#258342 - 19/06/2005 13:47
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: julf]
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addict
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 498
Loc: Virginia, USA
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In terms of support, I'm curious what is it about Sony's support for older models that you find a problem? Repair? Parts? Driver updates?
Parts mostly. Things like new batteries, plugs, accessories etc.
I tend to run Linux, so drivers are not here nor there...
Sony really ticks me off with their price gouging on accessories. $250 for a battery! $100 for an AC adapter! It's a big reason why I won't buy Sony laptops.
And they make other customer unfriendly choices. My friend has a nice Centrino class Sony laptop he bought about 18 months ago. In most ways the machine is still up to date and there isn't a reason to upgrade. But he would like to change the 802.11b to Intel's 802.11b/g chip. Nope. It's soldered on the motherboard instead of being mini-pci card. He also tried to upgrade the hard drive and OMG was that an ordeal. Many vendors (Dell, Compaq) put their hard drives behind easily accessible panels. Sony buries it in the machine and the reassembly is nearly impossible because of a very fragile ribbon connector that must be reattached. He broke it and Sony wanted something like $100 to just look at the machine before they would even give him a price for the repair. And Sony wouldn't send him just the part. He had to spend way too much time tracking this part down from a local service center. What would have been a 5 minute job on a Dell cost many, many hours of time and 2 weeks of not having a working laptop.
Unfortunately, Sony has brought their planned obsolescence model from consumer electronics to computers.
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#258343 - 19/06/2005 19:01
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Dylan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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I guess the concept of upgrading a laptop just eludes me. Especially the smaller light weight models I prefer. The parts are just so tightly integrated, nothing is really interchangable. Customized batteries are one of my pet peaves. I don't think I've seen two model laptops that used a common battery pack.
Not being able to run LInux, that's a problem I can respect.
_________________________
Glenn
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#258344 - 20/06/2005 13:08
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: gbeer]
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addict
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 498
Loc: Virginia, USA
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I guess the concept of upgrading a laptop just eludes me. Especially the smaller light weight models I prefer. The parts are just so tightly integrated, nothing is really interchangable.
I'm not expecting to change the CPU or video chip in my notebook (although some high end desktop replacements are starting to make that easier), but upgrading the hard drive and RAM are the key to extending the usable lifetime of a computer. I don't think I've ever gone for more than a year before I'm ready to increase both of those.
My point about Sony compared to Dell/Compaq/IBM is that those latter vendors often make it a design goal to allow the user to perform the basic upgrades. Sony's designs regarding upgrades often range from not caring to seemingly going out of their way to make it difficult.
Sony makes customer unfriendly choices in other ways, too. I remember reading complaints that Sony didn't make XP drivers for their proprietary hardware which shipped with Windows ME even though these were still relatively new machines when XP became MS's consumer OS.
I also happen to be a bit annoyed at Apple right now as I look at the difficulty of replacing the HDD in my PowerBook. Fortunately, with Apple products you can find step by step instructions with pictures while my friend had to largely wing it with his Sony.
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Customized batteries are one of my pet peaves. I don't think I've seen two model laptops that used a common battery pack.
Yeah, wouldn't that be great? At least they don't have to blatently rip you off because they've got you trapped. Dell/Compaq tend to be in the range of $100 for a battery and $40 for A/C. Apple is like $130 and $80 I believe. Then there is Sony giving the big FU with their $250 batteries.
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#258345 - 20/06/2005 14:18
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Dylan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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I'm not expecting to change the CPU or video chip in my notebook
I've upgraded the video card on a Dell laptop before but that was because it was a daughterboard which could be swapped in about 5 minutes.
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My point about Sony compared to Dell/Compaq/IBM is that those latter vendors often make it a design goal to allow the user to perform the basic upgrades. Sony's designs regarding upgrades often range from not caring to seemingly going out of their way to make it difficult.
Dell appear to have the design goal that it's easy to upgrade purely because the system is built to order and only happens when you place the order. It makes it easier for their staff to construct the laptop from the various interchangable bits.
Very few laptop manufacturers actually make the laptop. They usually contract it out to one of the big laptop manufacturers like Compal. Unless they want a specific design like Apple then they can buy an off the shelf kit as it were. Nearly all the Dell models are off the shelf. You can find no name ones which look nearly identical.
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Sony makes customer unfriendly choices in other ways, too. I remember reading complaints that Sony didn't make XP drivers for their proprietary hardware which shipped with Windows ME even though these were still relatively new machines when XP became MS's consumer OS.
