Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO PCG-V505DX Laptop (1.40-GHz Pentium M (Centrino), 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This new laptop replaces a Toshiba A15-S127 that we bought 3 months ago and one that died 4 weeks later when the LCD screen cracked. This one still confuses my wife and me given that the thing spent most of its time in its carry case and it bore absolutely no external damage on the laptop's shell. To add insult to injury the store we bought it from wanted to charge us literally 2/3rds the cost of the thing to repair it, manufacturer's warranty be dammed, I guess. Suffice it to say that we won't be buying Toshiba products again nor shopping at this store (who's name, by the way, rhymes with Stomp Youse Say), ever again. I would have reviewed the S127, but what's the point? We hardly had it long enough to get to know it.

When Sony began producing computers, I was less than impressed. Yet another big name producing very shiny products that look great while using second rate parts that deliver underwhelming performance. That was several years ago and while I still don't care for big name brand PCs, they are still good machines. Even though I build my PCs from parts I choose, I can't build a lap top, and after the Toshiba debacle, anything would have been an improvement. Truth to tell, I didn't really like the Toshiba from the start, but my wife wanted something cheap to take to work and use it to learn Spanish, practice her mathematics and watch the occasional movie, and the Toshiba did a fair job at all of those things. The Sony PCG-505DX is a vast improvement in every category, though it was twice the price.

The 505 features a 1.5 Ghz Pentium 4 Centrino processor- possibly the most important consideration when buying a laptop these days. The CPU scales its speed and processing ability to conserve power and extend the usability of the lap top. With the full charge the 505 will run for nearly 5 hours when doing things like word processing. Obviously, the more things you do, the shorter the battery life will be. The Vaio also sports a whopping 512 mb of RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 16 mb of its own RAM, (a lot of laptops video RAM is actually shared with system RAM and performance takes a real hit), a 400 Mhz FSB, an 11 mb IEEE 802.11b `Wi-fi' wireless network adapter, 1 PC-MCIA slot, 2 USB + 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire ports, CD-RW & DVD player combo drive, Network and modem ports, VGA port, and a Sony memory stick slot. All of this is packed into a very small and very attractive box,. The casing also has a lot of polished aluminum, which will no doubt enhance the durability and life of the computer.

Though the S127 was fully 600 Mhz faster, the 505 out performs it every category- it boots faster, loads programs faster, and came with much better software pre-installed. I actually plan to keep all of Sony's own music and video programs, which is odd as I usually spend the first day or so with any laptop I have owned blowing out all the junk and promotional software that comes with them. About the only things I removed was AOL and that really terrible office package known as Microsoft Works. Everything else will stay. Sony also wisely partitioned the 60 Gb hard drive to make mirroring the drive much easier. (What they didn't include was a system restore CD or DVD and instead require you to make your own. If you want to do this, make sure your have a stack of CD-Rs handy, because it will take 9 of them).

The 505 is actually pretty much the same size as my old 486 Compaq Aero, which itself was a dynamite little machine. I love the Vaio's design and feel- it's sturdy, incredibly well made and given the luck we have had with our other Sony products, I suspect this little beauty will be around for a long time. About the only real complaints I have about it is the speakers sound terrible, but then again, this is a laptop and a general gripe about laptop keyboards in general- I just can't get comfortable with any of them. This is the best laptop I have ever owned in both performance and build quality. The screen image quality is great, the keys and controls intuitive, I only wish we had bought this first instead of the Toshiba.

I bought this notebook in December 2003 because I was attracted by its sleek and shiny design, and thought I could trust a Sony product. Looks are certainly deceiving. Two months later, I left the notebook idle for 5 minutes while I attended to something else, and when I returned and touched the touchpad to activate it, the whole thing shut down and wouldn't start up again. Sony Support told me to take out the battery, hold down the power button, etc., but nothing worked so it was sent in for repair and I received it 4 working days later. A month and a half later, in mid-March, I touched the touchpad to move the mouse and the notebook died again!! It was completely unresponsive to any attempts to revive it. I am incredulous at the quality of this product. Sony should really get its act together. If there's one thing I have learned from using this product, it is to constantly backup my files. When the notebook was working, it worked beautifully, but it's intolerable to have to send it in for repair every couple of weeks. I would strongly urge prospective buyers to consider other laptops, e.g. the IBM X40.

This is one of the best laptops I worked on. Though many people think 12.1" screen is smaller, I do not think so, it gives you an 1024x768 resolution which is very good, unless you are expecting your laptop to be a TV replacement to watch movies. I am a student and use my laptop for heavy software development and I never faced any problem with the CPU performance. Till now my experience with this new centrino processor is awesome. As for the battery life issues, it cant be better than this. Though compared to the other centrino machines this machine is bit expensive, but I pay for the style and brand and the quality of the product. Its been 3 weeks since I bought this notebook, and I never repented for paying the extra buck..

