Sony Vaio

Brand new Sony vaio with nice specs and at cheap price wanted.

Please help me before I run mad. I was at computer village today to get a sony laptop and I keep seeing made in china. I'm looking for japan or us. Please help me or doesn't it matter?

Hey Wysiwyg,

Indeed you should be careful to ensure you are getting the real deal. Truth of the matter is all the Big guys (HP, Dell, etc) have their factories in China. 70% of Global products come from China - after all.

don't get me wrong - I am not trying to endorse all IT products of chinese origin (there are some dubios manufacturers too) that you find carried as inventory on shelf at the Ikeja Computer village - I am only trying to apprise you of the fact that most of the genuine IT products are manufactured in China. You only need to make sure you are getting the products from the right source.

brume

Wysiwyg,

The (American) versions are actually manufactured in China. When I buy computer equipment (that has not yet been manufactured) directly from HP here in America, it is built in china and then shipped from Shanghai direct to me. I know its coming from china because HP provides me tracking information - so I can see where its at and when I'm going to get it etc.

You need to realise that those factories in china are owned and run by these american computer manufacturers to american standards but using cheap chinese labor.

Brume

It's a pity. OK I need to clarify some things, my friend's vaio has the sony name engraved in it not pasted and then written made in the US. It is the vgn - 290. It has an in-built bluetooth and comes with a vista but I don't really remember the hard drive capacity and the display is 13inch. The ones I see in Nigeria here do not have the sony name engraved but instead it is written and pasted then you'll see made in china. I was thinking I could get the earlier described for about 160 to 170 grand. Those china ones I saw where like 115 to 120. Now I'm getting real pissed of Naija. Tell me about the ones you saw.

Wysiwyg,

It is curios that your ID is WYSIWYG. The Sony you see is the Sony you get .

Ok. Seriously, For what its what, I went into one of the Best Buys to get a firsthand look at the SONY VAIOS on display.

They all had the word "VAIO" italicized and engraved on the inside of the laptop. i.e. the same surface that houses the keyboard.  This word was similarly engraved on the back surface of the panel that holds the display.

The word sony however was perhaps embossed (or printed?) on a thin layer over the panel that holds the display (same side as the display). For lack of a better description I would say the panel surface area around the word SONY was portrayed in a different colour from the surrounding area to enable the word SONY to be visually observable.

I looked at several models (VGN-N365EB, VGN-TZ160C, VGN-SZ140E, VGN-CR120E, VGN-N385E) and confirmed that this is Sonys style of physically branding the VAIOs.

I looked to see if I would find "made in china" written on the laptops themselves but I didnt find that phrase written on it. With the benefit of hindsight I should have looked for one still in the box to see what was written on the box.

When I got back I looked at the empty box of my HP laptop and surely enough I found the words

"Product of China"

HewLett Packard
,
,
Shanghai China

The model of my HP is dv6105us which may/may not mean it was built specifically for US customers.

AFAIK, there are no longer any factories in North America manufacturing commodity PCs/components. It all happens in asia now (70% in China). So I will be surprised to find a laptop that is made in america. Could you please take a second look at your friends laptop to confirm that it has "made in america" written on it?

I also checked again the VAIOs on www.sonystyle.com and the images I saw correlate with what I saw in BestBuy.

brume

At last, somebody feels my pain. I'm sorry I've not been able to reply because I'm not feeling too fine lately and that's what is helping me stay at home. I've missed two weeks of lectures all in the name of buying a laptop computer.

Alright brume, I think you finally got it but one more thing, assuming we took this c290 of a thing to "pimp my laptop" and change some things like 60GB HD to 80GB or 100GB, CD-RW to DVD-RW, I guess it could just be a model higher than the c290, how much will that cost and also let me know the precise amount I've to pay in naira for both the c290 and the later. Please let me have your mail addy so we could negotiate privately(lol) and please I need to know how soon I can get it here in Lagos because my dad is already kicking my ass back to school. I ain't got much time to miss lectures again.