Which Sony Vaio?

Soldato
Joined
25 Sep 2006
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Hi guys, another laptop thread :)

I'll be off to uni in September time, and dont fancy lugging my C2D rig up to Lincoln with me in the Akasa eclipse because its mahooosive! So a laptop is my other option. My course is 'Furniture' mostley timber based and craft orientated. So I wont really be using it much.

I'm a man obsessed with Asthetics, so a Sony Vaio is screaming out to me!

My parents have agreed to pay £600 and I can pay the rest upto £1000 ideally.

My preferences are as follows:

Core 2 Duo processor
1GB of RAM minimum
DVD-RW etc etc
80GB+ Sata Drive

I'll be using it for MSN, E-mail, Watching movies, downloading etc, browsing. I like powerful machines as I hate waiting for things to load!

Ive narrowed it down to 2 models atm the 'SONY VGN-C2Z/B'(Which can be had for £960 there abouts) and the SONY VAIO VGN-FE41E(Can be had for around £775)

It needs to be portable hence why ive not gone larger than a 15" screen.

1.My questions are is it worth the extra £200 to get the much smaller unit with a 13" screen?
2.What are peoples thoughts(brief, no flamming or arguments!) toward Vista Home Premium?
3.Is there anything else im getting with the more expensive unit, other than a smaller lighter package and sexier looks?

Any help or feedback is greatley appreciated!

Thanks

Benny C
 
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I had seen a HP one for £800 with C2D and 2Gb of RAM. My friend had a HP one for a short while, might look into those. Graphics is a bit of a let down on the Hp front unfortunatley.
 
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Cant comment on the other model but the Vaio VGN-FE41E looks to be a good buy. It was included in a group test in PC Pro mag this month and came out top in its price range with a very good write up. Best price I have seen online is around £765 which seems quite reasonable for the spec. It certainly ticks all the boxes in your list of preferences!

I've looked at a fair few models recently, from 13" screens up to 15". The models with 13" screens are nice and compact but I reckon the screen size would become an issue for me after a while, particuarly for watching movies and web browsing.
 
Thanks for that. I'd just seen a Samsung R20 for £550 and it looks good, but i fear its graphics lack a lot, and also im not to keen on the desgn at the bottom of the screen with the sort of cylindircal hinge along the back. Torn between that and the FE now lol
 
Hi, If you want a very fast Core 2 Duo machine ,

Try the Asus F3J Series, they have serveral versions to choose from, They come with very good graphics card (depends on version) Plus

There cheaper than vaio , and i would say Perform much better than vaio laptops. I Sell this at work day in / day out, We have a lot of vaio coming for repairs around 2 months after purchese, No asus so far / Although we have had problem with getting region free and the dvd-drives.

Go for asus , Cheaper, Faster , Better !

Jay
 
so all vaios are bad then... :rolleyes:
they are expensive for a reason,ive fixed loads and sony vaios are very well made(mate dropped his down the stairs :eek: )...all that happened to it was it needed a ctrl key...thats it!
its up to you m8 but all i have had to do to my vaio in 5yrs is upgrade the memory. c ya ;)
 
g00dsh0t said:
so all vaios are bad then... :rolleyes:
they are expensive for a reason,ive fixed loads and sony vaios are very well made(mate dropped his down the stairs :eek: )...all that happened to it was it needed a ctrl key...thats it!
its up to you m8 but all i have had to do to my vaio in 5yrs is upgrade the memory. c ya ;)

I was looking at the sonys for quite a while, they do seem nice and look good but when compared to other brands they dont really justify their costs. I'm pretty much set on an IBM, but waiting for the new chipsets to be released + I can live without one for a few months anyway.
 
We only use Sony laptops at work - has been the case for the past 6 years now.
Generally speaking they are proving to be very reliable - with the exception of the S1 line which had a general issue and every single one of them went back with video card problems.
We buy the extended warranty for each of them for 3 years, but very few actually go back with a fault of any description.

You do pay slightly more for a Sony over the competitors.
You're paying for the looks, however you don't sacrifice build quality or performance.
They are usually well featured from a hardware point of view.

Don't touch Toshiba - the old "king of laptops" are certainly not what they used to be and the build quality I've seen on some of them has been awful.
The odd Dell has been purchased in but nothing special about them.
The only other make I'd possibly consider moving the company over to would be Acer as they seem to do a good range as well and the odd personal Acer I've used has always been a good quality build.
 
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