to the sony.

TIA,
kundan

Kundan wrote:
>
> I have been a fan of both sony Vaio's and Apple Macs - had a Sony
> desktop earlier, and have now switched to the new iMac with LCD. Love
> the Mac OSX as an operating system, and the general design and
> usability considerations of Apple over anything Windows supports.
>
> Now here's my dilemma - am looking for a laptop to add to my resurces.
> No computational use - I don't want to bring work home. I'm thinking
> of one that will be easy to carry around, will be light and thin, will
> allow me to watch movies in a flight without running out of juice.
> I've narrowed down to 2 machines - the Sony Vaio PCG-TR2A subnotebook,
> PIVM 1GHz/ 10.6" LCD / DVD / 512MB at 3.11 lbs, and the Apple
> Powerbook G4 1GHz / 12.1" / DVD / 512MB at 4.6 lbs. Both of them boast
> 5+ hours of battery life (with the disclaimer about actual use), and
> are light enough to be easily portable.
>
> Would you care to share your opinions about these two machines, on a
> side by side pros and cons basis? My greatest cons with the sony are
> the stick-out DVD tray and the bogus windows operating system, while
> with the G4 it's the extra 48% weight as compared to the sony.

While Sony makes some great products, they've become one of the *worst*
companies, when it comes to after-the-sale support.

Search this newsgroup, and others (e.g., comp.sys.laptops), for details.

Personally, I'd go Apple.

Larry

Lawrence Glasser wrote:
> Kundan wrote:
>>
>> I have been a fan of both sony Vaio's and Apple Macs - had a Sony
>> desktop earlier, and have now switched to the new iMac with LCD. Love
>> the Mac OSX as an operating system, and the general design and
>> usability considerations of Apple over anything Windows supports.
>>
>> Now here's my dilemma - am looking for a laptop to add to my
>> resurces. No computational use - I don't want to bring work home.
>> I'm thinking of one that will be easy to carry around, will be light
>> and thin, will allow me to watch movies in a flight without running
>> out of juice. I've narrowed down to 2 machines - the Sony Vaio
>> PCG-TR2A subnotebook, PIVM 1GHz/ 10.6" LCD / DVD / 512MB at 3.11
>> lbs, and the Apple Powerbook G4 1GHz / 12.1" / DVD / 512MB at 4.6
>> lbs. Both of them boast 5+ hours of battery life (with the
>> disclaimer about actual use), and are light enough to be easily
>> portable.
>>
>> Would you care to share your opinions about these two machines, on a
>> side by side pros and cons basis? My greatest cons with the sony are
>> the stick-out DVD tray and the bogus windows operating system, while
>> with the G4 it's the extra 48% weight as compared to the sony.
>
> While Sony makes some great products, they've become one of the
> *worst* companies, when it comes to after-the-sale support.
>
> Search this newsgroup, and others (e.g., comp.sys.laptops), for
> details.
>
> Personally, I'd go Apple.
>
> Larry

I really have to contest your contention that Sony does not provide
adequate after-sales support for Vaio laptops. I have read these ngs
for years and have done archive searches on this very subject and have
found very, very few quantitative examples, but many, many,
unsubstantiated opinions about Sony service. There is a continuing
issue with a group of Vaio users who contend that a given series of PII
(!) laptops has a reliability issue that they contend that Sony will not
address. Other than that singular instance, Sony comes across as having
the normal level of equipment and peripheral problems as any laptop
manufacturer. Most other laptop vendors do have issues with specific
series of laptops which have caused frustration among users. Dell and
Gateway are currently leading the pack with verified service and
reliability problems. For my money, Sony Vaio laptops have the same
quality and reliability as the best of laptops and rank up there with
Toshiba in terms of quality and reliability. I have had nothing but
good experience with Sony service, as good as Toshiba, since many Tosh
service centers are Sony service centers as well; certainly better than
HPaq, Gateway, and Dell (except for Dell in the late 1990's). My
service experiences as a 15-year Macintosh owner are far worse than any
Wintel laptop could ever get away with; running from excellent to
abysmal, with abysmal more typical.

The sad thing is that there really is *no* quantitative way to judge
service issues with laptops since there are no quantitative, unbiased
evaluations of service. It is, however, akin to the worst kind of
unfounded gossip to simply repeat "what everybody knows" about a given
company's quality of service issues with no factual basis for the
opinion save other's similar gossip.

