Overheats big time, slowly degrades
Written: Mar 29 '08
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Pros: Cheap for what you get.
Cons: Expect it to only work for a year!
The Bottom Line: Don't buy it. It is junk after a year due to slow degradation of the power system and Sony knows it.
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| darkhero's Full Review: Sony VAIO GRT170 PC Notebook |
I bought this computer because I wanted a machine that I could play games on and be able to take with me as a carryon because I was always moving around. This laptop is heavier than other models and also had a nice 16" screen. I don't mind the weight, since the price and power were right.
After owning it for between 6 months and a year it sometimes would overheat and shut down. This is actually quite preferable compared to some laptops that don't have an auto-shutdown feature and will simply fry themselves.
But it turns out this machine has some kind of flaw in the power system that causes it degrade over time and shut down more readily the older it gets. Between 1 and 2 years of ownership, the computer REQUIRED a cooling platform to be underneath it to play games and run movies.
Sony's customer service is non-existant. "Too bad, sucker!" could be their catch-phrase.
After 2 years, during the summer the cooling plate was not enough. Now I have a giant box fan set up as a little table that blows straight upward to keep the thing running.
I did some research on it. A russian guy apparently can fix some models of Vaio by replacing some very inexpensive parts, and has a website where he shows detailed steps with pictures on how to fix it. My machine is not the right model to be fixed.
I tried running the computer with it open (man is it hard to get it open if someone doesn't show you how) and it immediately shut down after finishing booting up windows XP when it was open. You would think with it open it would be cooler, but actually when you have the case open the little fan no longer has a channel where the air is forced to move through. Without out the cramped channel, air doesn't circulate past the important hot area and it overheats immediately.
So, I'm quite proud of my "orcish engineering" and how my laptop is now set up as a desktop.
The nice 16.1" screen no longer works and flickers and goes dead. So I also have a different monitor attached to it.
Since it is silly to have the laptop computer in front of me with a dead screen I picked up a cheap keyboard to plug into it to type on instead of a dead looking laptop that sits on a giant, upward blowing fan.
The combo DVD drive became very finicky and only worked intermittantly, so I got an external DVD drive. I'm not sure if the DVD drive would work at all anymore. It is not worth the hassle to find out and I dont' care anymore.
The hard drive isn't very big, and I've been afraid the entire system is going to die so I've got an external Hard Drive hooked up to it so I don't lose my information when it finally does croak. Surprisingly, despite a lot of the peripheral devices on this thing dying... the main components still function so I keep using it.
This laptop has only 3 USB ports, so I had to get a USB hub to plug the external hard drive, external DVD drive, keyboard, mouse, and other components for various games.
This thing doesnt' have enough memory (512) to run the best games anymore. I hate to spend money on memory for such a piece of junk though. I keep expecting it to die, but then it just keeps on living. My plan was to strip the external hard drive and DVD drive out of their cases to use in my next computer... when I break down and get a new computer... along with the monitor, mouse, speakers...
I already have alot of the components for a new computer attached to this piece of junk to keep it usable.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 2000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Don''t Know
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
darkhero
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Reviews written: 1
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