Sony Versus Toshiba

Vaio VGNP13

We’ve just put the new ranges of laptops from Sony and Toshiba on the shelves and it struck me as odd the total difference in approach between the two. I have been selling computer stuff for 15 years and have sold Toshis when they were 7kg bricks with passive screens, no storage and 30 minute battery life. Over the years, the consensus among sales staff has always been consistent. If you were to buy a laptop for yourself you’d buy a Toshi. Reason? They don’t break down. OK, some do but mostly they don’t. The odds of a long life are more heavily stacked in favour of Toshiba than any other brand. I might also consider a Sony Vaio if there was a model that suited as they are mostly similarly well built. I’d prefer a Toshiba, though, because Sony’s regard for customers is less than Nil. Their service is a disgrace and the company as a whole is borderline insane. I’ll explain.

Sony are filled with hate for Apple. I respect that but Sony are a petulant child that has spat the dummy. Go back to the 80′s and 90′s and when you thought of mobile audio you thought ‘Walkman’. Even if you weren’t thinking Sony you’d still think Walkman. It was the generic word and it was Sony’s. Now it’s iPod and it’s Apple’s. The Walkman still exists but it’s in a cupboard behind the door of the room nobody ever goes in. Unloved and unlamented. There’s nothing wrong with the Walkman, in fact it’s actually much better than an iPod but nody gives a shit because the Walkman isn’t cool. No girl comes into the store with Mum asking for a Walkman. Not ever. Not in any store on Earth. So this galls the shit out of Sony who try to compensate by trying to make everything they produce overwhelmingly cool. The result is, more often than not, overwhelmingly weird. Well made but weird. The Vaio range is a case in point.

Compare with Toshiba. They have five ranges. Satellite L, A, M, P and Qosmio. This is the consumer products. They also have Satellite Pros, Tecras and Porteges. Forget them for a while and focus on the Satellites. All of them look the same. The L is the cheap range, A is the 15 inch range, M is 14 inch and P the 17 inch. There are some basic colour options but mostly they are corporate black and all have the same style. The Qosmio is a hard core desktop multimedia replacement that weighs a metric tonne. Forget it too. The point is a consistency of approach and fidelity to Toshiba design principles. They are a bit boring but reliable, powerful and the way they’ve always been.

Now the Sony range is a complete dog’s breakfast. Nobody knows how many ranges they have and none of them are remotely similar to the next. They have stupid, indecipherable model numbers and an inconsistent collection of random designs. It’s like they went to a Technical College and asked design engineers to design a cool laptop. They get 30 different designs and then make them all. Some are just plain weird looking and most have prices that appear completely random. Everything about the Vaio range sings out ‘RANDOM’. Some models are unsellable. This is because sales people are scared of them. They don’t fit any usage pattern from a normal person. Eventually they sit around so long they get marked down hundreds of dollars and finally find a buyer. The thing is though, sometimes you get a customer with weird requirements and you just know Sony have the perfect model. Long before I was lured into the Apple cult, I had a Vaio Z1. It weighed 1.5kg and looked like it was designed by Mercedes/McLaren. It was an awesome bit of kit complete with Memory Stick slots…and there’s another thing about Sony…

If the entire world agreed to a single standard for anything, you can bet your boots Sony will do something else. The SD card is used by every damn camera but Sony has to develop Memory Stick. Early Vaios had a slot for Memory Stick in apparent denial of the existence of any other memory format. Toshiba went straight for SD. “Whaddya mean not everyone uses a Sony camera?” cry Sony. Of course, Memory Stick is expensive and slow compared to SD but Sony don’t give a shit because they don’t care about their customers. Mostly this isn’t a problem because mostly Sony products are top notch and you are fairly safe buying one. I would have no hesitation buying Sony if the product was right for me. They are just a strange company.

Let’s look at the Vaio VGNp13 Netbook. It’s a 10″ widescreen netbook that’s paper thin and very sexy. It is also $1000 dearer than the competition. First question, what am I getting for a grand? Answer, NOTHING. A thousand bucks worth of cool. It is certainly cool and if you wanted a netbook this is the one you’d want. If someone else paid for it. Why Sony, Why? Why are you so divorced from reality? If this machine offered some tangible advantage over the others then OK, you could sell on that but as it is it has nothing else but its good looks. Same power as a $599 Asus EPC900, same storage. Sony is a thousand dollars more. It is cool, though. Welcome to Sony.