which laptop?, Dell XPS 16 or Sony FW51

[RichardCranium]

Sony, eh?

Expensive to buy, hideously expensive to repair, spares and components also expensive.

Flip side: I am writing this on an 8 year old Sony Vaio. With extra batteries (each provided 20 minutes of running) it cost me £1,400. Given how heavily it has been used (it has been my main machine on and of during that time) I am happy I had got my money's worth out of it by 2005.

I visited a mate the other day, his teenage daughter has inherited his ancient laptop: a 7 year old Sony Vaio. She seems perfectly happy with it.

[JoJoGabor]

I have an 18 month old XPS 1330. It stopped charging a few months ago so I called support who told me I needed a new motherboard and it was out of warranty. i said I'd be getting some legal advice on that as I expected a motherboard to last longer than 18 months and within 5 minutes they called me back to offer a free repair! The repair guy said the old motherboards had a few problems like the GPU melting, but they are generally ok now.

Sony Vaios are notoriously unreliable

[d000hg]

My XPS was a peace of expensive sh*t. Burns up, graphics card melts, hinges on screen not strong enough... constant phone calls trying to sell stuff etc etc.

I never heard of a laptop having that problem before. Maybe you should disconnect the modem?

[MikeC1408]

Mac Book Pro

[conned tractor]

I have an 18 month old XPS 1330. It stopped charging a few months ago so I called support who told me I needed a new motherboard and it was out of warranty. i said I'd be getting some legal advice on that as I expected a motherboard to last longer than 18 months and within 5 minutes they called me back to offer a free repair! The repair guy said the old motherboards had a few problems like the GPU melting, but they are generally ok now.

Sony Vaios are notoriously unreliable

Same here. XPS 1330. 2GHz C2Duo. 2 gig ram. Does all that I want it to.

Touch wood have had no problems with it. Before I bought I read that the ones with the Nvidia GPU were frying so purposely bought the one with Intel graphics (mainly cus I aint bothered about graphics performance). I still manage to run the plasma telly through the HDMI on the side and it has a nifty little media remote built into the side. And mostly when desk based use an additional monitor in dual screen mode which works seamlessly. Doesn't run hot either as someone mentioned.

Good that you got the free repair, thanks for sharing that info.

The thing I do find annoying is the carp screeen - can't see a bloody thing when it is bright. Again there are two options for screen and I think I had the rubbish one.

Then again I know people who have had vaio's for years without problems, apart from of course the costs.

[css_jay99]

im kinda stuck considering these two were my only option.

I have had a 3 dell inspirons in the past that gave no issues, and was able to buy parts on ebay when something got broken.

I bought a sony laptop for £1000 about 3ys ago and the screen went after 1 year. Sony wanted me to pay £400 just for a new screen which seemed a ripoff.

While the XPS seems to have all the bells and whistle's I am just concerned with the heating problems reported on the dell forums. though some do have a few good things to say about it.

generally Is it better to buy the laptop as a business customer or buy as private (though still using business card). A work mate bought a Dell laptop as a business customer and was told that 10days cooling period does not apply! when he did not want the laptop


css_jay99

[MikeC1408]

I made a few posts a while back as I was after a new Laptop and these 2 were also my only option, or so I thought.

Under advise, can't remember who's, I went and got a Mac Book Pro and a copy of Fusion2 to run windows (3 instances of XP with different versions of Office).

Must say it's the best computer buy I've made to date and I haven't used the Dell XPS Desktop since the purchase.

[Moscow Mule]

Interesting reliability study

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/l...-win-hp-fails/

[krytonsheep]

This was due to their being one vent on the back of the laptop which is blocked when you open the macine to use, bit of a design flaw

I've got that XPS 13 (1340) and it's fine, the vent placement is a bit odd but isn't blocked unless you push the screen all the way back. I like it because it's only a bit bigger than a netbook, has SLI graphics and plays Left for Dead like beauty.

[Halcyon]

Sony, eh?

Expensive to buy, hideously expensive to repair, spares and components also expensive.

Flip side: I am writing this on an 8 year old Sony Vaio. With extra batteries (each provided 20 minutes of running) it cost me £1,400. Given how heavily it has been used (it has been my main machine on and of during that time) I am happy I had got my money's worth out of it by 2005.

I visited a mate the other day, his teenage daughter has inherited his ancient laptop: a 7 year old Sony Vaio. She seems perfectly happy with it.

WHS

I bought a sexy little Vaio for doing demos and working on trains, did a bit of that and ended up using it for eight years as a dev box running workflow engines, squirrel server, web server, visual studio, yada, yada, yada, by the end the keyboard was concave because of the number of times it had been thumped, and it has been thrown across the room more than once, then used by teenage son for "dodgy" internet activities (downloading free games and accessing Dr Who type websites... what were you thinking...)

At the time it was expensive, but after eight years of hard work it was a bargain.

Also buy from John Lewis, then if it does **** up they will be understanding!

R