AS for the other side,You have to make your own recovery CD's, which is very important step before you do anything with the laptop.. And I could not upgrade to windows XP professional, it gave me some virtual memory low message and kept on restarting after the installation was done, So I had to do complete installation of XP Pro. If the XP pro upgrade is not successful for you also, do not worry. You can put the recovery CD 1 and get all the software installed back on the clean XP professional. So there is a way around to keep the software which came with the machine and have XP pro.. And I am little disappointed SONY did not provide us with a third party CD writer software, we are forced to use the inbuilt XP writer, which is slow compared to NERO cd burner software or Roxio easy cd creator.. Overall you will get the value for your money..

And I do not understand why Amazon display's different specification on this website than what we see on sony. My laptop has an L2 cache of 1MB, but amazon displays here it as 512 KB which is very confusing. I didnt buy my notebook on Amazon becoz of that confusion..

I purchased this laptop at the end of November 2003. I liked the laptop - lightweight, good battery life (for what I need), compatiable for wireless internet - quick - keyboard takes a little getting used to, but not bad once you get started. I was very happy with my purchase.

At the beginning of January I accidently picked up this laptop by the screen. Apparently this caused a VERY LARGE THUMB PRINT ON THE LCD SCREEN. So words of advice, never EVER touch the screen.

In the middle of January I set my laptop down. When I came back it would no longer go on. I called Sony help on a call that lasted 3 hours. WE TRIED NUMEROUS THINGS TO GET THE COMPUTER TO WORK AGAIN WITH NO AVAIL. I WAS TRANSFERRED TO ABOUT 5 PEOPLE DURING THIS CALL. FINALLY THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE WAS THE SHIP THE COMPUTER TO SONY FOR REPAIR IN CALIFORNIA. I LIVE IN PENNSYLVANIA AND THEY SAID THEY HAD NO LOCAL REPAIR SHOPS. So off the computer went to California. Since the computer was ONLY 2 MONTHS old they said whatever was wrong would be covered under warranty.

WELL HERE IS WHERE THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS........Remember the THUMB PRINT I told you about from touching the LCD screen. They were trying to charge me $795.00 to replace the LCD screen and would not do any repairs until I agreed to pay the $795.00 for the replacement of the LCD screen. Not that I particullary like having a thumb print on my LCD screen, I like even less having to pay $795.00 after just purchasing the computer in November for $1,799.00. Touching the LCD screen SHOULD NOT CAUSE SUCH A THING. I had a DELL laptop for 4 years and touched it on many occasions and NEVER EVER had a problem. Not once did the DELL stop working for no reason or break because I touched the LCD screen.

After 2 weeks of fighting with SONY........probably a GOOD 15 hours total on the phone, it was finally decided that they would NOT FIX THE LCD SCREEN, but they would get the computer to start working again. It has yet to be explained to me WHY the COMPUTER STOPPED WORKING IN THE 1st place.

That was covered under warranty and my computer is now back 2 weeks later up and running. I can put up with a thumb print I guess. But words of advice NEVER EVER TOUCH YOUR LCD SCREEN. IT IS VERY SENSATIVE. AND SONY CUSTOMER SUPPORT HAS TO BE THE WORST I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH IN MY LIFE. I probably spoke with about 20 people during this time and only one girl by the name of WENDY provided me any CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

Although I do like this computer, I would not recommend it. A computer should not stop working for no reason after 2 months and an LCD Screen should not leave an imprint after touching it. The customer support is terrible. If I had it to do all over again I would go back to a DELL which caused me no problems in the 4 years I had it. It was just time to upgrade to a largeer, quicker, newer version. The weight of this computer and style is what led me to this. Really, its not worth it compared to the aggreviation that I have experienced and the lack of customer support.

There are some really great things about this laptop. First, the weight (or lack of it). It is light and easy to carry in a bag, which will be a relief if you are replacing a nearly 10 pound laptop like me. The old dinosaur was doing well if it got 70 minutes from a battery. The V505DX gets almost 4 HOURS for basic word processing and surfing (closer to 2 and change if you're watching a DVD).

I had read the complaints and had to buy my unit sight unseen, but I am very happy. I had heard bad things about the keyboard. They are, for the most part, not true. Yes, it is a smaller keyboard. Yes, the right shift key is small, but you can get used to it by using it for a couple of hours. The screen looks good and is a 12 incher, but you get the savings in weight.

