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Sony VAIO PCG-GRT170 Laptop (2.80-GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW/CD-RW Drive) | List Price: $2,099.99
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Platform: Windows XP Home Edition
Brand: Sony
Binding: Personal Computers
Warranty: 1 year warranty
Bad experience with Sony Vaio PCGGRT170 [Posted on 2005-09-12]
I purchased a Sony Vaio PCGGRT170 in January 2004. The LCD creashed in February 2005 (just out of warranty). I paid $777.60 to Sony for repairs on 3/09/05 and repairs took close to a month. Now in September 2005, the LCD is flickering and headed for a crash. Sony says that since repair guarantees are only 90 days, I need to pay them another $777.60 and wait another month for repairs.
Like a woman: Very pretty, great when it works, but high maintenance [Posted on 2006-05-14]
This is the first laptop I've owned where I could not clean the fan. As silly as that might sound, consider that it does generate a lot of heat and will overheat and shut down if the fan and cooling fins aren't clean. I do not like the fact that I have to send the unit in for _repair_ just to clean the fan, something I consider as normal as wiping the screen.
That hasn't been too much of a problem, I've only had to send it in for cleaning once, because I've asked them to clean it each of the 4 times it's been in for replacement of the DVD drive.
It runs Linux beautifully, screamingly fast. The "10 gig unusable" is a Windows problem, nothing to do with the hardware. But SONY has decided to run all of the special keys through Windows-only software, so I cannot change volume, I cannot use an external monitor or change screen brightness. That means that the battery is pretty much only there as a UPS.
I'm pleased with it, but in the 3 years since I got it I would not buy it again. I would go to LinuxCertified or Emperor computers and buy one of their high-end units instead, and have things like external monitors and volume control work.
I won't be buying SONY hardware again, no matter how pretty or how perfect the specs look on paper.
Great Laptop!! [Posted on 2006-11-07]
I purchased one of these when they first came out in 2003 and it was very pricey but has served me well for over 3 years!. It has been traveled with constantly and is very durable(though heavy). I was reading the bad reviews and had to post my experience. This laptop is a "desktop replacement" , hence why it is heavy and runs hot with it's "non mobile" P4. Truly the battery is useless but try hooking your desktop to a battery and see how long it would last. This was one of the fastest laptops I had ever used and still outruns many NEW ones IMO.. Only now in 2006 is the vid card starting to show its age with games but it still does respectably on most. I read people writing about "only" 10 gigs of hard drive space? It has a partitioned hard drive, used the "d" drive to load your software lol, its there. well, theres my personal take on it, only downfall is don't try to use it on your lap as you could roast weenies off the back and bottom of the laptop!!.
BURNING UP IN BACK, MELTING THE ADAPTER [Posted on 2008-02-29]
ISN'T THAT THE LIMIT. I NEED TO HAVE A FAN RUNNING OUTSIDE OF THIS THING TO KEEP IT FROM MELTING AND OFF IT GOES AND ON IT GOES. I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH AN HP PAVILLION. WHAT DOES IT? IT'S JUST NUTS
Slowly Degrades Over Time: A review written 4+ Years after purchase [Posted on 2008-03-31]
Pros
Cheap ($[...] 4 years ago) for what you get.
Cons
Expect it to only work for a year in good form!
The Bottom Line
[...]It is junk after a year due to slow degradation of the power system and Sony knows it.
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, [...]!" 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. I don't like to throw good money after bad, but I justify it in that I can reuse all the external components later.
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