No problems like that for my old VAIO. Took a month or two after XP to come out and they released a new BIOS and a set of drivers and applications for XP. Just need to log into the Club VAIO site and download it.
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#258346 - 01/07/2005 22:06
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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I got my two new X1's at work and got to play with one for a short while. Wow, it is very light (2.5 lbs?) and quite compact. It wasn't running your fully loaded specs, but I can still make some general observations about it:
The left and right track pad buttons take some getting used to. I kept tapping the track pad because they are so thin.
The words on the screen at the default resolution are pretty hard to read. You'd be quite hunched over while working on it.
Not much connectivity. No PCMCIA, only SD and CF. No PS/2, only one USB and a questionable kind of USB. But, bluetooth and WiFi work.
The DVD and floppy use an external drive bay with some crazy USB+proprietary connector. The bay adds bulk and is one more thing to worry about.
The keyboard is nice. The screen doesn't latch shut. It doesn't run too hot. It seems pretty darn fast for being 1.1ghz Pentium M. It did the Office 2003 install in no time.
That's about all I can think of. Nice little laptop. Too bad about no PCMCIA though; not sure how I'll get cellular internet (for remote places where WiFi is not available). Maybe using a cell phone as a modem.
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#258347 - 01/07/2005 22:56
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: FireFox31]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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What happened to those ultralight Sony, what was it x505 laptops? They seem to have dropped off the face of the Sony website.
_________________________
Glenn
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#258348 - 02/07/2005 18:14
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: gbeer]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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Dynamism still offers it, but for almost $3000 after you've added the 802.11g card. And, that's only got a 10.4" screen, a 20GB disk, and 512MB of RAM. I played with one at a Sony store when they were (briefly) available domestically. It's a marvel of engineering, but I disliked the keyboard feel. If I could get one for $1000, I'd buy it in a snap. You're paying an extreme premium for, in effect, is only a single pound of weight reduction relative to the competition.
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#258349 - 02/07/2005 19:37
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Mataglap]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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I went back and checked that comprehensive PDF, and it seems that IBM/Lenovo is now offering two different wireless solutions. Their default uses an Intel miniPCI card (with either b/g or a/b/g support), but now they offer a brand new variant with an Atheros AR5004X board (a/b/g support) versus the Intel 82533 Centrino chipset. If you Google for either chipset, you don' t come up with very much, although Atheros claims support for various draft standards (e.g., 802.11n), which means it might actually be a vaguely more future-proof solution. Further confusing matters, if you actually want to buy the Atheros model (1866-6tu), things get even weirder. Google was able to find me an order page for all the tablet variants that there appears to be no other way to reach. Next week, I'll try getting somebody on the phone who can explain this all to me. Among other mysteries is what kinds of discount is available on the "educational" models. While some machines have significant discounts, most others have less exciting discounts, typically $100-$200 off a $2000 laptop. Nothing is published yet about X41 tablet discounts, but if you look at the specs of the educational models and their list prices versus the normal models and their list prices, you get more features for the same money on the non-educational models. My guess is that the "discounts" merely get the prices back down to where they should have been in the first place, and the only actual benefits of buying from the educational program are that you get Microsoft OneNote and some kind of encyclopedia/dictiionary/etc. software.
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#258350 - 02/07/2005 19:55
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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enthusiast
Registered: 11/06/2003
Posts: 384
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Well, part of it used to be that IBM made up larger quanties of certain variants and used those variants and supplies for things like "get it tomorrow", extended support lifetimes, different supply chains and distribution channels, corporate supply offers (so you could get the exact same model for years, after it normally would be end-of-lifed), and the educational discounts. I don't know what Levano is doing.
Not every model is available through every channel, which would effect the discount at various points.
--Nathan
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#258351 - 02/07/2005 23:26
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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Quote:
Dynamism still offers it, but for almost $3000 after you've added the 802.11g card. And, that's only got a 10.4" screen, a 20GB disk, and 512MB of RAM. I played with one at a Sony store when they were (briefly) available domestically. It's a marvel of engineering, but I disliked the keyboard feel. If I could get one for $1000, I'd buy it in a snap. You're paying an extreme premium for, in effect, is only a single pound of weight reduction relative to the competition.
For the same reasons you noted, I never really wanted one. Now if they had built one the size of the S series but as sharply thin. I'd give it more than one look.
