** abower@thebowery.co.uk abower@thebowery.co.uk [2003-08-06 10:49]:
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 10:33:50AM +0100, Adrian F. Clark wrote:
My experience with Sony is also not good. I bought what was apparently the last replacement battery they have in Europe for a 2.5-year-old 266 MHz picturebook and it cost about ?150. Far too expensive.
Ouch! I needed a replacement battery for my picturebook (typical dead cells problem, happens to picturebooks more than anything else in the sony range it seems) and got one from www.psaparts.co.uk (I think, will have to check when i get home) it isn't an official sony battery and is twice the capacity of the standard sony. I also cost me about half the price of just the standard "official" battery not even the "official" dual capacity one. I don't think I would have actually paid for an "official" battery considering how many problems people have with them, it being 3rd party was a bonus.
They obviously have a better margin to work with on Sony parts. When I looked some months back they were actuall more expensive for my Dell battery, and now they are all of 2 quid cheaper. I may try to contact them about my PSU issue though as they seem to do a generic one with adapters. It's the same price as a genuine Dell unit, but they may be able to sell me some adapters on their own if I'm lucky as that's all that's broken (the connecter). Currently I've solderd a pair of wires between the two broken halves of the connecter and all is working fine - just doesn't look too good!!!
** end quote [abower@thebowery.co.uk]
BTW, from your other reply, I'm not sure as I'd consider an IBM at 40% less than standard prices. It's obviously prejudice by now as the technicallities must have changed, but I keep seeing them on deals from Morgan and another second user/refurbished laptop supplier, but have never been tempted enough to even find out if the price is good or not.
It's odd really, as my first personally owned PC compatible was an IBM laptop which is still going strong (apart from the batteries, but I can forgive that!). A 386sx20 based L40 - nice keyboard, but the tiniest greyscale screen ever! When I first followed Linux it was with a view to installing it on that machine back in the early 90's on an IBM internal forum dedicated to Linux on L40's - there's even a patch still in the kernel for the floppy drive on them iirc! Now if I'd actually managed to get some install media and try it I'd probably be a guru by now, but I stuck with OS/2 betas and didn't take the Linux plunge until around '96 or 7 iirc with Caldera OpenLinux (spit, spit, spit - excuse me while I choke remembering how I preferred it to Red Hat at the time!).