Rating: 
Summary: If I could afford to throw it out the window, I would
Review: 1) Like everyone else - battery life sucks. I have to drag my power adapter with me everywhere I go. Makes it virtuously useless for wireless capability.
2) No way to get parts unless someone on e-bay happens to be parting one out.
3) Sony claims there is no way to reinstall drivers after you put in new hard drive or do clean install of new OS. Of course, the hard drive quit after 1.1 years... so I bought a bigger one. This is after four hours on the phone trying to find out what connection it uses (ultra ata, etc) so I can buy the right one. The six people I talked to (including two managers) were convinced that the only thing I could do was send it to Sony for repair. Right, like I'm going to do that. I'm A+ certified along with many other things, why pay for what I can do better myself???
4) So after I do a clean install of windows 2000 pro (because I like it better), I have no drivers for the keyboard, touchpad, memory stick, modem, lan port, audio, or vga capabilities beyond 16 million colors on 800x600. So I call Sony again - they are convinced that there is no way to even install another OS besides XP, and no way to install drivers. After messing around for weeks, I finally figure out that if you download the Sony Shared Library off of the site, you can use the recovery cd/dvd kit to install the drivers you need as well as applications you might actually find useful.
5) Just don't buy anything from Sony. They will refuse to help you, they are convinced their machines cannot run anything but windows xp, and basically it's a useless piece of junk that would be better suited as a paperweight in your home office.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible battery life, non existant support
Review: Also had a problem with the battery only running about 45 minutes at best, now it only lasts about 30 minutes. Tried to resolve the issue with support and they would not address the problem. Technical support knows less about PC than I do. Do not pay for this laptop at any price, and think twice if someone is giving it to you.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Deal Below $1000
Review: Haven't gotten into it much yet but works fine so far. Best Buy has a deal right now for $1199 with 3 different $100 mail in rebates. CompUSA also has this computer for $999 with a $100 rebate. That puts the computer at $899. Good system for the price. I'll probably upgrade to 1024 RAM because I can.
Rating:
Summary: Good Deal Below $1000
Review: Haven't gotten into it much yet but works fine so far. Best Buy has a deal right now for $1199 with 3 different $100 mail in rebates. CompUSA also has this computer for $999 with a $100 rebate. That puts the computer at $899. Good system for the price. I'll probably upgrade to 1024 RAM because I can.
Rating:
Summary: poor quality with a ridicoulsely big battery
Review: I bought 8 months ago and now it has 2 or 3 problems that I need to send back to SONY for repair. Not a good product to buy
Rating:
Summary: Too many flaws; not worth the money
Review: I bought this laptop for $1499 at Best Buy, something I deeply regret now, and here's why:
- Terrible battery life (While it tells me I can get 1 hr 30 min once I unplug it, the best I've gotten out of it was 45 min). This makes it impossible to use wirelessly in a practical manner.
- Ridiculously heavy (this is largely, I think, due to the battery, since once I took the battery out its weight lessened significatly)
- While it advertises 512 RAM, its actual RAM was more on the lines of 475 RAM or so (I found this out upon installing a game that required 512MB of RAM; I was warned that I had insufficient RAM and sure enough gameplay was slow and lagged); if you run too many programs at once (three or four), it also starts to lag. This is something, unfortunately, that I have to do quite often. I also edit videos a lot on this computer, and anyone who's done video editing knows that it's terribly difficult to edit videos on a machine that has insufficient RAM.
- Built-in speakers are horrible. I can barely hear anything even on max volume; I've had to hook it up to external speakers to have a decent listen to my music.
- No firewire ports. You'd think that Sony would have those in all of their laptops by now.
- Too little USB ports. Three ports are NOT enough.
- Heats up VERY quickly and easily. I've had to buy a notebook cooler to keep it from shutting down on me.
- Too many bundled software, 75% of which I don't need and have had to uninstall.
Some pros:
- Nice, fast, reliable CD burner.
- Excellent recovery program. I've reformatted this computer numerous times and it's been very easy to use as well as efficient.
- iLink port. I use a couple of Sony camcorders often, and this is very practical for me.
