I had two Vaio laptops. The first one was my first laptop, it was really cheap, around 400 EUR, and worked wonders. When it was time to upgrade I needed a Mac so I bought a MacBook Air. I gave the Vaio to my father and he's been using it everyday since. It's been six years and it still works perfectly, not a single issue. Sometimes I still play with it, it's fast enough for me, almost too fast for my father.<p>The second Vaio I had was bought my by line manager at the time so I could work with C# for a new project. It was a high end one, probably more than 1000 EUR. It was an amazing machine. At the time, I have never seen a screen like that and I was surrounded by Macbooks, really great quality. Maybe it was because of its pixel density, can't quite figure out why it felt so good on the eyes. Also, the keyboard and the sound, things I usually nitpick about, were very good. I quit that company some years ago but I know that one is still being used when needed. I would say that machine was very on par with the Macbooks even after a couple of years. And then came the SSD (and also my Macbook Air).<p>It's sad if the Vaio label goes away.
Maybe relevant, Steve Jobs wanted to license OS X to Sony for their VAIO line.<p><a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5380832/sony-vaio-apple-os-x-steve-jobs-meeting-report" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5380832/sony-vaio-apple-os-...</a><p><a href="http://nobi.com/en/Steve%20Jobs%20and%20Japan/entry-1212.html" rel="nofollow">http://nobi.com/en/Steve%20Jobs%20and%20Japan/entry-1212.htm...</a>
Sony exemplifies why PC vendors are crap. Too many models, no intergenerational continuity. With Apple, they take a design and iterate it for years. The Macbook had been working the same basic strengths for almost a decade. I buy one and I know that in a couple of years, I can buy the new model and it'll be a solid upgrade. With Sony, its a crapshoot. The Pro 13 looks like a solid machine. With great battery life. In 2 years, there won't be a followup that has the same basic strengths. It'll be a new machine that is a total crapshoot. Good chance there will be some major regression and I'll have to find a new vendor. Heck, the can't even build on strengths at any given time. While the pro 13 had high battery efficiency, the similar flip 13 has terrible efficiency.
I love my Vaio-Z, but it's a bit like a Lamborghini - pretty and sleek, but not all that practical. It has a blazing graphics card but the fan noise could rouse a coma patient. Even worse, after a year it simply started shutting down because cooling wasn't working particularly well anymore, and the fan never goes below medium speed, even when idle. The RAID-SSDs failed too, and are extremely expensive to replace, so I had to put a new SSD in the optical drive bay.<p>Needless to say, next time I'll be buying something a bit more practical, and likely for a lot less money.
That would be a shame. I've had a series of VAIOs since the late 90s, and aside from the S series in the mid-2000s they've been stellar Linux machines.<p>The VAIO Pro I replaces my Z with in November is a fantastic machine and pretty much everything worked out of the box with Debian+Xmonad.