honey and sting

I am hooked on the Vaios but only if you don't need customer service at all. Their hardware repair is great and with 5 of them so far I have only needed that once. Another time I worked with them because I had two of the same models three months apart in age, both aging and I was trying to find out if I could move a hard drive from one to the other and whether it would work with slightly different bios----they found it an intriguing question and while they had to remind me that this was unauthorized---gave me the go ahead and it worked really well, rescued the hard drive from the one whose screen died and kept it all going for another year.

On the other hand I was about to buy the SZ---nice compromise between small and fully featured---8 ounces heavier than my current TR and an inch wider but thinner----and my attempts to talk to customer service about the TX (8 ounces smaller than my current one and the SZ---around the issue of wireless broadband carriers was so frustrating that I am going to wait to buy it and hope the SZ wich has dual processors and is a better main computer comes out with a Sprint broadband integrated card instead of Cingular.

While customer service did not answer my question they did give me info on hacking into the communications program and putting in one's own sim card.

I had been very seduced by the new powerbooks and was on the edge of succombing to the switch when Ree got one because we hoped that Ichat would work better with Peter's Mac---which after weeks dogging different Apple stores worked for the first time at the Memphis con but did not work in several other cities. My efforts to get help at the APPLE store in Manhattan if anything was MORE FRUSTRATING than dealing with Sony and I know that Ree felt the same way. We had appointments to work on this in the dedicated Apple Stores in London, LA, New York, Memphis and in an authorized store in Reno.

My take on this is that in some ways like Sony---Apples are great when they are great and not so great if a human has to work through an unexpected problem. They also each work better as long as you don't try to use third party equipment.

In Memphis I got to play with the new powerbook for several days and as a PC user since the beginning I did not find it easy or intuitive to make the switch. It was esthetically beautiful but I grew to hate it and was glad I hadn't bought one. I would definitely borrow one before buying

For my money Toshiba is underheralded as almost unbreakable, reliable, well built, and well priced machines which are not so sexy as the Sony and Vaio but make up for it in many ways-----While I keep falling for the beauty of the Sony's, I recently got a wonderful full featured Toshiba laptop for my husband which is just terrific if a little more homely.

Dell's are servicable and I know many people who have happily bought them but more recently service and reliability of the hardware seems to be a frequent complaint---i think Dell is working on this but that is why my current vote for most bang for your buck is the Toshiba and for greatest elegance the Powerbook if you don't hate using it or the Sony esp the SZ whose screen is one of the most beautiful yet--has dual processors and lots of cool features.

(written on my Sony TR who is resentful that I am looking toward Vista and thinking of making her a second line machine. Vista no doubt has hideous bugs hiding but does have at least one very cool feature----You can add "working RAM" to the actual RAM but adding a USB drive---a 2GB one works and i think you can add up to a 4GB one and when you do, performance noticeably speeds up. Most noticeable because i was playing with a computer with only 1GB internal RAM when i think Vista needs 2GB--but even with 2GB inside adding 2GB externally was very cool)

Anyone else playing with Vista yet?