Sony Vaio vs Toshiba - Pros and Cons

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

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

>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.

-----------------------
All lower case to respond by mail.
If you give a little they give a lot
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/disco

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

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.

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

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)