A few years ago, I bought a sony laptop: model VGN-AR750e. I paid $1,800, which seems steep in today’s market, but at the time it was a decent price for a gaming/media laptop. Also, Sony was pushing the blu-ray format so they essentially threw a free bluray drive in there despite being a laptop similarly priced to other brands.

Very quickly, though, it was apparent there were design flaws, largely with the hinge system. The hinges themselves began to “creek,” and the cables for the speakers ran through the hinges. After about a month, the right speaker cable was cut by the malfunctioning hinge and stopped working. Secondly, a mysterious internal “beep” began randomly sounding off every now and again. I am no computer science major, but I do know more about computers than the average person. The beep was a system beep. This beep was coming from the motherboard, HD, CD-rom drive, or some other internal component (not the speakers). It beeped randomly - sometimes when I was gaming or video editing, but other times when the system was idling. This wasn't a code-beep either. It wasn’t a sequence of tones to give me a message, it was just this awful noise.

I called up customer service. While this was not a particularly painless process (talked to multiple people), they did eventually inform me that my local sony store had a support center. I drove an hour to get to the sony store, only for them to tell me that they couldn’t do a damn thing. They did nonsense crap like virus scans and basic software troubleshooting, but they wouldn’t touch any hardware issues. After countless hours on the phone with customer service, they finally agreed to send someone to my house to fix the beep and speakers. I was actually pretty happy that they would send someone to me.

The technician came as scheduled. He fixed the speaker. When I asked about the beep he basically blew me off and gave me some short answer like, "I don't know about that, they didn’t tell me anything like that. A beep, though?... I wouldn't worry about it."

Whatever. I was so annoyed with the ordeal that I accepted my repaired speaker and moved on. The speaker worked, but the beep persisted. However, the computer didn't seem to have any real issues beyond the physical beeping, so I listened to his advice: I ignored the beep. It wasn't unbearable, and so as long as it wasn't a serious problem, I could live with it.

Fast-forward a few weeks. The beeping still persisted, but I also noticed my screen-latch -- the little hook that swoops up to lock my screen in the closed position -- wouldn't latch. It took me a while to notice because I used the laptop as a desktop and rarely closed it and took it with me. After some examination, I found the problem. The flip-up lock wouldn’t latch because it was off-position. The whole screen was slightly… shifted. I examined the computer to try to figure out why this happened, and it ultimately led me to the left hinge. Yes, the same hinge the technician worked on to replace the speaker a few weeks previous. I don't know what exactly he did, but trust me when I say he further screwed up the already malfunctioning hinges.

When he closed the LCD back up after replacing the speaker, he literally closed a foam seal INTO the computer. So, you can see this little strip of foam GOUGED into the seal of the computer, which basically forced an opening behind the laptop screen. This created a whole series of problem with this side of the computer. The top of the computer shifted, and the whole hinge area was completely contorted. He also neglected to replace a screw is on the bottom of the computer that holds everything together. As a result of the gap he created, dust made its way UNDER the LCD screen where it can't be cleaned or removed. A month later, the hinge snapped. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but let me just say this: Sony’s warranty centers are based outside of the U.S., they were completely unhelpful when I tried to explain that THEIR TECHNICIAN broke my computer further. I tried relentlessly for months, and I COULD NOT find a number for anyone higher up or get a transfer.

But, this calls to a bigger issue. This laptop model is a lemon, and Sony knew damn well. It was marketed as Sony’s big Bluray-launch laptop, and within 3 months, it was completely off the shelves and replaced by their FZ series. The whole thing was swept under the rug. I am no conspiracy theorist, but it’s obvious that they were aware of this and just tried to temporarily appease all of us poor souls who bought the $2,000 laptop until our warranties ran out. I can see a board room somewhere with executives deciding that it was cheaper to lose us as customers than to help us, since it was such a short-lived product with barely any purchasers.

