Home :: Computers :: Notebooks :: Sony  

Acer
Apple
Compaq
Gateway
Hewlett-Packard
IBM
Other Brands
Sharp
Sony

Toshiba
Sony VAIO PCG-GRZ630 Notebook (2.40-GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive)

Sony VAIO PCG-GRZ630 Notebook (2.40-GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive)

List Price: $1,499.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 >>

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Look elsewhere for happiness!
Review: This is not the computer you think it is! It's a little demon, wrapped up in silver grey plastic with a friendly logo.

Really, I should have read the amazon reviews BEFORE I bought this machine. I was blinded by my excitement of having my first laptop - a SONY, at that! I was moving on up in the world. Unfortunately, I wish I could've not moved at all. It has been nothing but horrible since day two. Day two? Yes, day one, it was perfect, like a child in its mother's eyes, it could do no wrong. Then, on day two, it overheated. The LCD hinge became loose. The IEEE 1394 port shorted out. Things just went wrong.

I had the latter of the two issues fixed, but there was still the issue with overheating. No matter what I did, whenever I started to play a game (Unreal, Quake, etc), it would go black and die on me. I tried everything short of holding a bag of frozen vegetables with a towel underneath it to get it to let me play my games. After all, that's what I'd gotten it for! But eventually I found that even if I wasn't trying to play a game - just doing some work online, if I left the computer on for more than ten minutes on my desk, it would overheat and crap out. That was more than not good. Finally, after a few months, I broke down and purchased a cooling tray with dual fans, and that did the job. It let me run my computer for ages at a time without shutting down to cool off. It does drain battery power, though, but it's a trade off. That brings me to my next issue...

The battery life on this thing is for the CRAP. On max battery power, I get an hour, MAYBE. It could be just that my system is running so hot even on the cooling profile it's taking up power, but it could just be that it's made of crap. I haven't figured out which! On normal activity, this battery will last possibly half an hour, if you're lucky. I suggest either buying a better battery, or not buying this computer.

About a week AFTER my warrantee expired, I came upon an unfixable problem. If this is the sole reason you make your decision, it will be justifiable. This is the reason I do not want my computer anymore. The socket in which you plug the AC adapter into the computer has a short in it. At first, I thought it was my AC adapter, so I went off the edge and spend $60 on THAT. But it didn't solve the problem. I took it to two different computer repair shops and they both told me that the problem was of the motherboard malfunctioning type and that they wouldn't dare try to fix it, lest they make it not boot up AT ALL. No computer shop would touch this thing with a fifty foot pole. (PS: They said most sony models will have this problem eventually, so stick with sony stereos and DVD players, NOT computers!) I couldn't even send it back to Sony for a refund or repair!

And yes, it's HEAVY. But I should have known about that. With all the accessories it takes to cool and supplement this computer, it just gained about five pounds. That is not cool. It's also loud, no matter what you do. I didn't really mind the noise because it was always drowned out by the sound of my four desktops, which always sound like they could fly off at any given moment. But in class, this is a miserable laptop to have.

As sad as it is, my pride and joy was actually a POS. I can't stand to look at it anymore. I'm gonna scrap it on e-bay for parts or something, because as a computer, it's worth little more than the plastic bubble wrap it came with.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I wish I could give it 0 stars
Review: This is one of the worst purchases I've ever made. 3 months after buying the machine, I'm also running into an overheating problem. I've sprayed out the fan with a dust blower, but the laptop is shutting down after 2 hours of use and won't reboot until it's completely cooled off.

Customer support was blocked by a combination of bad instructions and a voice recognition system telling me that I was out of warranty. Trying to get a human was mostly useless until 3 days later, I accidentally stumbled on a way to get a human. (Keep telling the voice recognition system that the serial number is wrong and you will get a human.)

Now they want my laptop for 7-10 business days and based on other reviews it seems the likelihood that it will be truly fixed is slim.

Sony tech support denies any knowledge of an overheating problem. Please don't buy Sony until these problems are resolved.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Laptop shuts down after 5 minutes of heavy load work
Review: This laptop has it all, my only complain centers in overheating, after 5 minutes or less of full CPU usage, like full window videos or data processing it shuts itself down due to overheating, I read similar problems with this 2.4GHZ Vaios on the net and seems like a recurrent problem. On second place here in Peru you don't get any warranty from Sony Peru (and it really sucks) now I have to take it to the states to claim for warranty, besides this BIG problem everything else on the product it's ok.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Overheating, Shutting down
Review: This product overheats, gives a lot of noise, and keeps shutting down unexpectedly.

Even before 1 year has passed from the "manufacture date", they refused to fix it without proof of sales, saying the only way I can validate my 1 year warranty is throug providing the original packing slip (they did not ask for this when I registered the product, and I thought I did not need it anymore).

Basically, Sony, with their tech support and my experience with them so far have proved to be a mere joke, and non-funny one.

Any lawyers want to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of us all?

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't buy Sony notebooks - serious overheating problems
Review: We have a house full of Sony products - computers, monitors, TVs, DVDs, even an original Walkman that still works. I never thought twice about buying Sony notebooks, a PCG-GRZ610 for my wife the author, and a PCG-GRZ630 for my son going off to college. Now a little more than a year later both are having serious problems overheating. They shut down without warning after 30 - 60 minutes of work. Won't burn a CD without shutting down. It didn't take much time in the Amazon reviews to find out that MANY Sony users are having the same problems. Search for "Sony shutdown problem" in Google and see for yourself.

Sony's support is terrible. Their phone rings in India. I'm OK with that, but the staff reads prepared text from their monitors and avoids all questions about overheating. Standard reply: "Reinstall the factory software." Out-of-warranty phone "support" costs $20.

Save yourself some frustration. Buy a Dell, Compaq, or Toshiba notebook untill you can verify that Sony has resolved this problem.


<< 1 2 3 4 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates