If you’ve been around me within the past year, you’ll have probably heard me go off on a long diatribe against Sony. Indeed, I have quite the hate-on for Sony, and here’s why.
Dell has had a recent run of bad publicity with laptop batteries catching fire. They updated their website dedicated to battery recalls to include my laptop model, Inspiron 6400, as one of the models that might contain a faulty battery. Luckily, my battery is not on the list of defective firestarters; it’s manufactured by Sanyo. Only lithium ion batteries manufactured by Sony are on the list. Apparently, Sony batteries in laptops made by HP, Lenovo (IBM) and Apple might be affected to. The common thread? Sony.
I had an old-school Walkman when I was a kid and it was solid. I listened to mix tapes full of Elvis Costello, Talk Talk and Squeeze that my cousins made for me. It got a lot of use, and that Walkman was rugged, even in my prepubescent hands.
For university, I wanted a decent stereo for my room. So I went to the Sony Store in the Timmins Square, and found a reasonably-priced stereo. It had a 3-CD tray, two cassette decks and a good range. The salesman even talked me out of the extended warranty due to it’s Sony-esque quality. A little less than a year later, the laser died and the repair would be over half what the stereo cost me in the first place. I chalked it up to being a lemon. Even Wayne Gretzkey missed the net every once and a while, right?
A few years ago, Dena and I were looking for a TV upgrade in our living room. Were were using my grandma’s fifteen year old TV and it was beginning to act its age. Off we go to Sears in the Fairview Mall. We scoped out a 27-inch Sony Trinitron and settled on it. It came with a two-year warranty and the sales person pitched a two-year extended warranty for an additonal $275. In a horrible decision on my part, I declined believing that the Sony-eque quality would shine through. One month after the included warranty expired, the TV gave up the ghost. The power inverter went and Steves, who had two other TVs in for repair that were the same model as mine, said that $400 would cover the cost of the repairs…which is close the cost of the TV in the first place.
People always oooh and aaaah over Sony’s products, and for what? Sure they’re an electronics inovator and their products are easy on the eyes. By my estimate, which might be way off, Sony’s quality control has taken a nose dive at some point between my Walkman and my stereo. That in itself, isn’t what irks me. The fact that they remain smug is what gets to me. The Playstation 3 will cost an arm and a leg, and they’re not courting developers at all. Their music CDs install rootkits on your computer. Now they’re producing laptop batteries that are hazardous to your desk, or worse, your crotch! To use a second hockey analogy, I think Sony’s heads have gotten too big for their helmets.