You will find when you get this laptop that it comes with no discs for the OS or bundled software. This is because Sony has partitioned to the drive so that the application software is in one place if it needs to be reloaded. In theory, all your data should be on the second partition (D drive), so if anything ever happens, you can restore your machine to functionality while saving your data. I moaned about this at first, but I know see the advantages of it. What it really means is that you are not going to be able to do a clean install of XP Pro and you are not going to be able to take the partition off the drive without risking losing the ability to restore your laptop should something go wrong.

You do have to create your own recovery discs (9 of them!) or order a DVD recovery disc from Sony for about 15 bucks. If you are like me and like to format your laptop as soon as you get it, you will need to know that you aren't going to be able to do this (at least easily) with this one.

I do wish the warranty was longer than a year, but every other laptop I have looked at seems to have the same.

Love this baby!

I've had the sony PCG-V505DX for more than 2 years and overall, I've been satisfied with it. What I like the most are the keyboard, the sleek feel of the computer, and its weight. It's a pleasure typing on it. The design is great and it's light enough to carry around.

My only negative experience, unfortunately, was a near-catastrophic one. After about 8 months, it stopped working. It wouldn't even boot up. I called Sony's tech support and they were no help. In fact, their suggestion that I ship it in and they would reformat everything was less than helpful since saving my data was of utmost importance. Fortunately, I took it to a local shop and the guy fixed it in a day without any loss of data. Also, the warranty covered the repairs. However, the experience left me with little confidence in Sony's quality control and no confidence in their tech support.

All in all, the computer is a pleasure to use. However, the fact that the computer wouldn't even start up after just 8 months has convinced me that my next purchase will be of a company with a better reputation for reliability.

The laptop is sleek, sexy, and is ergonomic enough, but apparently, there is a reliability issue. Mine stopped booting up after 18 months of normal use. I don't leave it running hot, I use that Targus cooling pad with a USB-powered fan.

It was definitely not an LCD issue. The repair technician recommended that I replace the motherboard and/or CPU, but was unable to fix it otherwise.

I found this 66-page thread too late... but it's enough to keep me away from purchasing another Vaio to replace this broken one:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/5449/?o=0

Wow. I'm also surprised at all the negative reviews. Maybe I just got lucky, but this laptop has done everything I expected it to. Keep in mind that I've had it since March of this year... so that's a good 9 months of use. It's perfect for my school assignments. It runs things I need like MS Visual Studio just fine. And I can bring it to school without the power cord, knowing that I will have enough power to last me several hours.

I even played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and City of Heroes on it over the summer break. For CoH, I had to kind of tweak the video card a bit... but that appears to be a known issue with customized laptop video cards (Mobility Radeons, to be precise).

Overall... I love this laptop.

I bought the 505dx after looking long and hard at the TR series, and ended up buying it because it had much the same features at a slightly lower price. So far, I'm glad I did. The 505dv is packed with memory (comes with 512, can be upgraded to 2 gigs) and a very fast processor for a computer this small (1.4 mhz pentium M). As someone else has noted, the video card has its own memory. The 505Dx really seems to be targeted at people who want to do digital video or media, hence the extremely large hard drive, relatively souped-up video card, and relatively large amount of memory capacity. It also comes with a large amount of media software preinstalled. Oddly, this model does not seem to have a DVD-writable drive available as an option.

The laptop itself is just under five pounds, and the casing seems strong and durable. It offers two USB 2.0 ports, which, trust me, you will appreciate when using peripheral devices. Other perks include built-in wireless networking and a memory stick slot.

Now the downside-the laptop does not have a very large range of available features-you can choose XP pro or home, 40-80GB hard drive, and more memory, but not much else is optional. This is common failing of laptops in general. As with most small laptops, the optical drive is built-in and can't be swapped out. The keyboard and mouse are hard to use and the mousepad in particular is not very sensitive (another common failing of laptops in general). The sound from the speakers is crappy, but laptop speakers always sound crappy. Get some external speakers or headphones.

Also, note that sony skimps on its warranties-mine came with only a one-year limited warranty for parts and service and 90-day free technical support. Sony really needs to take a lesson from Dell and offer greater warranty coverage, especially for laptops, which tend to be more fragile and abused.

In all, I think this computer is a great value for the money, particularly if you want something small and powerful with which to do music downloading and sharing.

This laptop is just great. It is light and portable. After having suffered with having two laptops (non-Sony) damage themselves because of a cost cutting strategy of using the screen itself as a support member, I have switched to Sony. They have a case that is stiff enough to actually protect the computer. A 12.1" screen is the perfect size for most things (especially if you are are trying to use it on a plane and you find yourself in coach, you just can't open a 17" screen unless you are Mini-Me). This machine is great for everything you might need from a notebook and want to use it outside of the home.

Great job from Sony!