Sony VAIO VGN-A290 17" Notebook PC (Intel Pentium M Processor 735 (Centrino), 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW Double Layer Drive)

Rating:
Summary: Don't allow yourself to get scammed
Review: Amazon customers,
Please beware! It is really sad that Amazon is unable to police up their own web site and allow some piece of mind and security when making purchases.

I recently attempted to purchase a Sony Vaio A290 through Amazon, and at only $600.00 I knew this had to be too good to be true, and it was.

After I made the purchase I contacted the seller at [e-mail], who quickly replied and inform me that he was shipping from the UK (not in the United States as was listed) and he had to liquidate his inventory because he was going out of business, the price went up to $650, and to secure the purchase we would have to use a "third party" for the financial transaction.

This is not an isolated case. I emailed 4 other people that was also selling the Vaio A290 on Amazon, and they all had very similar stories.

Amazon needs to do a much better job in protecting their customers. I got lucky because I could see what was happening; however, it is easily understandable how a consumer could get robbed via this process.

Good luck and be watchful, especially if you are purchasing from Amazon because they are providing a perfect cover for people to take advantage of us.

Rating:
Summary: buyers beware
Review: Buyers watch out for private sellers
There are a lot of private sellers trying to rip you off .prices look cheap when you send the money you wont get the product or your money back.

Look for the specific items that scammers try to do:

1. Look at the seller's id they look like some what irrelevant. Example (amazon_cheap)(Sony_Amazon)
2. Look at the sellers rating it says just launched because the sellers like to create many e mails as they can.
3. In the sellers comments they will say like "please contact me before buying. Otherwise I won't send you the item".
4. When you send the e mail to them they will say "we are a small company in Romania or UK or Spain trying to evolve to sell outside the country". They will say send money through western union. When I get the money you will get the notebooks with in 2 business days.
5. They will send detailed sellers address where to send the money western union (Spain). I said "I know the address in Spain can I come and pay to that address" he said "I will do only through online" this is cheater.


When you send money through western union you won't get your money back.

Escrow and Amazon secure payment are the trusted payment.

I got an e mail from a seller he said "I will get transaction only through Amazon secure payment. I thought he was good seller. Next e mail he wrote "tell me your complete address I will forward the address to Amazon" I gave him my address .

With in 1 day I got a e mail from "Amazon secure payment" from address looked like it was from Amazon, but when I clicked on reply the to address said "([e-mail]) it was not a e mail from Amazon in that message it said Amazon wants you to make payment through western union. I wrote the email to Amazon they said we will not allow any one to pay through Amazon these are fake e mails trying to rip peoples money.

Rating:
Summary: SCAM!?!?
Review: Here is what I have received so far from:
I am glad I read these other experiences first.

From : SquareTrade Costumer Support <[e-mail]>
Sent : Saturday, December 4, 2004 7:26 PM
To : paul
Subject : Re: Sony


right sir,
and please e-mail the SquareTrade after you will made the payment with all the informations to : [e-mail]
Thanks!

paul wrote:

Hi,

I have alll information ready to send....just wanted to confirm everything
before sending it.
You are selling me this exact model notebook for .....$765.00 usd
right?....NEW with all accessories and O/S ....warranty?

Sony VAIO VGN-A290 17" Notebook PC (Intel Pentium M Processor 735
(Centrino), 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW Double Layer Drive)
Sony CE

What do you guarantee and for how long?



Paul

>From: SquareTrade Costumer Support
>To: paul
>Subject: Re: Sony
>Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 02:13:43 -0800 (PST)
>
>
>Hi
>
>I want to complete the deal trough Square Trade Service..
>
>How it works Square trade ??? 5 Easy Steps:
>
>Step1: The buyer and seller agree to the terms anddetails of the
>transaction.
>
>Step2: The buyer sends payment. Payment is verifiedand after that the
>Square trade inform the seller tomake the shipping to buyer.
>
>Step3: The seller ships the merchandise to the buyer,
>
>knowing that the buyer's payment is secured by squaretrade.
>
>Step4 : The buyer accepts the merchandise after havingthe opportunity to
>inspect it and after that contactthe square trade.
>
>Step5: The Square trade relase the paymentinformations to the seller after
>all conditions of thetransaction are met.
>
>And to complete the deal i will need your full name and address , city ,
>zipp code , country and your amazon id.After that i will contact Square
>Trade and they will contact you with everything you have to do to complete
>the payment.
>
>After you will complete the payment you have send the details to Square
>Trade.They will confirm the payment to me and i will deliver the machine to
>you.(The shipping will take 6 days with FEDEX).
>
>When you will get it you have 24 hours that you can inspect the machine.If
>you agree you have to notify Square Trade and they will relase the payment
>details to me so i can pick up the money.
>
>Thanks
>
>
>

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but already at under $ 2,500 at Ebay..
Review: I bought this Vaio on Ebay for $ 2,425 New in Box, unopened. I use it for high-end 3D surfacing, for Photoshop and Premiere, and for Corel Painter. It is excellent. The ATi graphics had to be set to full screen 3D to work properly in 3D, but it beats much higher end notebooks hands down.

I bought an extra Logitech MX1000 wireless Laser mouse with it, for unprecedented precision in my work.

I am loving it.

When buying on Ebay, I always look for the amount of feedback (preferably high) and never under 98.9% positive. For these sort of higher priced items it gives an extra security.

Rating:
Summary: I still want to use it
Review: May be the laptop has superb features for which i have chosen it for my use.And after paying the money via western union to a newly launched seller amazon(who still uses the Email ID- [e-mail])-the seller had disappeared without delivering it. So even if you are getting some really good or cheap prices for a laptop just be sure that you will be getting that.

Rating:
Summary: Nice multimedia notebook that's great for most applications.
Review: My review is of the VGN-A270 model (this means I custom ordered the machine from Sony). Differences from the model here at Amazon: 80 GB 5400 rpm hard drive (faster than A290's 100 GB), 512 MB RAM, 9700 ATI Mobility, and added applications (Adobe Premiere and Elements).

The unit is quiet and cool running. The display clarity and brightness is the best there is. Performance of the Centrino 735 is on par with the Pentium 4 at 2.2 GHz. Burns DVD-Rs nicely, although only at 2X, but compatible with standard DVD players. The video capture is its strong point - captured VHS at 720 x 480 resolution. This provides ample resolution to output to multiple formats, from DVD to QuickTime and various MPEGs while maintaining program detail.

The speakers provided with the docking station are nice sounding, but don't expect floor shaking bass from them. Careful when you unpack the speakers - it is very easy to press in on the cloth in front of the speakers and possibly damage them. Between the docking station and the computer itself there are connections for just about anything you want to connect, although there is only 1 PCMCIA slot. The flash card slot is only for Sony's own, used in their digital cameras.

Burning CDs sometimes fails. I've had to reduce the burn speed to remedy the problem. Takes longer to burn but saves on ruined (thus useless) CDs.

The system plays HDTV 720 x 480 resolution videos quite nicely - even when reading from a CD. However, it does not have the performance for the next higher resolution of HDTV.

Overall, this is a very nice machine for nearly anything you need to do. Only those who are into extreme gaming, working on serious video, or use heavy computing power would require a higher performance machine than this.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent desktop replacement!!
Review: This a DESKTOP REPLACEMENT, no doubt!
For the features, is NOT so heavy...with the added port replicator is a monster laptop, sound is exceptional thru the 12" speaker included in the packet.
The screen is out of the mind...extremely brilliant and nitid..even better than my office Vaio K23, its 17 inches surpasses all expectations... the bundle softwares is ok, even would be better if would bring some more burning applications

PROS: Superbrilliant screen, convenient size, 1 gb Ram and 64 mb ATI video card 9600, quick response, 100 Gb HD, not so heavy, nice port replicator, burn Double Layer DVD, wireless work extremely smooth....

CONS: Port replicator easily detached in a non-totally horizontal surface (lap, etc), my XP crashed two times with Gigapocket appl. (for TV captures)...no big deal

After buying this machine I noticed the Toshiba 17" COSMIO with 100 GB HD, 512 RAm and the TV/Video card inside, no need of port replicator, A comparison would be interesting to find.

I wonder why the Vaio A series did not come with all in there as the GRT models did.

Anyway this in an excellent laptop for home.

Rating:
Summary: Great Laptop
Review: This Sony VAIO VGN-A290 Notebook PC is a great desktop replacing laptop. It has an Intel Inside Centrino Processor 1.7GHz. It might be a desktop replacement but you can still take it to the cafe and to the airport in a breeze. 1 GB RAM is very good to have since I do a lot of music and graphic software programs which take up a lot of RAM on the computer. 100GB is enough for me to download thousands of hours of music without making my computer even slow down. The wireless internet on this notebook PC is still vary fast. I usually get 11 Mbps at the airport which is pretty good. I can burn my DVDs on the DVD+/-RW Double Layer Drive easily without any mistakes. I used to have a Toshiba Satellite 1955-S803 notebook PC which costed around $2,500.00 with an Intel Inside Pentium 4 2.49GHz Processor, 512 DDR SDRAM, 60GB Hardrive, WiFi Technology, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive, Wireless Keyboard that couldn't top this one. I love this machine and you should experience it yourself.