- Memory card slot. Again, since I use Sony camcorders, this makes it very convenient for me.
All in all, I can't afford to buy a computer for another two and a half years, and I'm stuck with this computer. I'm really disappointed to have to say that, since I've always relied on Sony products in teh past. After buying this computer, though, I'll have to think twice about purchasing another VAIO. If you get this for under $1000, then it might well be worth it. Anything above that, however, is a total ripoff.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible performance and battery life
Review: I know Vaio's have a good name overall. But the FRV31 does not live up to the Sony name. The performance of the 2.4GHz Celeron processor is slower than a 1.8GHz Celeron proc on a desktop system. Oh, and the advertising material on this model is incorrect in saying the processor has 512kb of L2 cache. It only has 128kb of L2 cache. But, that's not the worst part.The battery life is only 50 - 55 minutes, tops! That's without any thing else connected to it. Sony's repair center kept my laptop for a few days, they said they ran some battery tests which all passed. Returned my laptop without any repair saying no problem found; must be a software issue. Of course, it still only runs for 50 mins before battery runs out. Have called Sony since then, only to find out that they only warranty batteries for 30 days. They recommend that I purchase another battery. NO way, a customer should have to spend [more money]on some thing that should be under warranty. Based on my experience, I would recommend you spend your money some where else. So far, I've found FRV31 to be a sub-standard product and a Sony support team which is NOT willing to resolve the problem.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible performance and battery life
Review: I know Vaio's have a good name overall. But the FRV31 does not live up to the Sony name. The performance of the 2.4GHz Celeron processor is slower than a 1.8GHz Celeron proc on a desktop system. Oh, and the advertising material on this model is incorrect in saying the processor has 512kb of L2 cache. It only has 128kb of L2 cache. But, that's not the worst part. The battery life is only 50 - 55 minutes, tops! That's without any thing else connected to it. Sony's repair center kept my laptop for a few days, they said they ran some battery tests which all passed. Returned my laptop without any repair saying no problem found; must be a software issue. Of course, it still only runs for 50 mins before battery runs out. Have called Sony since then, only to find out that they only warranty batteries for 30 days. They recommend that I purchase another battery. NO way, a customer should have to spend [more money]on some thing that should be under warranty. Based on my experience, I would recommend you spend your money some where else. So far, I've found FRV31 to be a sub-standard product and a Sony support team which is NOT willing to resolve the problem.
Rating:
Summary: Great features for the price
Review: I recently purchased this vaio frv31 at a electronics superstore. i purchased it for $1199.00 with a total of $450.00 in rebates which brought the price down to $749.00 wow what a deal. Everyone complains that the hard drive is not really 40 Gig,but only 32 gig. i found out that it really is 40 gig if you go into control panel, then administrative tools, then computer management, then storage , then disk management you will see not 2 partitions but actually 3 partitions, the partition that is invisible is the files that are used to make the vaio restore disc's, so people that know nothing about computers should not make a statement that is not true, sure the processor is a little slow but then again most people that buy laptop's already have a fast desktop to do all the things that the laptop can't, i know i do. the only 2 complaints i have are no modular bay for a second battery or an internal floppy, there is space for a floppy if you pry off the cover just behind the pcmcia slots, i would like to put in an internal floppy but have not been able to locate one so if anyone has info email me at pickupmanf150@yahoo.com asap. other than that for $749.00 i think i got a real good deal
Rating: 
Summary: Only if you like Sony.
Review: PCGFRV31 VAIO® Notebook This is a good home computer, but it may not be the powerhouse you are looking for. Beware of the following misleading information 1. 64 video MB is intergrated. It is part of your 512 MB total. This is not a separate 64MB of video ram that it leads you to believe. 2. 40GB, make that 32GB. C drive has 13.9 GB and the D drive has 18.2GB. You do the math. So is it worth the retail $1199.99 average price? Probably not. If you can get rebates that lower it to under $1000.00 then maybe you should consider it. Another odd thing is that the LCD screen seems to act up at times. It seems to have a subtle vibrating/blinking type of problem. Overall this notebook is only above average.
|
