Rating: 
Summary: One problem after another
Review: Be warned,Sony technical support is a complete NIGHTMARE. I've had persistent cooling fan problems (it rattles loudly after a few hours of use)with my laptop. It took nearly 30 hours on the phone to get them to allow me to send it in (you can wait 1&1/2 hours just to be told that you'll need to wait to talk to someone else). When it came back, the CD-Rom was finally working (it too had also been defective), but the fan problem was not so much as acknowledged. I'll never but a Sony product again after the ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE service I received. Buy something else.
Rating:
Summary: OVERHEATS, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
Review: Do not buy this laptop, unless
1) it is always snowing in your house,
2) you like to send it in every 3 months for service,
3)Sony is paying you to use it,
4) You need it for decoration,
5) You have no idea what a computer and since your TV is sony you thought it might look nice having the same brand on everyting. I bought this laptop and it stared overheating and shutting down within 3 months, I finally returned it to the U.S. but Sears changed they're policy and even though I had a 2 year estended warranty, they made me send it to Sony who replaced the motherboard CPU and heatsink, (Costs over $600, glad I had the extended plan) but they never fixed or replaced the DVD/CD-RW drive, so it still scratches disks and doesn't always work.
Now after having it back for 2 months it just overheated and shut off in the middle of a video. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Needless to say I'll be returning it again.
WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T DON'T DONT'T BUY A SONY LAPTOP.
Rating: 
Summary: I love Sony and want to love this VAIO
Review: Everything electronic in my life is Sony, so why not my laptop too. I could use the built-in memory stick port and the interconnectivity to the of my Sony world. I want to like this notebook, but it is tough. Is it loud - yes! But no louder that the desktop it seeks to replace. The worse part is it is loud and will still overheat. This is not an Pent-M and will get exceptionally hot. So hot in my case that it just shuts off. This only happens in gaming (like Quake3) - I've never had a problem with Photoshop or Premier or an other application shutting the machine down. Apparently, you have a choice on cooling - performance or quiet. Quiet is really a poor word choice. Performance means your machine will [turn]up the fan to 100% and continue to put full power to the CPU - even to the point of system collapse. Quiet will also crack the fan, but will also throttle down the CPU to keep the machine from crashing. That's a horrible choice to make. If you bought a 2.4Ghz you want to be able to use 2.4Ghz. ...They are DVD sellers, not computer experts. You're getting DVD player level of support with any Sony product. If you are not extremely enamored with Sony (like me), lack the technical know-how to solve most problems yourself, or are relying totally on Sony to save the day then you're asking for trouble. My suggestion - buy the 2 or 3 year service contract that the store sells .... My biggest regret of buying this machine is the battery life. I am lucky to get an hour out of thing - especially if I am watching a DVD. At [a price] for a second battery it is tough to justify buying another.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time -- unless your in the Arctic
Review: For basic tasks this laptop is probable fine -- however if you are going to use it with products like Adobe Photoshop or do any kind of software compiling then skip this one. The laptop has a terrible overheating problem and shuts down quite often when the CPU is chunking.
I am sorry I bought this thing.
Rating:
Summary: It won't power on just after the gurantee expires!!!
Review: I bought a sony PCG-GRZ630 one and a half year ago, so did one of my friends. We were attracted by its lower price, large memory and large screen ..., and so on. Half a year later I met the first problem, the integrated Lan card didn't work properly. It was automatically disconnected occasionaly for unknown reasons. One year later, just after the gurantee expires, my friend's GRZ630 failed to power on, no matter how hard we try!! Just a few days ago, I had the same problem with mine. It was terrible! Fortunately, I got it powered on again after exchanging the position of the memory sticks. Anyway, it is the worst experience with this laptop. Just a nightmare!!
Suggestion: NEVER buy a sony laptop any more!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Best bang for your buck!
Review: I bought an HP Pavillion zt1230, and had so many performance and hardware issues that I bought this Sony just 4 months later! I use it mostly at home, and take it with me on vacation: I'm not someone who travels constantly with it for work. I surf the Web with it, do graphics and web design, play video games, and edit home photos. Even while running several large graphics programs at once, the memory is never a problem, and it handles my husband's fastest video games like Warcraft III. With the HP, his game is jerky, and there wasn't enough memory for me to use Front Page and Photo Shop at the same time.
It's extremely sturdy, whereas the HP was not. I have three children, ages 11, 2 and 5 months, and a husband who thinks that banging on the buttons will make it work faster! My HP had three different keys pop off, and the mouse USB port busted the first week. This Sony has been dropped, banged on and spit up in (my baby actually spit up all over the keys without hurting it). The battery life isn't what it claims to be, but then none of them are, are they?! Mine lasts about 1.5 hours, and charges back up quickly. The large screen on this is a dream! I will say that this is a large laptop, and might not be the best choice if you travel constantly with it strapped to your back. It's large, much heavier than my HP, and the power supply for it is huge! However, I think that part of the reason it weighs more than the HP is because it's built much more solidly. It still fits into my backpack-style laptop bag easily, and the size and weight aren't a problem in the least for my needs. The processor on this thing is a screamer! I've never had a computer boot up and shut down as fast as this one in my life! And for once I finally have a computer that can actually let me see the benefits of having Broadband Internet-my other 3 computers didn't let me see much improvement in speed. The keyboard is nicely laid out, with nice, clicky buttons.The touchpad is nice, because it's not as freakishly sensitive as my other one was; the HP, if you even brushed against it in the slightest, it would register as a mouse left-click. I also like the fact that this has an ACTUAL scroll bar at the bottom, instead of a "touchpad scrollbar". It's much easier to use when my husband steals my laptop mouse than the other one was. My favorite feature about this laptop has been the Memory Stick drive! I have both a Sony digital still camera and a Sony digital video camera, and when I want to load photos and mpegs onto my computer, I just pop the stick into the side of it: No cords, nothing! The fact that it's that convenient now motivates me to do it more often than I was before. If I had to find a drawback to this computer, I'd say it's the fan. There's an intake vent underneath,in the middle, and it's flush with the bottom of the computer, so it occassionally overheats. Using the two little elevating pegs on the underside in the back raises it up a smidge and keeps this from happening. Overall, if you want quality, power, and versatility, I just don't see how you can beat this without going into the ..range. I paid dearly for straying from Sony with that last laptop, and it won't happen again!
