Expensive, proprietary and not worth the money (Sony Vaio A617S)

Member Name: outlando

Product:	Sony Vaio A617S
Date:	09/11/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good screen, comes with Vaio wireless mouse

Disadvantages: Manufacturer lock - in,

I bought one of these back in January 2006. Initially I was more than pleased with my purchase. It looked great, ran smoothly, had all the features I wanted in a large-screened portable. It even ran a few games quite well (F.E.A.R, Half-Life 2). With the memory-stick slot on the front I was able to quickly transfer photographs from my Sony digital camera etc, and I was happy.
I found that Sony, irritatingly, had partitioned the slightly meagre 80Gb HDD into two equal parts, so my installed OS partition was rapidly approaching full, even though I store most of my data separately. Then I discover that I cannot update the drivers to the video card (Radeon Mobility X600 - which was outdated even when this machine came to market). I had to use third-party driver software to get more push from this unit, a fact which makes me highly reluctant to purchase a Sony notebook again.
Upon re-installing Windows from scratch, many of the additional hardware features refused to work - even after reinstalling Sony's resource-hungry software.
Two years down the line, the screen is on the blink, it runs so hot you could cook an egg on it, and the processor goes dog slow after the unit's been on for more than twenty minutes. Oh, and the battery lasts about that length of time, too.
All in all, it's left a bad taste in my mouth, £1100 not very well spent in my opinion.

Summary: a different feeling

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