No the thing that suprised me was that after having recieved so much noise, it has so completly dissapeared from Sony's web site. Not even the support areas show it. Almost as if it was banished.
_________________________
Glenn
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#258352 - 03/07/2005 15:04
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Dylan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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I also happen to be a bit annoyed at Apple right now as I look at the difficulty of replacing the HDD in my PowerBook. Fortunately, with Apple products you can find step by step instructions with pictures while my friend had to largely wing it with his Sony.
Try it with a clamshell iBook sometime. I had to break it down to parts.
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#258353 - 03/07/2005 19:11
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Daria]
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addict
Registered: 10/11/2000
Posts: 497
Loc: Utah, USA
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Try it with a clamshell iBook sometime. I had to break it down to parts.
I've got this year's iBook, but I don't think it's any easier. I tried to count the screws that I took out, but I lost track around forty-something.
_________________________
-Aaron
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#258354 - 05/07/2005 21:34
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Mataglap]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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Quote:
Not every model is available through every channel, which would effect the discount at various points.
To further confuse matters, there's now some kind of "kit" that includes the top-of-the-line X41 Tablet, Microsoft One Note, and some kind of sleeve that you can put the computer in. The price for the kit, sold under the "express" label, is about $2000 -- fully $250 less than the same laptop, by itself, sold under the "normal" label. But wait... I clicked the "options" button, where you might normally tweak things, like buying an extended warranty, but it didn't work; however, it would happily add the kit to my shopping cart.
So, I decided to call them up. The main 800-number guy said "oh, you're educational / government, so you need to call this other number." Fine. The guy answering that line said "I'm new here, so I'll forward you to the rep. for Texas." Then, an answering machine. Who knew that buying a laptop from IBM/Lenovo was so difficult?
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#258355 - 18/08/2005 12:51
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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Continuing our story...
Last month, we ordered the X41 Tablet, top of the line model with all the gadget and gee-gaws. The educational price came out to $1750 - a fantastic price - to which we added the no-matter-what warranty and a spare battery. I think the final price was around $2100. Fast forward to today. Still no laptop. We'd gotten some feedback, at some point, that they were having production problems. Now, they're flatly refusing our calls. We emailed the sales droid, asking to cancel our order. Five minutes later, the response, a single word, "cancelled".
Lenovo's web site currently says shipping in "2-4 weeks". Anyone have any experience with this? Should I surrender and look at other vendors?
Edit: here's a thread on TabletPCBuzz that shows lots of people waiting a long time to receive their orders. Looks like it's not just me.
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#258356 - 04/11/2005 13:59
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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We ended up killing the original order and, eventually, reordering when the TabletPCBuzz crowd started seemed to be actually getting their orders. We got it maybe two weeks after ordering. So far, I'm loving this machine. The smaller battery still gets almost three hours of life when doing wireless web surfing. The bigger battery, at least for now, is sitting on my desk unused.
The fingerprint reader really does work. Nice toy, but not serious.
The tablet aspects are fantastic. When I was on the road and I needed to fill out some stupid PDF form, I "printed" it to Windows Journal, marked up, and "printed" it back to PDF for email. Nice.
Right now, the mystery to me is how to properly configure the power management stuff. I want the screen to automatically go dim when I'm on battery and then go to full brightness when plugged in. IBM has this "power manager" gizmo. I've set it to the "power source optimized" scheme, which in theory does what I want. However, the screen brightness seems not to be sensitive to anything that I set here. Any thoughts on how to fix this?
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#258357 - 04/11/2005 23:10
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Check the normal Windows power management control panel. On my Sony, it has to have a "scheme" selected that tells it to use the Sony utility's settings.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#258358 - 05/11/2005 14:22
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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Quote:
Check the normal Windows power management control panel. On my Sony, it has to have a "scheme" selected that tells it to use the Sony utility's settings.
Tried that, but no good. Using the IBM "power manager", I made a new profile that had everything set just so. I then flipped back to the Microsoft "power options" and it was set to my profile (with the new name that I used in the IBM dialog box). Still, the screen brightness isn't doing what I want. The screen *is* dimming, but not down to the low-level that I want.
Hmm...
EDIT: if you go to the "Access IBM" screen and selct "Manage Your Display -> LCD display settings", it offers you "Brightness when running on batteries", for which you choices are "normal" or "high", as opposed to the 0-7 available elsewhere. Now, if there were only some way to override this thing.
