Page 1 of sony vaio tx series laptop

I am trying to help my friend find a super lightweight laptop.

I have read a review about the new Sony Vaio TX Series on an American website laptopmag.com it only weighs 2.8 pounds she needs it to be very light. It is small but also has a nearly full size keyboard. Does anyone know if it is available in the uk? Or how much it is in the UK?
Many Thanks

Hi there Goldfinch,

By all means by a Sony if you wish,
In my experience they don`t honour the guarantee or answer proper questions,
As in my Vaio at 9 months needed a new CD Rom, hardly an exorbidant item. They where not interested in replacing it. They expected me to cover the cost of damage caused by their courier, and wait 3 weeks for a guarantee covered repair. In the end, I went to Dixons locally and bought a liteonit CD Rom & did the job in 15 minutes.

3 months after the guarantee, the single layer DVD writer packed up. The would not advise me of any reason a dual layer one would not work. Again, 3rd time lucky a Liteonit was spot on. The first 2 of equal renoun, where just not suitable.

Fujitsu Siemans- A friend had one of their laptop, nice & light. I needed to know a couple of things including whee the momory cover was. They where most helpfull. The laptop was well out of waranty

Good luck
Jemma

Hi Jemma, sounds a bit of a nightmare. >:(
Thanks for advice - I will take a look at fujitsu siemans - but did have my heart set on the sony. Has anyone else out there had a similar experience? Just wondering if it was a one off with cdrom.

Ironically, Sony optical drives are made by LiteOn!

Sony laptops are implausibly overpriced but I actually did find their tech support helpful and knowledgable though.

Mike if you are still there,
Just out of genuine interest, I never knew that Sony use Liteonit.
Might you have time to elaborate, please?
As some one that has replaced both optical drives in my Sony desktop, I didn`t recall what make they where

Thanks again
Jemma

I think he meant that Sony use re-badged propriatary hardware for their products.

They do this all the time. For example, the TFT screens in the PSP are made by Toshiba and I believe the Memory Card Duo`s are made by Sandisk and re-branded with the Sony logo.

Its common practice in the world of computing. They dont have the facility to make every thing themselves so source the parts they dont make, stuff them in a pretty shell and sell them for a fortune.

I believe Sony also do this with LCD and Plasma TVs.

Quote:
I believe Sony also do this with LCD and Plasma TVs.

Yep - screens are made by Samsung ;)

Gemma, Sony decided to outsource optical drive production to LiteOn as they couldn`t compete. LiteOn are one of the World`s largest manufacturers of optical drives with much better technical expertise than lesser players on the market like Sony and with the ability to manufacture the drives cheaper than Sony and a few others they became the choice for a lot of the electronics giants to produce equipment for them. I think there is one model of the Sony drive that is made by BenQ but most are LiteOns.

Despite this, it is difficult to firmware upgrade the Sony drives with LiteOn firmware (the firmware on LiteOn`s website will not work) due to checks for a header string inside Sony badged drives` firmware so if anybody wishes to buy a Sony drive, they are better off going for the LiteOn equivalent.

Back to the original query, however - yes, they are available in the UK. I saw one in my local Sony Store a couple of weeks ago.

hi and thanx for reply. I have seen them available now on internet - since my post. Did you have a go on one? Just wondering if it is a good computer especially the screen quality ...as it is expensive, but we have been recommeded sony.