Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-SZ691N/X 13.3-Inch Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7700, 2 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, Vista Business)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Strengths: Beautiful, elegant, well-thought-out design. Light weight. Stunning LCD. Excellent overall performance. Very comfortable keyboard.

Weaknesses: Bloatware, bloatware everywhere. No printed documentation. Poor online knowledge base. No recovery discs or installation discs. Limited configuration options. Obscenely expensive extra battery. Horrible Sony customer service.

Summary: Sony's taken a great machine and, sadly, Sony-ized it to death with bad software and bad support.


The Sony VAIO SZ670NC like its other SZ6-series siblings is a beautiful, elegant machine with a very well-thought-out design. It's very sleek with its carbon-grey casing and its extremely thin LCD panel. It's very light (4 lbs exactly), yet feels sturdy.

The LCD display is vivid and responsive, with stunning colors and sharpness. Sony is said to be notorious for dead pixels; my display had only one dark pixel near a bottom corner, which is something I can certainly live with.

The performance is excellent, possibly a bit stunted by the slow RAM the machine ships with. (You can replace it with faster RAM.) The Windows Experience score of 3.5 is limited by the surprisingly small video RAM, but that doesn't seem to affect its performance. It handles Aero perfectly.

The keyboard is full sized, but with less travel than the ThinkPad. Still, it's very comfortable to type on it. The trackpad is responsive and accurate, but it could be a bit larger.

Sony loses points, though, on the way they package this nice (and expensive!) machine. It arrived CHOCK FULL of lousy bloatware, much of which was either time-limited trial versions of good software or unlimited versions of bad software. It literally took me four days (and nights!) and a full hard-drive restore to clean all the garbage off of the machine. The result was worth it in that I now have a very streamlined machine, but Sony might have made my life a bit easier by giving the option of a "clean" configuration from the factory or of at least providing a "clean" recovery disk. (Some value-added resellers offer their own versions of such "clean" recovery disks or can pre-configure a "clean" system for you.)

Sony doesn't ship the machine with any substantive printed documentation or any discs. There is the usual recovery partition on the hard drive, which was able to restore my system to the factory configuration when I removed something I actually needed. Also, luckily, the first thing I had done after buying the laptop was to create recovery media (needed 2 blank DVD+/-R's).

Sony's on-line knowledge base seems to be quite barren and unhelpful compared to HP's or Dell's. I haven't had reason to call tech support yet, but when I tried contacting Sony's customer service department about my purchase of an extended warranty and accident-protection plan, they kept me on hold for over an hour before I hung up, and I'm still waiting for a reply to the email I sent them two weeks ago. This is pretty much the WORST customer service I have ever encountered -- and I've owned a Dell!

Finally, Sony offers few pre-built configurations for this machine, although there are several more versions floating around at resellers. Even Sony's so-called "Configure-To-Order" systems give limited flexibility and are not as good value as the pre-configured systems like the SZ670NC. I sacrificed hard drive speed and bought more pre-installed memory than I wanted (I'd rather have gotten the minimum from Sony and bought my own memory at 1/4 the price elsewhere afterwards) in buying the pre-built SZ670NC, but I got it quickly and painlessly.

One final negative is that spare Sony batteries are obscenely expensive, just as they are for Sony cameras and Sony camcorders.

Despite these negatives, this is really a great little computer. There's no such thing as the perfect laptop, but this one comes closer than any I have owned so far. If you can put up with removing the bloatware (or can find a pre-assembled clean recovery disk from a 3rd party vendor) and won't need much after-sales support from Sony, this is a good purchase.

I was so excited when I bought this laptop, and was happy to pay the costs because it is so light and powerful. It was too good to be true. Three days after the purchase, it completely froze. I took it back to the shop, and the assistant did a total reboot and said it was the extra software. The computer seemed to be working fine. Yesterday, 3 weeks after the purchase, it froze again. Hours before a crucial meeting, I could not access my files, or anything in the computer, which seemed to be overheating (the cable was faulty too). I took it back to the shop for good- I wanted this model so bad, and all I have had is one headache after another. The design is great, and the lightness is amazing, it feels like you are carrying a book or a thick magazine instead of a laptop. The graphics are also very impressive. But:
The screen is hard to clean, the computer comes with way too much trial software and yet without recovery CDs, and the instruction leaflet is online only- so if you have problems with the computer you cannot read the instruction manual. I expected something else for this price. The design is great, but what do you want a sleek frozen computer for?

The amount of software loaded on this computer is obscene, and this is not an exaggeration. Just to do any single task, the computer would take 60 seconds or more to respond because there is just THAT much software loaded into memory. It is insane, I am not exaggerating! Just uninstalling everything doesn't remove all the residual miscellaneous files and settings that the system must deal with in order to run regular tasks. If you buy this machine, I would suggest you use your own copy of Windows to overwrite what is there so the computer is clean and runs at optimal level. Other than though, the computer's performance had a Vista Performance Score of 3.5, but was very unimpressive when using it. Next, the video was iffy on this machine when connected to an external monitor, it was unbelieveably unstable. Lastly, when this computer is connected to its docking station, the DVD drawer dragged along the surface is is laid on meaning you have to move your mouse and mousepad completely out of the way. One last thought: It was not a sturdy machine.

