Sony VAIO Recall

[SnowyCheetah]

There is a massive recall on certain models of Sony's popular VAIO laptop.

Read PC World Magazine's article here for the entire story. Here's the most important stuff:

[quote]Sony and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on Wednesday a product recall for Sony Vaio laptops... ...Affected laptops pose a burn hazard due to potential overheating, but Sony has issued a firmware update that the company says will fix the issue.

...The recall is for Sony Vaio laptops with model numbers beginning in VPCF11 and VPCWW2. The devices were typically purchased between January, 2010 and April, 2010 and sold for prices ranging from 800 to 1500 dollars....

...potential to be a burn hazard for users...

...Sony has received 30 reports of deformed keyboards and laptop casings... ...parts of the laptop melt....

...You can give Sony a call at (866) 496-7669, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission would also like to hear about your problem....

...[if your machine is affected] You need to download a BIOS firmware update, but before you do that you need to know your computer's model number and your operating system type....[/quote]

[AdAstrα]

Eek,I've been thinking about getting one of those Perhaps I should reconsider...

[Panda-chan]

*whew* I got mine on November 4th, 2009 and the model number is nowhere near that. It works perfectly and I absolutely love it. ^^ Still, this news was really kind of shocking lol.

[SnowyCheetah]

[quote="QueenOfPrideRock"]Eek,I've been thinking about getting one of those Perhaps I should reconsider...[/quote]

I think it's fine now that they've fixed the issue. They're doing their best to fix the ones that have the problem and, needless to say, they probably aren't selling any more that have the problem lol

[kumarileopard]

I know Toshiba's are notorious for overheating within the first year of use. I saw a lot of them at my last job. Sony's are usually pretty solid but that just scares me. They're not cheap and to have a problem like that is downright frightening. Only thing I can think of is they unknowingly overclocked the CPU in the BIOS and that's what the firmware update did was downclock it to the right speed. I'll have to keep watch out for any technical info on this one.

I'm working off a 2 year old Lenovo 3000 that has been nothing short of fantastic. Believe me I've beat this thing up. I dropped it on it's lid one day and i thought I had shattered the display. Only damage done was the latch button popped off. It's scraped up and battered but it and plugs away like it's brand new. I highly recommend them.

[AdAstrα]

[quote="SnowyCheetah"][quote="QueenOfPrideRock"]Eek,I've been thinking about getting one of those Perhaps I should reconsider...[/quote]

I think it's fine now that they've fixed the issue. They're doing their best to fix the ones that have the problem and, needless to say, they probably aren't selling any more that have the problem lol[/quote]
That totally makes sense lol,I'm just paranoid about laptops causing fires and stuff

[kumarileopard]

A few versions of Ubuntu ago my laptop could not go into suspend or sleep mode. Well...actually it could do it but when I woke it up and started putting a load on it the CPU fan wouldn't kick back on. So after about 30 minutes of use my laptop would simply shut itself off. Most modern laptops have that kind of thermal protection built into them so that when the CPU reaches a specified temperature it sends a signal to kill the power. Scared me to death the first time I saw it happen. I turned it back on the the fan came on at full throttle and stayed that way until the processor cooled down.

That's since been fixed in later versions of Ubuntu and I've not had that problem since.

[SnowyCheetah]

[quote="kumarileopard"]A few versions of Ubuntu ago my laptop could not go into suspend or sleep mode. Well...actually it could do it but when I woke it up and started putting a load on it the CPU fan wouldn't kick back on. So after about 30 minutes of use my laptop would simply shut itself off. Most modern laptops have that kind of thermal protection built into them so that when the CPU reaches a specified temperature it sends a signal to kill the power. Scared me to death the first time I saw it happen. I turned it back on the the fan came on at full throttle and stayed that way until the processor cooled down.

That's since been fixed in later versions of Ubuntu and I've not had that problem since.[/quote]

I suppose that was one of the veeeeeeeeery few drivers Ubuntu didn't have. So far, the only driver I've ever seen Ubuntu lacking is for the wireless adapter on Dell laptops.

[kumarileopard]

Back in 7.10 I had to hack my wireless to get it to work. I have a Broadcom chipset and you basically had to use a wrapper with the windows driver to make it work. Now all you have to do is enable it as a hardware driver and it downloads itself and you're good to go.

The only funky glitch that remains is if I have something plugged in to the headphone jack and you boot the system, when you hear the startup sound it's coming through the front panel speakers as well as the headphone jack (the speakers should be switched off). If I unplug the headphones (or speakers) and plug them back in it switches the front panel off. It's a relatively minor problem and it's not a usability issue so I can live with it.