i have had a sony vaio PCG-K415S for over a year now,i do all my work on it and play high end games on the laptop.
As yet the machine has not given me a days trouble i use the laptop every day as i am housebound
All i can say is please bring on the next generation of VAIO'S MINE IS A REAL BABY

Sony PCG k215 i was fine in the winter as this laptop kept my whole hose warm with its bizzare fan placement and teflon processor recycled from the spaceshuttles nosecone..it must have been to with stand the heat. and after warrenty runs out, like a timed virus it died, R.I.P. i now have a full new heating system which was cheaper than my ex-sony. but at least when it gets to hot i with my new heating i at least have a 1000 pound front door stop to keep me cool. It seems it would be easyer and cheaper to get a new mother board for the space shuttle than a vaio. who knows i may even be able to swap it for a betamax video recorder on ebay... Thanks Sony

I would never, ever buy a Sony laptop again as they do not honour the warranty. Six months after buying my laptop a metal piece fell out of the diskdrive. This piece is what the drive slides in and out on. Otherwise the drive still works but now hangs loose. I sent it to Sony as still on the warranty but they refused to fix it, saying I must have damaged it - clearly not able to accept that something they produced could actually break (I can hear hollow laughter from others on this thread...) We argued for some time. They wanted to charge me £270 for fixing this. In the end I needed my laptop for work so I just said send it back. They wanted to charge me £40 postage. They agreed to waive this after some further discussion. I tried to claim through the supplier, PC World/Dixons, but they told me Sony told them I must have damaged it myself.

I wouldn't worry about your Sony breaking after the warranty is up as it seems all they have to do is say you must have done something to the machine.

Hi,
even though you en quired about a different thing at sony vaio support, I was astonished that you got so rude and bureaucratic replies.
I have had contact with sony vaio support for several times, and always got nice replies.

Here is my case
http://www.h4x3d.com/sony-vaio-support-review
in case you are interesting in reading of course. Sorry if you consider this spam, I thought you might be interesting in how "sony support can be". I am no pr minon =)

best regards,
jez

All I can say is, lucky you if they helped you, I'm sure service standards can vary. I am not saying they were personally rude just completely unhelpful and said to me that if their disk-drives broke they'd have other people with the same problem, and claimed they didn't, therefore I must have broken it - which I don't think is true as I read on Vaio's own club site people complaining that the drives always break!

actually that was quite rude when you think about it!

I'm looking for a laptop for work and study over about six years at University. I don't need something very powerful, just Word Processing, research (+ network connection) and hopefully some digital audio/video entertainment features such as reasonable speakers, clear, bright screen, DVD/CD player/burner.

I don't have a job, or enough money to afford a top of the line computer so I'm looking for something under hopefully in the $1,499 to $1,999 range (Australian dollars).

I'm sure it may sound crazy after reading this thread but I'm thinking of getting a VAIO, one of the 14.1" home notebooks like VGNFJ76GP or VGNFJ78GPW. Mostly for the LCD screen, lowish price, the DL DVD-RW and all of the other entertainment features (DVD, Sonic Stage etc.).

I just wanted to know if all these complaints are aimed at a specific line of notebooks, VAIO in general or the customer service? Also, would these errors and complaints be influenced by factors such as heavy use, eg. constant gaming or demanding work or overheating due to the location of the computer?

Is there any option for extended warranty with Sony?

Finally, I'm sure you can tell I'm looking for excuses to stay with Sony but what other companies would people recomend, Dell, HP, Apple?

I have a Sony Vaio PCG-K25 since March 2004, but I never have problem with it except sometimes the screen went totally black. I have contacted ones the customer service and they just told me that its normal for most LCD screen. He advised me to just log-out,then turn it on again in few minutes. It works... I am still using my same Vaio laptop 'till now.

It took me 1700 us dollars to understand that the Sony vaio laptops are total crap. Even crapper is the service. They ask for 25 dollars just to say hi to their technicians. My problem began with the keyboard. Some of the keys were having problems and i was using the on screen keyboard. When i spoke to one of their customer disservice representative, he told me to send the laptop to a sony center. He also told it would be around 3 months before i get my laptop back.

Okay, i had a lot of data in it and i was totally dependent on the laptop, so i thought i will continue with whatever is working. And one fine day, the laptop started whining when i started it. It was a horrible ear spllitting ringing noise. I shut it down, and its been lying like that for the past two three months, with all my data. I am afraid to reboot it because i fear all my pictures songs and other files will be gone with the drive crashes. I have stopped calling the sony customer service because they do not seem to be interested in service anymore!

My sincere advise to anyone who is planning to buy a sony laptop. Please do not waste your money on this piece of junk. You will get better deals, more features and most importantly better service on other brands!

I brought my Vaio In August of 2005. In September of 2006 the entire thing crashed. I lost all my information. Music, Pictures, everything. When i finally got it back working,it happened again in October.I again lost everything. Now it is working ok but it is very slow and very little software works on it. I will be buying a Mac later this year.