My first post here, just purchased a VPCH2C5E laptop after a few years using a Dell Inspiron. I work in IT and we have several Android devices, another W7 laptop and a Linux server in the household.
I was looking forward to getting the Vaio as it was to replace a poor quality Dell laptop that has many issues. So when it turned up looking all new and shiny last Thursday I was quite excited. It didn't last long.
Firstly, Windows Update ran and found a huge amount to do, why is the build so out of date? Several updates then failed with no reasons provided, rather frustrating. I then ran a Vaio update and that also kept failing intermittantly. The window kept crashing and I lost track of what had worked and what hadn't.
I then started playing with Vaio Gate - or trying to, Sometimes it was there, sometimes not... When it was there it was slow to open and I just couldn't see the point - I can pin stuff I want to the taskbar in W7. Maybe it was useful with XP but why has been left in the build?
Anyway - everything else appeared to be working OK so I copied down video and photo content from a back up hard drive (as pretty much anyone would these days if they haven't got NAS storage?). Its then that 'Vaio Content Sharing' and 'Vaio Analysis Manager' started up. I didn't know what they were so left them running - for the best part of 2 days. During this time the CPU was pretty much 100% and the laptop unusable. This was with default settings.
Can someone explain why Sony think this is a good idea? After much Googling I decided they were useless and tried to get rid of them - not just turn them off but get rid of them. Easy? Nah, of course not. After hours of research I lost my temper and ended up going through Add/Remove programs and deinstalling most of the stuff that started with Vaio. This turned out to be the best thing I did.
I now have a functioning W7 laptop with (so far) no ridiculous background tasks kiling it. But why oh why do manufacturers think they can provide software that will do a better job than Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world? The whole laptop is riddled with Sony add-ons that add absolutely no value and just complicate the setting up and ongoing useability of the machine.
Sony seriously need to think about how they present their pre-built laptops and until they do I for one would never recommend one to anyone.
As postscript I'd add that one of the Android devices we have is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It also has some proprietary Samsunng software on it but when that arrived I booted it up and had the thing working perfectly inside 2 minutes. Sony are a decade behind that with the Vaio series.
