Sony Selling Off VAIO Computer Business

Kensai7 writes "Confirming reports from earlier in the week, Sony has announced plans to sell off its VAIO computer division to a Japanese investment fund. Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will take control of the operation for an undisclosed fee, and Sony will 'cease planning, design and development of PC products.' For a variety of reasons 'including the drastic changes in the global PC industry,' Sony says 'the optimal solution is to concentrate its mobile product lineup on smartphones and tablets and to transfer its PC business to a new company.'" I have some nostalgia for the tiny old VAIO laptops; I wish more companies incorporated the swiveling camera that they came with.

Comments

So who is left

[nurb432]

IBM sold all theirs off, HP/Compaq have merged, and Dell, who knows what is going on with that.

Re:So who is left

[maynard]

Perhaps we are indeed witnessing the downfall of the PC era.

Is that good or bad?

For open platforms manufactured by large companies, it's bad. We can still buy barebones PCs and cheap laptops, but there's an obvious transition away toward locked down systems like tablets and consumer products.

OTOH: the old PC was a successor to prior hobby platforms that were fully open. The old ALTAIR / IMSAI, Heathkit, SWTPC, Apple II, etc world of 8 bit before it went corporate. If IBM had had its way, what we're seeing today would have happened much sooner. Ironically, we can thank Microsoft for stalling that outcome for decades. It had already happened twice with mainframe and minicomputer players decades before, as they swiped ideas and technology developed in university labs for commercialization and then locked them down.

So maybe this shift will engender a resurgence of very slow systems designed for hobbyists to built from scratch. A bifurcation of commercial products for the general public and a hobby community that might lead to hands on hardware / software development of entirely new platforms. A real resurgence of competition without commercial pressure because it's being done just for fun.

Such systems wouldn't fulfill the expectations of consumers. Nor should they. But they might be cool to tinker with. And that could have second order effects down the road that could impact future markets in unexpected ways. Or not. And who cares?

A hobbyist / commercial hardware split might be for the best.

Or, maybe I'm talking nonsense. I often do.

Fuck Beta

[portraitofsanity]

Slashdot Overlords, You can continue posting new stories, but we will just keep complaining about the beta. Can you meet us halfway and actually create a story for us to dump hatred into so that we can go back to commenting on articles we haven't read? This isn't going to go away, and you might have realized this is not the most patient and incapable group. In a week this whole community can be destroyed or moved...

Re:Sad news

[andreicristianpetcu]

Another company ruined by WIndows 8. Why don't computer manufacturers switch already to GNU/Linux distros? ElementaryOS, LinuxMint, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE. There are lots of choices.

Good riddance. Worst computers EVER to work on.

[nctritech]

As someone who has had to rip open and repair Sony VAIO desktops and laptops for a long time, I can say with authority that they're the WORST computer brand EVER when it comes to the repair business. Every computer has two different model numbers, there are a seemingly infinite number of minor incompatible variants, finding used parts is a ridiculous endeavor (because everything has to have multiple model and part numbers and almost no part seems to be drop-in compatible) and I don't care if I never see another one on my workbench ever again.

Any full-sized laptop that requires you to remove the keyboard, all the top plastics, and heaps of fragile FPC cables just to get to the hard drive and memory is automatically ultra-shitty shit and the engineers responsible should be bear dick punched. Maybe the new owners will fix some of this mess. /rant

A Message from the Beta's Target Audience

[hendrips]

Dear Slashdot,

I'm fairly sure that I know what you're trying to do with Beta crap. You're trying to lure in a younger, more hip readership that's less technical but brings in more revenue. In other words, this "Web 2.0" redesign is trying to attract people exactly like me. I'm young, male, middle-class, and (possibly) looking for a new job, which I suspect is exactly the demographic you're aiming the Beta at. I'm also less technically inclined - I'm an actuary, not a programmer or an IT guy. As you can see from my posting history, I've only been here a short time, although I read and posted anonymously for a while at first.

But I hate Slashdot Beta every bit as much as the old fogies who are complaining above me. I don't come to Slashdot for flamebait articles or glitzy graphics, I come here because I want to learn about and discuss technical topics that I don't encounter in my day-to-day work. I read the discussions here so that I can understand the technical stuff that my office's IT lady tells me, and so that I can better understand the technology that I interact with. I comment in discussions here because I want to avoid the teenage, brain dead, narcissistic, color vomiting "new new internet" bullshit twittering that's infecting discourse on the rest of the internet.

I've just started participating in the Slashdot community. I'm pretty sure that I'm the exact demographic you want to attract. You had such a good opportunity to reel me in permanently. Yet you've utterly failed with Slashdot Beta. I've already abandoned a fair number of web communities after they gutted their discussion system or went too far with the Web 2.0 nonsense. Likewise, I'll regretfully, but quickly, abandon Slashdot if I'm forced into this Beta bullshit against my will and against the obvious will of the community here.

Sincerely,
hendrips, a representative member of your target audience
   

Re:Sad news

[MMC Monster]

Oddly enough, not one story on slashdot in the last couple days about Beta. So, of course, we discuss it in every other story on the site.

I tried it again today and if you think the article and comments sections are horrible, you should see the user profile section.

We cannot see how many replies a comment we had written has received. I find this an important tool to answer questions I have (just look at some of my previous comments) about the topic at hand.

Why couldn't they have just adjusted the style sheet a bit and let everything else stay the same? If they wanted to open up another site, they could have just done that and left /. alone. The domain name can't be *that* lucrative for them.

Re:Sad news

[ColdWetDog]

Well, yes. If, for example, Adobe wrote Creative Suite to run on Linux, a lot of folks who use those programs would consider moving off of OS X, especially given Apple's reluctance to come up with mid priced tower hardware instead of high tech ashtrays.

Autodesk does run on Linux but here you're talking high five and into the six figures - effectively not 'desktop'. And there is some other very, very pricey Linux enterprise software, but in this scenario, the workstations are really just chump change.

If MS ported the Office Suite to Linux, well, hell would probably freeze over, Stahlman would expire in a bought of apoplectic fury and quite a few places who don't rely on Windows based Line of Business software would switch, but I don't think that's happening any time soon.

So yes, Developers, Developers, Developers. Ballmer was right about that.