Q

Quaoar wrote:
>
> Lawrence Glasser wrote:
> > Kundan wrote:
> >>
> >> I have been a fan of both sony Vaio's and Apple Macs - had a Sony
> >> desktop earlier, and have now switched to the new iMac with LCD. Love
> >> the Mac OSX as an operating system, and the general design and
> >> usability considerations of Apple over anything Windows supports.
> >>
> >> Now here's my dilemma - am looking for a laptop to add to my
> >> resurces. No computational use - I don't want to bring work home.
> >> I'm thinking of one that will be easy to carry around, will be light
> >> and thin, will allow me to watch movies in a flight without running
> >> out of juice. I've narrowed down to 2 machines - the Sony Vaio
> >> PCG-TR2A subnotebook, PIVM 1GHz/ 10.6" LCD / DVD / 512MB at 3.11
> >> lbs, and the Apple Powerbook G4 1GHz / 12.1" / DVD / 512MB at 4.6
> >> lbs. Both of them boast 5+ hours of battery life (with the
> >> disclaimer about actual use), and are light enough to be easily
> >> portable.
> >>
> >> Would you care to share your opinions about these two machines, on a
> >> side by side pros and cons basis? My greatest cons with the sony are
> >> the stick-out DVD tray and the bogus windows operating system, while
> >> with the G4 it's the extra 48% weight as compared to the sony.
> >
> > While Sony makes some great products, they've become one of the
> > *worst* companies, when it comes to after-the-sale support.
> >
> > Search this newsgroup, and others (e.g., comp.sys.laptops), for
> > details.
> >
> > Personally, I'd go Apple.
> >
> > Larry
>
> I really have to contest your contention that Sony does not provide
> adequate after-sales support for Vaio laptops. I have read these ngs
> for years and have done archive searches on this very subject and have
> found very, very few quantitative examples, but many, many,
> unsubstantiated opinions about Sony service. There is a continuing
> issue with a group of Vaio users who contend that a given series of PII
> (!) laptops has a reliability issue that they contend that Sony will not
> address. Other than that singular instance, Sony comes across as having
> the normal level of equipment and peripheral problems as any laptop
> manufacturer. Most other laptop vendors do have issues with specific
> series of laptops which have caused frustration among users. Dell and
> Gateway are currently leading the pack with verified service and
> reliability problems. For my money, Sony Vaio laptops have the same
> quality and reliability as the best of laptops and rank up there with
> Toshiba in terms of quality and reliability. I have had nothing but
> good experience with Sony service, as good as Toshiba, since many Tosh
> service centers are Sony service centers as well; certainly better than
> HPaq, Gateway, and Dell (except for Dell in the late 1990's). My
> service experiences as a 15-year Macintosh owner are far worse than any
> Wintel laptop could ever get away with; running from excellent to
> abysmal, with abysmal more typical.
>
> The sad thing is that there really is *no* quantitative way to judge
> service issues with laptops since there are no quantitative, unbiased
> evaluations of service. It is, however, akin to the worst kind of
> unfounded gossip to simply repeat "what everybody knows" about a given
> company's quality of service issues with no factual basis for the
> opinion save other's similar gossip.

My comments were based on trying to get service for my wife's VAIO, my
attempt to get any kind of pre-sales information on another Sony laptop,
and comments from other posters.

It was not based on "what everybody knows."

Larry

It was

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 02:16:01 GMT, Lawrence Glasser
<lglasser@spamcop.net> wrote:


>While Sony makes some great products, they've become one of the *worst*
>companies, when it comes to after-the-sale support.
>
>Search this newsgroup, and others (e.g., comp.sys.laptops), for details.
>
>Personally, I'd go Apple.
>
I've been using Sony products for years. Yep, support sucks, but
the build quality is good enough that comparatively few people
actually need it - out of 7 or 8 VAIOs, I've had to call them once
(trying to get an 3rd-party PCMCIA CD-ROM to work, and yes, they were
no help whatsoever.)
That said, I haven't been impressed with the build quality of the
TR series. They seem much more cheaply put together than the C1 that
I'm writing this on, and I'm not tempted to buy one. If anything, I'll
wait for the X505 (viewable at www.dynamism.com) to reach our shores,
or try some new Thinkpad subnotebook variant.
Emanuel

I'd also like to throw in the 12" iBook, just 'coz it's about the same
weight and $500 cheaper!

So far, reading the other laptop discussions, looks like Sony does
have a terrible customer service. Oh well, that's a BIG negative over
Apple ... wonder how they keep up the brand name?

cheers :)
-kundan

Kundan wrote:
>
> I'd also like to throw in the 12" iBook, just 'coz it's about the same
> weight and $500 cheaper!
>
> So far, reading the other laptop discussions, looks like Sony does
> have a terrible customer service. Oh well, that's a BIG negative over
> Apple ... wonder how they keep up the brand name?

