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Sony's Latest VAIO Looks Like Barf
luigi writes "Sony offers sneek peek at completely new designed Notebooks - VAIO QR. No technical data, prices, release dates available yet." i4u is a sort of a rumor mill: the sony pics are a little bit down, but you can check out links to to sony's japan site. Basically the cool little purple boxes have been replaced with a black and white thing that looks like it was designed by school children. Sorry: Not candy coating this one, it looks dumb.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Take a look at the "material" closeup shots on the Sony site, and I think you'll find it looks really nice.
Having been a loyal Sony user for a few years (my current machine is an XG9) I'm quite intrigued by this new design. I wonder if it's a bit more rugged - that "PVC"ish outline seems to imply a bit more strength to me, which is a good thing. I've dropped my XG9 twice, and it's suffered minor damage as a result - if that rollbar on the new Sony will prevent that sort of damage, I'm all for it.
I like the inclusion of the handle, that's pretty slick - dunno why people say "its an iBook ripoff" just because of the handle. Laptops have had handles since before Apple even had a laptop design division - my old Grid machine had a great carrying system.
Generally, I think this new design is refreshing. The clean lines of the keys are really sexy - implies "Go"-style imagery, those keys, something I'd be happy to own. If the machine itself is fast, affordable, and available in the US, I may just upgrade.
Though, I have to say, I hope Sony fix their damned DVD drive manufacturing problems... this one on my XG9 just failed again.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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I hope I wasn't the only one who got the Spaceballs reference. Then again, maybe there was no Spaceballs reference, and I'm reading too much into the "Barf" part. And, if it was intended, the "candy-coating" pun was disgraceful... respect the memory of poor ol' John, will ya?
Ah, Spaceballs... what a great movie.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Keep in mind this product is designed for the Japanese market. Their aesthetic values often don't coincide with European or North American aesthetics (for example, authentic 70's office furniture is all the rage over there now).
Sure we can call it ugly and whatnot, but I wouldn't be so quick to judge that they're going in a wrong direction, given the traget market...
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Remember when the iMacs came out and all the /. users complained about how people should chose computers based on their use -- looks were only secondary? Notice how the industry has changed so that even the hardware-loving geeks have put appearance really high on the list of "important things" for electronic equipment. Yeah, sleek stereos have always been the rage, but every thread I've read so far related to this story isn't "What kind of processor will it have?" or "Do you think it'll come with dvd and a twelve hour battery life?" but more like "these things look like Dark Jedi iBooks!" or "It reminds me of something Get Smart would use! They're horrid!"
Is this a Good Thing, a Bad Thing, or just an Interesting Thing?
-Chris
And this certainly isn't it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Isn't it obvious? These are chew toys for the new AIBO. The handle is just so you don't get slobber on you when you pick it up.
My boss once got pissed when his powerbook froze. He immediately picked up the PowerBook, closed the top, and threw the powerbook across the room like a frisbee into the wall. The wall had a huge hole in it, and for a time, the computer wouldn't boot. I asked him if I could have it since it didn't work... 2 days later I had it up and running just fine.
:)
Only wrong with it was that it has a little problem with the power intake... the ac adapter doesn't always connect well, part of the case is loose in the back, and I'm not sure if this is a g3 powerbook problem, but the bottom gets EXTREMELY hot... maybe he killed a fan or something.
Anyway, the machine was a G3 Powerbook, but not one of the new slim ones...
Thrown across the room frisbee style into a wall, and it still works just fine.
Could it be true? Sony mass marketing the evil step-brother of Apple's iBook? This could mean the end of it all...
-gerbik
I dropped my IBM thinkpad from a height of 3 feet onto concrete. It powered up without a problem.
That's really cool!
When I worked for Dominion Business Machines (Toronto, now defunct), I wrote off dozens of notebooks that had had their motherboards cracked with less abuse. (Ever tried to repair a mult-layer PC board? Don't bother.)
I am going to be hardpressed to ever purchase a laptop from anyone else.Believe it or not, I've found Compaq, Toshiba and Acer (!) notebooks to be very durable, too. Though the Toshiba that the guy checked was a goner. The baggage carrousel at the airport is about the most gentle thing it would have experienced; now I do IT at a big airport, and it's scary what happens to your bags during the sorting.
Given all of my experiences with Sony consumer electronics, I must say I would NEVER buy anything, especially a laptop, from them, regardless of how cool it looked.Sony's quality control has definately gone downhill. It used to be that their TV sets could be guaranteed to go 20+ years. I used to work in a TV station as a bench tech (fixing stuff). We used to *try* to kill the old (1970s) Sony KV-1710 TV sets all over the station, but we couldn't. But the newer stuff is starting to die already. Granted, a TV station is a pretty extreme place to put a TV set - it's on at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and being beaten around in mobile trucks and stuff. But if it survives there, it should last almost forever in the home.
Okay, maybe it's not quality control. The solder on the boards is still excellent (unlike Taiwanese/Korean crap, Daytek/Daewoo comes to mind first); but the boards aren't secured as well within the chassis and things tend to break free of their solder (flybacks especially). Cheap design; not enough reinforcement. I hate stuff like that. I'd pay $0.50 more for a couple of screws and buttresses to hold the board in place a little better.
