Good gamer box, but could do better building your own!
Written: Aug 11 '02
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Pros: Sleek styling. Fast 1.8 Gig processor with plenty of 512 Mb memory.
Cons: Poor snotty tech support. Proprietary Sony Restore CD and motherboard.
The Bottom Line: Excellent machine when it works. Needs upgraded right away. Tech support is lousy and egotistic. Find another machine where the hardware, drivers and software is not proprietary.
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| wchtechie's Full Review: Sony VAIO Digital Studio PCV-RX580 PC Desktop |
I bought this from Best Buy 1/02 with 1 year free interest. Otherwise, I should have built my own. I had a brand new Radeon 8500 DDR (Double Data Rate) video card that I immediately swapped out for the mediocre Nvida 32 Mb card that had some drag to it. I was surprised to read reviews on this card as somewhat of a poor performer and that Sony skimped out on a critical item as this.
I was also impressed that it came with an 80 Gig Hardrive, but was later disappointed when I tore the box apart and found a 5400 RPM drive (which is pathetic). I found that replacing with a Maxtor 7200 RPM drive improved system time dramatically. The 5400 drive can't save/send data fast enough and actually puts a bottleneck on the processor speed. I read the other review on this machine and would like to let everyone know that the 5400 RPM drive on mine too would also cause the machine to drag at startup or in the middle of a mpeg file. If you buy this, DEFINITELY replace with a 7200 RPM drive or better!!!! Again Sony was being cheap.
I only call Tech support when I am absolutely desperate. The techs barely know their own product and will try to get you to perform a Restore or download a driver from their website. The P4 motherboard has a proprietary fan control driver that regulates the speed of the fan. More about that later. I was having problems with the System standby feature where I would get the blue screen of death if I tried to restart from Standby. A bulletin on Sony's tech support site offers a BIOS upgrade from Version 1003 to Version 1004. In small print the website reads (Excluding the BIOS Utility, these drivers are all also available on the bundled Sony Driver Recovery CD). I guess the Sony tech's can't read so they try to tell you it's on the CD and want to end the call. So each time you talk to them you have to read it back to them before they understand that this is an UPDATE. DON'T DO THEIR BIOS UPDATE, IT WILL SCREW UP YOUR FAN CONTROLLER.
The instructions said to create a boot disk (use 98 or Me boot disk as XP no longer supports this) and have the BIOS program upgrade create a BIOS upgrade disk. I thought it meant you needed two disks total. Well, after I reached a very snotty tech support group within Sony...they told me to create a basic DOS boot disk and ADD the BIOS files to the same DOS disk....the website does NOT say this. Let's just say it's not very user friendly and Compaq is able to create a BIOS upgrade that self executes, reboots itself, and flashes the BIOS ROM. Why can't Sony do the same?
After upgrading the BIOS, the CPU fan will no longer respond to the driver from the Recovery CD and/or new images of XP or Windows 2000. Tech support has no idea why, where, or how to fix the problem. I can't find the manufacturer of the motherboard or the drivers. If you do a search for the motherboard serial #'s, you get all kinds of Japanese website for Sony Vaio...too bad since I can't read them!!! I am screwed now that I have an extremely loud machine roaring with two fans at maximum speed. I feel like I'm in a server datacenter.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1550
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
wchtechie
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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