With some of the nicest designs on the market, it's (sometimes) easy
to overlook after-the-sale support.

Larry

personally I too would go Apple... in fact I did switch from an aging Vaio
to an iBook about a year ago.

The Vaio was fine but a bit plodding... the iBook is a joy to use. It's
not just hardware design and build, but also tha better software that
makes using the Apple such a pleasure.

m

I have a $4000 PCG-GR170K thta has every component replaced at least once, 4
hard drives!! and still gives trouble, tech support said time to replace the
whole thing, they even gave me aloaner for a trip but it had similar
issues, esp speaker feedback and HD noise, senior management said "NO" so
the laptop will go back in again and so on as long as the extended warranty
lasts. It has been a real pain, and expensive. Techs are fine, mostly,
although I take the beast in myself and have to demo the problem or else it
comes back no fault found. Trying to access tech support...now that is a
worse story. Feel free to contact me for details. My next will be a Toshiba
Tecra M1 on order now.
"Quaoar" <quaoar@tenthplanet.net> wrote in message
news:dr-dnbnmTvGnyFKiRVn-hQ@comcast.com...
> Lawrence Glasser wrote:
> > Kundan wrote:
> >>
> >> I have been a fan of both sony Vaio's and Apple Macs - had a Sony
> >> desktop earlier, and have now switched to the new iMac with LCD. Love
> >> the Mac OSX as an operating system, and the general design and
> >> usability considerations of Apple over anything Windows supports.
> >>
> >> Now here's my dilemma - am looking for a laptop to add to my
> >> resurces. No computational use - I don't want to bring work home.
> >> I'm thinking of one that will be easy to carry around, will be light
> >> and thin, will allow me to watch movies in a flight without running
> >> out of juice. I've narrowed down to 2 machines - the Sony Vaio
> >> PCG-TR2A subnotebook, PIVM 1GHz/ 10.6" LCD / DVD / 512MB at 3.11
> >> lbs, and the Apple Powerbook G4 1GHz / 12.1" / DVD / 512MB at 4.6
> >> lbs. Both of them boast 5+ hours of battery life (with the
> >> disclaimer about actual use), and are light enough to be easily
> >> portable.
> >>
> >> Would you care to share your opinions about these two machines, on a
> >> side by side pros and cons basis? My greatest cons with the sony are
> >> the stick-out DVD tray and the bogus windows operating system, while
> >> with the G4 it's the extra 48% weight as compared to the sony.
> >
> > While Sony makes some great products, they've become one of the
> > *worst* companies, when it comes to after-the-sale support.
> >
> > Search this newsgroup, and others (e.g., comp.sys.laptops), for
> > details.
> >
> > Personally, I'd go Apple.
> >
> > Larry
>
> I really have to contest your contention that Sony does not provide
> adequate after-sales support for Vaio laptops. I have read these ngs
> for years and have done archive searches on this very subject and have
> found very, very few quantitative examples, but many, many,
> unsubstantiated opinions about Sony service. There is a continuing
> issue with a group of Vaio users who contend that a given series of PII
> (!) laptops has a reliability issue that they contend that Sony will not
> address. Other than that singular instance, Sony comes across as having
> the normal level of equipment and peripheral problems as any laptop
> manufacturer. Most other laptop vendors do have issues with specific
> series of laptops which have caused frustration among users. Dell and
> Gateway are currently leading the pack with verified service and
> reliability problems. For my money, Sony Vaio laptops have the same
> quality and reliability as the best of laptops and rank up there with
> Toshiba in terms of quality and reliability. I have had nothing but
> good experience with Sony service, as good as Toshiba, since many Tosh
> service centers are Sony service centers as well; certainly better than
> HPaq, Gateway, and Dell (except for Dell in the late 1990's). My
> service experiences as a 15-year Macintosh owner are far worse than any
> Wintel laptop could ever get away with; running from excellent to
> abysmal, with abysmal more typical.
>
> The sad thing is that there really is *no* quantitative way to judge
> service issues with laptops since there are no quantitative, unbiased
> evaluations of service. It is, however, akin to the worst kind of
> unfounded gossip to simply repeat "what everybody knows" about a given
> company's quality of service issues with no factual basis for the
> opinion save other's similar gossip.
>
> Q
>
>


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