Also, back to the SharpKeys references, from earlier in this thread. So far as I can tell, the web browser back and forward buttons are magic. They don't generate normal keycodes that SharpKeys can latch onto. However, I can at least turn my caps lock into a control key...
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#258359 - 05/11/2005 16:22
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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enthusiast
Registered: 11/06/2003
Posts: 384
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Take a look for the Baterry MaxiMiser or something along those lines. If you have the IBM battery guage next to your system tray you can look at the schemes and kick off the Battery MaxiMiser Wizard. I don't know if there's a way to just edit those values without going through the wizard.
--Nathan
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#258360 - 08/11/2005 16:29
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Mataglap]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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The latest: I still haven't gotten any traction on the screen dimming issue. I've given up on that for now. However, I copied all my files from the old laptop to the new one and realized that, despite both raw disks being the same size, my stuff didn't fit. Digging deeper, it seems that IBM is keeping a "hidden" partition with 4GB of assorted junk on it that sticks around for rescue and recovery things. There's also about 2GB of assorted IBM-specific folders on my C: drive (CMPNENTS, DRIVERS, IBMSHARE, IBMTOOLS, SUPPORT, VALUEADD). Questions: 1) I've already backed up all the C: drive junk. Which ones are safe to delete? 2) Should I back up and nuke that 4GB partition, or is it worth keeping around? I've certainly got better things to do with the space. 2a) How am I supposed to back it up? The partition is marked "hidden", which means that I can't convince diskpart or the GUI utility to assign it a drive letter. Microsoft has a Win2003 hotfix that would seem to offer the right functionality, but you can't just download it from them. If I could somehow get a copy of this utility, would it work on WinXP? *sigh*
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#258361 - 08/11/2005 18:06
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: DWallach]
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enthusiast
Registered: 11/06/2003
Posts: 384
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If you ever need support, they're going to ask you to go through tedious steps involving programs running out of the hidden partition. (That's what the big blue button above the keyboard is for. At least it's a blue button on my T42.) In my experience, the IBM/Lenovo/Thinkpad software and drivers are actually pretty decent. The software update tool works pretty well. The Access Connection stuff works really well with multiple network connections and switching between wired and wireless connections. Generally speaking, keeping the thinkpad drivers & programs up-to-date with the software update tool works out really well. I've never had an update cause problems, and in fact, many of the problems I've had were fixed by updating the relevant package. Decent Thinkpad XP reinstall notes. If you really want to trash that partition, just download a live linux distro like Knoppix and use that fdisk. trust me, it won't care. Overall, I've just accepted the disk space loss from all the IBM stuff, more of it has proven useful than not, and is necessary when you have to call tech support, even if they end up being useless as you'd expect. And I've found that IBM did a much better job of o/s integration than Gateway/Dell/Micron where doing a flatout reformat was necessary. --Nathan
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#258362 - 27/11/2005 18:53
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: Mataglap]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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I've just bought a Sony VAIO BX197XP and it is a bit quirky. It doesn't have dedicated Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys for one. You have to use Fn and the arrow keys to generate those keycodes which is odd considering this is supposed to be a business laptop. There is plenty of room around the edges of the keyboard to fit the keys in as well so it isn't due to lack of room. Does anybody else have a laptop that has missing keys? I've remapped the context menu and right ctrl keys to act as Page Up and Page Down as I use them quite often. Not sure what I'll do wit the Home nad End keys. Might just have to learn to live with it as I can't really identify that many other spare keys to take over. The fan hardly ever turns off as well but I talked to a friend who has a similar laptop and he said also that the fan on his is pretty much always on. I got the laptop yesterday and the fan was on the whole time I used it. It was only this morning when I powered it up again that the fan stayed off but that was because the room and the laptop were both very cold. Apart from that, it appears to be quite a nice laptop. Excellent screen and the rest of the specs are good. Both HDs are easily accessible from the bottom via a large panel so no worries on changing those.
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#258363 - 27/11/2005 19:14
Re: time for a new laptop?
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
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It doesn't have dedicated Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys for one.
Neither does my Vaio SRX87. You get used to the Fn+key mappings remarkably quickly.
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The fan hardly ever turns off as well
I don't suffer from that, but I've only got a P3-850 in my laptop.
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Both HDs are easily accessible
Only got a single HD in mine, but it was under an easily removable panel, so I swapped it out. It was a 4200rpm 20Gb; it's now a 7200rpm 60Gb, which is plenty for what I'm using it for.
_________________________
-- roger
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