This is evidenced by the terrible support I received later. About a year after I bought the laptop, Windows 7 was released. It’s pretty normal for a company to back-support any model released within two years prior and release new drivers for the new operating system. All other companies did this. Toshiba, Asus, HP, Dell, and EVERYONE released windows 7 drivers for models that were two years older or less. My laptop was only a year old, but nothing. Amazingly (and disgustingly), sony released windows 7 drivers for laptops OLDER than mine, but not mine. More evidence that they were trying to pretend they never released this lemon of a laptop. I installed Windows 7 and finagled the HELL out of it to get it up and running, but I couldn’t get it to work fully. Without the release of new drivers, I couldn’t get any of the shortcut buttons to work and my webcam wouldn’t work at all. On a laptop, this is annoying. No skype or anything. If I needed to change the volume or brightness, I had to do it manually through windows. I figured there HAD to be a way around it, but I found VERY educated people online with similar problems, and none of them could find a work around.

I found that sony would offer 15 minutes of free chat support, so I gave it one last shot. I knew the time was limited, so I quickly explained my problems in about 30 seconds. The technician wasted the 15 minutes talking nonsense… I actually saved the last portion of the chat session:

Me: Are there no windows 7 drivers available? I downloaded the notebook utilities but it doesnt seem to be compatible. However, I am mostly worried about the camera. I can live without the shortcut buttons functioning.

Technician: LovableContrarian, I can resolve the web cam issue completely. However, I can also provide alternate solution for the brightness keys, but the av MODE BUTTON WILL NOT WORK AS EXPECTED.

Me: Okay, great!

Me: Can you explain what you are going to do, so I know what I did wrong for the future? I installed the webcam driver from sony support, but it didnt work.

Technician: Sure, I can fix this issue for you if you sign up for any one of our Service plans, even though your system is out of warranty and you are past the FREE 15 minute support period that we have offered.

Me: Well can you just tell me how to fix it really quick? I feel like nothing was really done in the 15 minute time period. I have no problem doing the workaround myself… Is there an online link explaining it?

Technician: LovableContrarian, I will resolve the issue completely once you signup for any of our service plans. However, you can pay just $24.99 to get the web cam issue resolved.

Me: No thank you, I will figure it out on my own. Thanks anyway.

It was a complete bait and switch. Again, I was only trying to get help on a laptop that I paid $1,800 for, and I was asking for something they should have offered to EVERYONE for FREE. I was asking for driver support for a year-old laptop, and they want every individual to pay $25 for some guy to give it to you. To this day, there has been no public fix for the webcam or buttons, and they are still non-functioning.

Here I am with a $1,800 laptop with no webcam, no shortcut buttons, and a hinge I had to replace myself. There is an insane amount of dust under the screen and it continues to get worse. And, still, something internal randomly beeps at me. It feels like I bought a $1,800 problem. I’ve wasted HUNDREDS of hours talking to customer service, looking through forums for solutions, trying drivers, and every other headache that came along. Despite buying their premiere laptop that was one of the most expensive they offered, I’ve been treated as a second-class customer that needs to leave them alone. When they finally sent one person to help, he created more problems that Sony refuses to accept.

And, I am not alone. These stories are all over the place online. And, it isn’t even just my model. Hell, even if you have a working Sony laptop, their driver support is awful. Unless you get a hacked driver, you will be using an old nvidia driver because they only update them once a year (if that). Sony is the ONLY producer with this lack of support for video drivers. And, they only put a small portion of their bundled driver/software on their support site, so if you ever reformat, you lose programs and functionality. This is all from Sony, by the way, which is probably the most expensive windows PC manufacturer around.

I’m certainly not asking for upvotes here, but I did everything I could to make Sony aware that I was getting screwed. No one cared. I tried to email this to someone important, but Sony will literally ONLY direct you to their foreign support services. I think a little negative publicity would go a long way. If you actually made it this far, I thank you for listening, and I advise you to avoid Sony’s Vaio division like the plague.