Vaio has some of the best screens you can find in laptops but rest of hardware inside tend to be average and afaik they don't make dedicated gamer models.

I have an older model Vaio and it has/had a number of problems. The screen has several dead pixel areas, hard drive failed and the battery was recalled. From my own personal experience I think they are overpriced for what you get. And its like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip with Sony's reapair department (they still refuse to fix my screen).


If I can give you any advice, don't worry about the name of your rig. Find the CHEAPEST rig that does what you want it to do. Then go buy the thing, most of the parts all come from the same companies and the only thing your paying for is a name.

I have an FZ series laptop and it has mostly been great. My only problem has been with the battery, which now only has a battery life of 15 mins, but I did leave it on full power for an entire week solid, which is probably not a good thing to do. It comes with a blu-ray drive and every port that you might ever need, and it looks quite good too. It is a reasonable weight as well (15" model)

As for performance, it has been good. Mine has a 2Ghz dual core with 2GB ram, so it is not top spec, but for a medium sized laptop it is good, but it is starting to feel slightly sluggish (any easy ways of improving speed?). The newest game that I have played is Empire Total War, and it is not quite smooth, but the game is poorly coded, and apparently does not take advantage of multiple cores. One slightly problem is with the graphics card, but it will be better on newer models (I got mine last June)

That doesn't work in notebooks.

In notebook you need to look at :

1) screen quality

2) battery and backup time

3) keybord

4) GPU inside (if you need gaming notebook)

rest is less important.

Sure it works, it just requires a little research.  Trust me,  just because you pay more doesn't mean you get more.

As someone who works in IT I certainly wouldn't recommend one. They look good but lack substance and their support is terrible.

I had one with a power management issue where you'd plug the power in and the screen would go dark, unplug the power and it would light up again. Reformatted the system, same problem. Called Sony, after 3 weeks of saying they'd look into it said they didn't know what it was and couldn't help.

If you really want one make sure you upgrade the warranty.

Personally I'd stick with Lenovo, Toshiba, HP or Dell. Focus on brands who build PCs as their primary business, not a general electrics company.

please before you purchase any. I have this tough sob (accidentally dropped 2 already and still functioning like new)

http://www.shopbot.ca/pp-toshiba-qosmio-x300-p7350-toshiba-price-137446.html


it's a good gaming laptop, I can run Fallout 3 at max settings , crysis only on high setting.



OT. Vaio is great but it doesnt have a good a decent GPU yet...

Old piccy here.. but I can't find old pics of my laptop except a pic of my old gaming rig with the laptop box on the right.. Laptop is sitting at nieces now gathering dust....

I bought a VAIO laptop a looong time ago I think it was christmas 2004 well its lasted 4 years cause I loaned this out to my neices (homework assignments, internet surfing, facebook, MSN etc) but it died during 2008.  Anyway I think the motherboard has fried and Sony have qouted it could cost upto £200 to fix it (which is probably about $300 USD.

To be honest their systems are alright and I can't complain if you want to buy one.. go ahead...  but I know for what I paid for mine..  you pay for the name and design.  you can get better specs for cheaper from other places.   Mine costed me £900 back in 2004 which was about $1800 USD then.  and it came with.. I think.. 13" screen  1GB ram, 80GB hard drive and intel centrino CPU. 

When I had it in my possession I was just using it a few hours a week and the laptop got very hot.  I decided to give it to my nieces to use around christmas 2007 since they needed to have pc for coursework and when they finally got their own internet connection up they were using the laptop a lot for torrents and internet stuff.  So the laptop probably died from overheating

Thanks for all the info guys.

all major brands companies recall batteries to that includes those made by panasonic and toshiba.

and vaio are quite decent notebooks materials and LCD are at least a step head apple.

(cheap white plastic) unless buy a very expensive aluminium macbook pro.