Sony Vaio VGN-NR310E
July 9th, 2009
This is by far the absolutely worst computer ever released to the world. Even after upgrading to 2 gig's of ram I found the CPU up against the wall at 100% and freezing the computer frequently. I'm sure it doesn't help that Windows Vista is something of a hog when it comes to resources.
I have heard all over the net that Sony Vaio computers have serious heat problems. I'm not experiencing any of the behavior that I heard related to that but I do think it seems hotter than hell and wonder about it. My last laptop definitely got hotter and hotter towards the day it ultimately failed. I'm sure the two are related. Heat death, we may not be sure about the ultimate fate of the universe, but the Sony Vaio is burning down the house... literally.
In addition to this, If you want to download any helpful hints etc. from the Sony site, forget about anything real deep for the geek squad. You're on your own with this baby. The manual actually mentions checking to see if the unit is plugged in as the first step in trouble shooting. I closed the manual after a perfunctory purusal of this rubbish.
I think that Sony and Microsoft worked together on this one and are making it exceedingly difficult to get the drivers that they didn't build to handle the config of the board in the event we all hated vista.
Networking hell, that's what they call it. I've only met a few people that were able to configure my computer at work when I wanted to get the computers to talk to each other and use a nice network printer copier. Getting XP and Vista to share files together was accomplished after much ado. I thought about the idea that if I were a designer of the most used OS on the planet I'd make the transition much more smooth. For instance, XP and Vista would play nice in my world. I mean right out of the box. Is that too much to ask?
So... the next project really is building a linux machine and saying goodbye to microsoft forever. Eventually my friends that know me will say; "Dave, can you help me with my computer?" and I'll have to say something like, "Sorry, I just use them since I switched to Linux!
Back to the VGN-NR310E...It has the most stripped down CMOS I've ever seen in my entire life. You have absolutely no control of anything on the board. The advanced tab is beyond pitiful. You have the choice of selecting between booting from cd or network, that's the advanced tab! Wow, I'm completely underwhelmed! The huge amount of time I spend working on this laptop just to keep it from crashing makes me wish I'd spent a lot more money and spent a little more time looking for the right machine.
I guarantee that I will never ever buy anything produced my the SONY corp. ever again. Additionally, I will ceaselessly blog about this machine as it digs itself an early grave. If anyone out there reads this and has something to add, use my contact form and let me know about your Sony Vaio story.
SONY VAIO VGN-NR310E -- Average Score: 60% - poor60%: Such a bad rating is rare. There exist hardly any notebooks, which are rated worse.
