Sony Vaio VGX-XL201

I've had a Sony XL 201 for 2.5 years and its been a pain right from the outset. The booting up process is very unpredictable, often freezing and needing a 2nd go, while the standby function is worse than useless - it mysteriously turns itself on while on standby, and then goes dead, needing you to switch it off and on again before it gets going.

Then there are all the driver issues, I've had problems with the tuner, the sound, the video and with general crashing all at different times, and some of these remain unresolved.

Having said all of this, its true what the they say that bad products can be redeemed by manufacturers who take responsibility and sort the problems with minimum fuss. Unfortunately Sony has been very poor in this regard. Hiding themselves behind a 35p/minute telephone line for all out of warranty enquiries. Clearly making more money is the most important thin. Very unimpressed and surprised given the Sony brand. I won't be buying Sony again.

The Sony VGX-XL201 came with the usual plethora of bundled freeware, trialware and out-of-date-ware that seems typical of all non-Apple PCs these days and took a lot of cleaning up right out of the box. Reinstalling the OS completely proved incredibly difficult as the Windows installer didn't recognise the SATA hard disks and I had to customize the installer with nLite. It was a challenge working out which drivers were necessary and which were just getting in the way.

The WiFi antenna connects with a screw fitting that turns anti-clockwise which is so counter-intuitive it took me a good 10 minutes to work out what I was doing wrong. The wireless keyboard really is a sight for sore eyes - like something from the early 90s with a trackpad fixed to the right side, making it useless for us left-handed people. It also frequently loses connectivity with the computer mid-sentence. The DVD drive cannot be modified to multi-region which I found very annoying.

My VGX-XL201 crashed during a firmware upgrade after I had had it for three months, requiring me to send it off to Belgium for a warranty repair. I have now had it nearly three years and the graphics card appears to have died - I get random bits of colour on screen and it crashes when I do anything graphically challenging like watching live TV. On these grounds I can't call it a reliable product.

Sony puts almost no effort into the VAIO-branded software they ship with their computers. The various utility apps they supply are typically buggy and poorly designed both from a usability and aesthetic perspective. The 1080i screen resolution, though supported, is unusable on my 37" Philips LCD TV due to constant flickering, but 720p works well.

On a plus side, the machine is extremely quiet even when left switched on more or less permanently. Ultimately though this machine was outrageously priced (more than double what it should have been for the specifications at the time) just to get that quiet running, and the entire offering is poorly thought out and executed. VAIO is marketed as a premium brand of computers but there is nothing premium about this computer. Sony's technical support has also been dreadful when I have needed them with questions about this machine. It'll certainly be the last Sony product I ever buy.