Sony Vaio Flip 15

[DarkStar02]

Just wanted to share my experience with the new Sony Vaio Flip 15 with everyone. I drove for 45 minutes to pickup the Flip 15 because I wanted a laptop that doubled as a tablet with an active digitizer. Imagine my surprise when I got home and opened the box only to find out that after spending $1350 I have to go buy the stylus separately for another $40. Wtf?

So I hopped in my car and drove to the Best Buy a couple blocks away. I asked for a stylus that will work with my new laptop and one of the sales reps hand me a Bamboo Stylus Feel for the Samsung Galaxy Note. She told me it will work with the Flip 15 because the Galaxy Note also has an active digitizer. I spent the $45 and drove home, excited to flip it into tablet mode and start drawing. I got home, ripped open the box and touched the screen with the stylus... nothing happens. WTF?! Not knowing much about digitizers or tablets, I thought "hmm, maybe it's a configuration thing". After looking through the settings for a while and not finding anything, I decided to contact Sony live chat support. What the guy told me blew my mind-- "That particular laptop only works with your fingers". How can that be? Why the #&!* would they put an active digitizer in a laptop that you can only use with your fingers? If I wanted a giant iPad I would have bought some other cheaper laptop with a capacitive touchscreen. I told the guy that makes absolutely no sense so he goes to ask someone else. He comes back like 10 minutes later and tells me that I need an official Sony stylus for it to work. Seriously?! Then why the hell don't they sell them in-store at Best Buy? Or better yet, include it for the $1350. Did they not mark it up enough to justify including the most important piece for free?

The laptop seems pretty nice but the fan is LOUD and has a slight whistle/whine to it. The WiFi card is also EXTREMELY weak, almost unbearably so. I was at my parents house this weekend and couldn't get signal at all from the same couch where my mom was using her iPad to FaceTime my sister. Not sure if I'm going to return it yet.

 

[heatlesssun]

Sorry to hear about your experience. There are currently three different pen digitizer technologies used in Windows tablets that I know of, all incompatible with each other. Considered the best by many pen aficionados like myself are Wacom based digitizers which are used in the Galaxy Notes under the trademark s-pen and the Surface Pro, as well as devices from Lenovo, HP, Fujitsu and Wacom itself in the Cintiq line. Then there are those made by N-Trig, which is the technology that Sony uses for it's active pens these days I believe. HP, Fujitsu and currently use N-trig tech I believe. Then there's Synaptics which is something of a new comer and now has its tech in the new Dell Windows 8 tablets, the Venue 8 and 11 Pros.

Unfortunately OEMs are very bad about labeling the specific technology they use for their pen digitizers and you wouldn't know and s-pen and Surface Pro pen were interchangeable unless you just knew.

 

[Trombe]

Need an ntrig pen direct from Sony I believe which sucks. The WiFi is a known issue with basically all of Sony's 2013 models and is their Achilles heel IMO.