Despite my statement that I would think twice before shopping at Dion Wired again, yesterday saw me there again making a fairly large purchase. As you’ve probably guessed from the title and image, I’ve finally succumbed and bought myself a laptop. I got a fairly well specified, fast but not super fast Sony Vaio VGN-NW23GE in black, as pictured.
I don’t intend using this as a development machine and will be using it for downloading and processing photographs when I’m away from my desktop machine and for giving me the ability to access the internet when away from home or the office. It will also be great to have access to Google and IMDB while watching movies and TV shows to answer those weird questions that always come to mind. It will also allow me to attend photography workshops; something the lack of a laptop precluded before.
Unlike my previous experience I received great service from Keanon (hope I’m spelling it right) at the Somerset Mall branch, who gave me good advice that allowed me to save R2,000 by buying a slightly lower specified machine than the one I first considered. He also threw in a R300 laptop bag as a freebie.
One curious thing though is what happened when I asked if they could upgrade the machine by adding an additional 2GB of RAM to double the memory. I was originally told this would be no problem. However, after checking with someone, presumably the techies that do upgrades and repairs, Keanon said they couldn’t do it. Seemingly they can for any laptop other than Sony ones, where doing so would void the warranty. Considering that memory upgrades are a common practice and that the hardware user manual contains a section explaining how to add and remove memory, I fail to see how their doing so would invalidate the warranty. Anyway, Keanon gave me the name and number of someone at distributors Rectron, that I can contact to arrange the RAM upgrade. I have e-mailed Sony, via the contact page on their site and am awaiting feedback from them on whether there is any truth to the warranty voiding story or not.
craniac's place 