Rating:
Summary: almost perfect
Review: I bought my grz630 7 months ago and never experienced a single problem with it. I was running some perfomance tests on it, i played Unreal and was running a bunch of programs at the same time for several hours (photoshop, winamp, 5 windows of IE), and it NEVER crashed!
Make shure you choose "perfomance", not "quiet" thermal control strategy at the Power Panel, because if you choose quiet mode, the CPU fan will run twice slower and the system may shut down while perfoming tasks like 3D games or Corel Draw. Yes, it gets hot after 2-3 hours of running, but not hotter than my cousins Toshiba. The only drawback is it has old USB ports, but not a big deal, you can get a PCMCIA card with 2-3 of those ports for around 20 bucks.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Monster!!
Review: I bought this last month and it's worth it, games runs smooth, great performance, good sound, it has a built in memory stick. To tell you honestly this monster runs like a desktop! it never feels like your using a notebook. Handles many application easily!! It is true, the fan is kinda noisy but the heck with that, that only means your vaio is powerful!!0
Rating:
Summary: THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!
Review: I have dealt with many companies in my life...but none come close to Sony when it comes to treating customers with utter disrespect, lack of empathy on the part of customer service, and blatant ignorance on the part of technical support. I had a problem with the touchpad mouse and have been on the phone with Sony for over two months trying to correct the problem. They simply will not take it in to be serviced even though it is still under parts/service warranty. It is absolutely unreal how comfortable Sony is with keeping customers on hold for literally HOURS only to be told that you will need to be transferred to another department. Lucky for me, this department informed me of my waittime...50 minutes to speak with the next representative. Sony has to get its act together or else customers will rebel. I do not see this as sustainable.
Rating:
Summary: A very portable desktop.
Review: I have had my Sony GRZ630 for about 1 month now. I am more and more pleased and impressed with it every day. This laptop's power and speed is certainly comparable to most of today's desktops.
I was debating between a Dell Laptop and a Sony Vaio. I wanted desktop performance since portability is not that big of an issue for me. This laptop weighs in at 7.5 lbs not including the large power adapter. I think the total weight with all my accessories (power adapter, trackball mouse, portable surge portector, and wireless pc card) and the laptop combined is about 10 lbs. Yes, that's pretty heavy to carry around on foot. BUT I don't mind carrying the weight from my house to my car, from my car to work. I do carry my laptop to work everyday. The weight has yet to bother me. I would not recommend this laptop for people who go to work on foot. However, if you commute to work via a car, carrying this for 20 feet at a time is certainly not bad at all.
The little touches that Sony added for the laptop make this machine that much more superior than others. I compared the GRZ630 to my friend's Dell.
1. Sony has added flaps on the PCMCIA slots. When no cards are inserted, the flap protects the ports. Dell left the PCMCIA slots wide open.
2. Sony has a cover for the monitor and parallel ports while Dell again left those ports wide open for dust and what have you.
3. This laptop has 3 USB ports instead of the normal 2 USB ports for most laptops.
4. Memory stick and iLink abilities are awesome. If you have a Sony digital camera, you will fall in love with the memory slot on the laptop. Not only can you transfer your photos from your camera to laptop quickly without wires, you can also use your existing memory sticks as extra storage.
5. the pegs to raise the laptop for better cooling. not many laptops include this much needed feature.
This machine's processing speed and included memeory more than serves the needs of having multiple resource hungry applications opened at once. I am a web designer. I can have my Photoshop, Flash MX, Dreamweaver, FTP manager, messengers, and outlook express all opened at once without any decrease in performance. Now that is power! The 32 mb video card is great. I often hook up my 19 inch Trinitron monitor to the laptop for duel monitor usage. I can display both screens at 1024 by 768 at 32 bit color at the same time without any problems what so ever.
In short, if you are looking for a desktop replacement, this is the laptop for you. At 7.5 lbs, it is not truly mobile, but it is portable. But hey, this one has the DVD/CD-Burner combo drive, P-4 2.4 ghz processor, 512 mb of ram, 32 mb radeon video card and a 15 inch screen. I doubt you can find this spec in any laptop weighing under 4.7 lbs (which qualifies as mobile in my view) at this price. The only complaint I have for the laptop is that the USB ports are 1.1 instead of 2.0. But the firewire port makes up for the lack of 2.0 USB ports.
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