Lazing on a Sony Afternoon

Well, a new addition to the Bassett household!

For those that didn't know, Cortez, my Acer laptop, died of a fried graphics chip after a short, but happy, life of 18 months (there's a message there to prospective Acer buyers). I've been looking at a replacement and weighing up the pros and cons for a few weeks and was totally confused. Do I buy a cheapie, as it's only a spare? It's not as if it's going to be doing much other than enabling me to do a bit of writing or browsing in foreign parts (well, the kitchen or the pub). On the other hand, as I have my super whizzy PC, I really wanted something that might aspire to something like its elder brother.

I mentally listed what I wanted and had a browse around the internet and a few shops. I even went to PC World but nothing, zilch, de nada.

I then found that I could customise at Dell and so I put together a suitable laptop. It was, naturally, far more expensive than I had first envisaged but that's the trouble with these customisation places. It's like when you buy Pick & Mix. You always buy about 4 times more than you intend and it was the same at Dell. I'll just up the processor speed a tad........ooh, I really need 2 gig of RAM.............hmm, maybe just a slightly larger hard drive. Before you know where you are, the price has doubled. I still prognosticated and therefore, still no new laptop.

Anyway, we toddled of to Eastbourne today where Curry's and Comet are conveniently right next door to each other. We were after a new HD TV and it also crossed my mind I would glance at the laptops (surprise, surprise). The visit started badly as we crossed the threshold of Curry's and the strains of Jonah Louie blasted us, exhorting us to stop the cavalry. Christmas frigging songs! Mid-November and bloody, bleeding Christmas songs! Oh, deep joy: Slade as we wandered through the washing machines, Wizzard as we meandered past the mixers, Cliff Richard as we trudged towards the TVs.

They had obviously taken on loads of extra staff as we were assaulted on all sides by enquiries about our welfare and told how their lives would be ruined if they failed to take us to the heights of ecstatic customer satisfaction. Now that's all very well but there seems to be a direct correlation between the number of staff and the aggregate knowledge. I stopped by the laptops and asked a minion if he would kindly allow me access to Vista on one particular machine so that I could check the Aero performance stats (these being a fairly reliable comparative between different machines)? 'Of course, Sir' says he, no doubt wondering why I actually wanted to look at something relevant rather than the stupid advert running on all the machines. We then had a slight technical problem - he didn't know the Curry's password to access any of the laptops. He then asked his mate who also looked suitably blank.

I had got bored by then (and didn't really like the laptop anyway) so off we went to the TVs. We had already kinda decided we wanted a Sony 32" so stood there and looked at it for a while. There wasn't much to ask about it so we thought we'd pop next door to Comet.

Good start - no music. I walked past the computer section and there it was - the perfect laptop! Not only did it tick all the boxes, but it was also a Vaio therefore street cred factor was a big plus. I asked a nice young girl to let me at the performance ratings and, wonder of wonders, she knew the password........ Comet 1 Curry's 0. She then admitted that she was new so I showed her how to do the check and she was suitably grateful and said she would use it to impress other customers with her knowledge. Everything checked out and, forgetting all previous pros and cons, I said I wanted it. Indeed, I would bite off my leg in order to acquire it.

Now, we can get 10% discount at Curry's so I asked her if she could match that? She enquired if there was anything else we wanted, and when we said a TV, she intimated that they could negotiate if we bought both. Found yet another imbecile in the Visual Dept. (obviously ex-Curry's) who couldn't really explain why there was a £200 difference between the two Sony 32" sets but eventually we settled on the more expensive one. Now this had 100 hz and apparently will turn television watching from a way of keeping up with Corrie into an unbeatable audio-visual experience so there was no contest really.

We then had to wait for the manager in order to sort out the discount and whiled away the time watching some demo HD stuff on a 50" Panasonic. Now, don't get me wrong, HD is amazing but, it was so realistic, we were both getting motion sickness just watching! Finally, the manager arrived and we eventually walked out the proud owners of a laptop, a new TV, a free Sony DVD recorder and a £100 discount.

The Vaio is known as Cher, seeing as it's a Sony (think about it) and is luvverly. Just one or two comments though, should the powers that be at Sony be reading this:-

1. Why do you have to put so many time-constrained trial programs on your products? I had to spend the first hour just ripping out crap software.
2. Why, oh why, put a trial of Norton on it? Nobody in their right minds uses Norton. Norton is as much use as a jock strap to a eunuch.
3. Why make the initial operation so difficult that I actually had to read the instructions at one point? You should know that manuals are merely a means of protecting the product in transit and serve no other useful purpose.
4. Why not provide a sticker for the laptop bag that say something like 'I have a Vaio in here. Jealous huh'?

Anyway, what with winning my first every tenner on the lottery tonight, it's been a pretty good day. All I need do now is work out the 46 different inputs on the back of the TV and I might just get it going in time to watch Betty's Christmas Broadcast!