I love the laptop but I agree with other people: SONY should allow XP downgrade and also should NOT load all of those unneccessary software. It takes forever to unistall them

The great part...hardware-wise, this laptop is top of the line. Fast Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram, large HDD, 8400M GS, etc. It has a BEAUTIFUL screen and is insanely light-weight. Some people do not like the feel of the casing or the keyboard, saying it feels plasticy or cheap, but honestly, I think it feels solid and durable. The keyboard is the perfect size in my opinion and the casing feels like high quality.

Now comes the not so great part. Vista! I have never used Vista before but thought that since I'm fairly good with XP, Vista shouldn't be too hard to learn. Like any new OS you play with, there will be some time spent learning where new features are and how to change this or that. I'm well aware of that. Never once did I think this would be an instantaneous transition from XP to Vista. And actually, it wasn't so much the transition that aggravated me as it was the bugginess of Vista.

I can't say for sure if it is Vista, Sony's software, or a mix, but I had to spend a good chunk of time spread over a week just to get this OS running somewhat stable. Even at this point, I'm not 100% sure all the kinks are worked out. I am sure when SP1 comes out for Vista, it will help out tremendously.

So yeah, I'm not sure how to rate this item since on one hand, I love the design/look and the hardware packed in. On the other hand, there are definitely some software issues such as Vista and all the bloat-ware installed.

If you're willing to put forth the effort to do any kind of software cleaning, then by the end, you will have one spectacularly running machine. I got this for a very reasonable price as well from Amazon, so that is another plus to this. However, if I had bought this a lot earlier when it was $2000+, I would be extremely mad to have to go through so much trouble just to get the laptop to run properly.

I purchased this computer 45 days ago. Today, the spring under the left mouse key failed. There is no reflex in the key at this point.

I called Sony and received absolutely horrid service and even worse service options.

Initially, after explaining the problem, the service technician asked me to reboot the computer and enter the BIOS setup. This didn't make any sense to me, but I did it anyway. After he asked me to reset the defaults in the BIOS setup, I had to explain again that this was a hardware failure, not a software failure.

He then told me that I would need to send the notebook back to Sony for repair. It will take approximately three weeks, he told me. I explained that I could not afford to be without my notebook for three weeks. He said that was the best they could do. I asked if there were any on-site options available. He said yes, but it would cost $149. I told him that I would not pay for service as the notebook is only 45 days old and has not undergone any abuse or excessive wear and tear. He said he had no other options.

I asked if I could simply take it back to the retailer or have Sony exchange it for another one so I can continue to use a notebook. He said no.

It was very hard to understand the Sony representative.

I asked for his supervisor. He was even worse. That is, after waiting ten minutes and being transferred back to the original tech two times.

The bottom line is this. This machine is slow with VISTA. Slow to boot up and slow to shut down. All of the added software is a drain on notebook performance and is a real pain. The hardware failed after 45 days and Sony is not willing to stand behind its notebook, which I paid a PREMIUM price for, thinking I would get a quality piece of hardware and a quality company behind it.

Don't buy a Sony notebook. I should have bought the Dell.

The notebook is gorgeous with a thin LED screen, brushed metal palmrest, and carbon fiber hood.

Sony sold the consumer down the river by allowing every imaginable bloatware to be installed on this PC. Uninstalling them by the normal method will take hours and even then your machine will still be slow because you still have residual registray files everywhere.

There are threads devoted entirely on how to do a complete clean install on this machine. Dont even get me started on the Sony Support Site.

The only other choice in the 13inch, 4lb market is the Dell m1330. While in raw beauty, it does not offer the same look as the Sony, it has other redeeming qualities such slot loading drive, presentation remote, less bloatware, and an HDMI connection.

The choice is up to you ultimately. I'll still keep my SZ6.

Every once in a while, I get the blue screen of death with an error that reads something like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Neither Microsoft nor Sony were able to provide a solution to the problem. Micrsofot support asked me to install an untested hotfix while Sony just asked me to perform a system recovery that erases the hard drive and reinstalls the original software as it came from the factory.

Therefore, I spent hours and hours reinstalling sofwtare and uninstall the large amounts of pre-installed software (impressive... most likely will not buy a Sony VAIO again just because of this). With no success.

The notebook continues posting the blue screen of dead with the same error. Guess what? No solution found yet.

It is not a problem of this specific configuration. My wife owns a VGN-SZ450 and does the same mistake. I imagine it is the combination of VAIO and Vista Business.

Used to be Sony fan owning TV, Photo camera, Video camera, notebooks, etc. But this time Sony failed: an expensive and inefficient notebook indeed.

Even after reading the reviews I bought this laptop because of "name" and "style", and loved it for few days... and then came to realize that this laptop is slower than my wifes, 899 dollar Toshiba (1.8).
Horrible performance, It was taking around 3-5 mins to re-boot. Also, key board is very noisy, makes more noise than my desktop keyboard, very annoying, especially in meetings.

But kudos to Amazon for providing 'Amazing' service and helped me return the laptop.


Thanks

this laptop is good looking and looks durable too but it comes with too much junk that takes lot of time to uninstall and it is even making the laptop slow and some times some simple applications such as internet explorer also do not work.the other problem is if u call sony the only first thing they say is to format the system again and problem is with os and they donot provide downgrade cd's.