I told you Sony Vaio notebooks suck

I saw this in the forum page of the Straits Times today. Seems that this is not the only person who thinks that Sony Vaio laptops (and not to mention their after-sales service) suck. I do not think many people will be buying a Sony laptop after this.

July 24, 2007
Laptops and dedicated graphic memory: Consumers have a right to know what they are paying for

I BOUGHT a Sony Vaio laptop VGN-SZ48GN in March, but it took me some months to discover that I am not getting what I have paid for.

I was told, during the sales transaction, that this high-end laptop has a dedicated graphic memory of 128MB but, to my dismay, it has only a mere 64MB memory.

And there is no detailed information on the specifications of the product on Sony's website and its printed brochures. Only the total memory, which includes the Dedicated Video Memory, System Video Memory and Shared System Memory, is stated.

After a few e-mail exchanges with Sony's Customer Contact Centre, I had a conversation over the phone with Sony's Customer Contact Centre Section Leader, Mr Chiou Bing Han.

He said that it had always been Sony's ongoing practice, which has been around for years, to not disclose the actual dedicated memory on the graphic card.

In another e-mail reply, he said Sony had been rightful in complying to the new Windows Vista classification of graphics memory, which is contradictory to what he said previously because Windows Vista was only launched in January 2007.

To highlight my point, there was a recent roadshow by Harvey Norman at Millennia Walk and the same laptop model was displayed with a promotional tag stating it has a dedicated graphic memory of 128MB. On further enquiry, the salesperson said his colleague has misprinted the tags.

I believe that consumers deserve a right to know what they are paying for. Sony's way of practice is not transparent, misleading consumers and ironically their authorised dealers too.

Kwan Ching Leong