Sony's cheap consumer stuff has been just reprehensible lately. But their professional line Betacam and other high-end stuff still seemed to be good, last time I touched a soldering iron to one of them (1996).
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
b) It's got a handle! You can't carry a computer like that by it's handle. It will get scratched, it is not protected, and if you drop it, it is lost! I do not let anyone of my clients carry a computer more than two feet with out putting it in a case. Believe me, you do not want to see what a laptop looks like after a two foot drop to a floor. Yes, even a carpeted floor! A handle is cute, but without a case, it is asking for trouble!
Heheheh... I used to work for a little computer store, and we once had a guy come in with a notebook computer. You remember the "I checked my notebook!" Toshiba commercials? Well, he did that.
I was the lucky guy who got to replace the display in that thing. Fun, wow. There's no way you can open up a notebook computer without leaving little pry-marks around all the clips that hold it together. Even though I wet-sanded the case with 1500 grit afterwards, it still looked like crap.
The broken display, recently back-lit with some white LEDs, hangs on the wall in my office, looking like a glow-in-the-dark piece of fractal art.
I like things that are built tough, forgiving of owner stupidity and indifference. That Toshiba wasn't it, though it was a rather extreme test.
Remember the AST pen notebook computers? They were really cool, with a magnesium case and a handwriting recognition system. They were about as close to the computer equivalent to the Chrysler Slant-6 as anything I've ever seen. Too bad that they only had 386SX processors.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Guess you're just turning old.
Next thing you know you'll be complaining about the music those young people like to listen to.
Not as cool as the fingerphone, but the new VAIO is up there. I wouldn't buy one, but it's as good a design as the prior one.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I don't understand why so many people think these
things are all that "ugly."
Is it the white keyboard? Or the tubular frame
around the monitor? Or the trademark? Sounds to
me like Taco said it's ugly and people seem to
agree. The handle looks interesting, doubly so
if it happens to be where the aux battery is.
The keyboard may take some getting used to, and it
may be wonderful, who knows? Also, the keyboard in the unit for the US market could very well be
different from the Japanese prototype you're seeing in the photos.
I don't understand why people are saying these things are "ugly" as compared to the average thinkpad or powerbook. If the spec's and compatability are like they should be for a vaio,
and if it's really lightweight, then fabulous.
I want to know two things about it:
1. Can it, on the standard battery charge, play
240 minutes of DVD with the volume turned up to say, 70%. Haven't seen a notebook yet that can
do pull that off.
2. What is the median S/N ratio for the analog audio input of the soundchip? (SP/DIF I/O would be nice too). I'd like to record live music, with minimal noise, thank you.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They could be purple and yellow.
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I just can't wait to see some really detailed specs.
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Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
Dear Hello Kitty Institute of Industrial Design,
.Net initiative.
Please ignore the rude American post by Commander Taco. Our military people have a bad habit of offending people, and he seems to have forgotten that Sony is a Japanese company bent on world domination.
Please also give my thanks to Pinky for his wondrous insight which caused him to contribute his artistic talent to the tooth paste accident which resulted in this cutting edge design.
Also, enclosed please find my drawings for the new brain to put in George W. Bush - I'm afraid the last model we ordered, while it is very good at acting, sadly has major malfunctions in the computation department. Feel free to give it to Bill Gates for use in designing his next add-on product for the
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Looks swell to me. Very 1982.
As for losing their corporate market, I'm shocked to hear Sony ever had one. No real docking stations, crappy port replicators, structurally weak cases, little plastic doors that break off if you breathe on them, and hardware so fussy that the things lock up more than a Packard Bell.
We bought a few a year ago. One by one, they've died, broken, or become nearly unbootable. They look slick. The light ones are certainly light and seemingly inexpensive. VAIOs have some nifty features (FireWire, f'rinstance), but they don't belong on an IT department's equipment list in my experience.
If IBM made Thinkpads that looked like these new VAIOs, I'd be thrilled. Seen the new Thinkpads? There's design. Rigid construction and reinforced, rubberized hinges throughout, pass-through everything to the port replicator/dock, bright screens, and they're about as stable as a good desktop. Sure, they're black rectangles that look like every other Thinkpad of the last 5 years, but they paid attention to quality. They're also not cheap, but even if they cost twice as much as a VAIO, they're worth every penny.
If you're in charge of your company/organization's purchasing and someone wants a VAIO, either tell them to buy it for themselves, or buy two so you can have a loaner on hand when the first one breaks.
It looks like a black and white iBook! It's got a handle! What were they thinking?
a) The Vaio's were and are really slick looking magnesium-encased computers. This black and white thing looks like the Panasonic Tough-book - a really blocky, non-slick looking box.
b) It's got a handle! You can't carry a computer like that by it's handle. It will get scratched, it is not protected, and if you drop it, it is lost! I do not let anyone of my clients carry a computer more than two feet with out putting it in a case. Believe me, you do not want to see what a laptop looks like after a two foot drop to a floor. Yes, even a carpeted floor! A handle is cute, but without a case, it is asking for trouble!
Sony, if you are listening, you are making a huge mistake!
~Patrick
"Lazyness is the first step towards efficiency." -Patrick Bennett