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Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

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Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#131

Post by Spooky23 »

kw71 wrote: post #90
notoothpaste wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your sincere and informed response. I understand that EEs create countless prototypes over the course of the development of a product, and that development PCBs need not (especially for debugging purposes) bear any physical resemblance to the finished product. What is impressive to me is that Toshiba could: Redesign and test a PCB Set up a manufacturing process for pick and place etc Create an injection…

Some of the external ports in my lifebook are simply mounted on the housing and connected to the boards by cable assemblies, so: They may have stuck the needed connector on a wire and used an NC mill to make an appropriate cutout from an existing housing part. It is literally less than 1 hour to design and tape-out a inch-square pc board to accomodate a connector and cable termination. I am a little guy and have to w…

I think you are right, but the idea that they were willing and able to actually execute was incredible to me. Alot of competence and strong relationships were in place in the sales and manufacturing organization for that to happen.

As a customer, I think we bought ~1,000 units in the end. I've rarely seen that type of capability in my career, and it's too bad that the realities of the market have likely nixed it.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#132

Post by fiatpandas »

bpicolo wrote: post #128

I had a Vaio Z once (This was ~2010, probably the first Vaio Z series). Performance was good in the 11" package. But... the hinge was terrible, and I snapped it with a light drop. Agonizing 1.5 month repair sendout. $300 bill. Same day it came back, broke the hinge in the same place. Never bought another Vaio. And this is why I just buy Macs now. Repair is easy - a couple hours at the Apple store. And the things are…

Using a 13" 2013 Vaio Z right now. It's a really great machine: 2x SSDs in RAID0, HDMI + VGA, 2x USB 3, SD reader, ethernet port with an interesting hatch mechanism to support its very thin form factor, 1080p, good thermal design.

The product design is quite nice as well, which was an important factor for me. When researching the model before purchasing, I found a YT video with one of Sony's industrial designers disassembling the entire laptop, describing all the components and a few of the design decisions, to a tech reporter. There was definitely a level of design consideration and technology craft that reminded me a lot of Apple, albeit not as sophisticated with material science. But it was the nicest 13" PC laptop at the time.

That said, there are issues with it: small key travel, flexible plastic body, bendy screen, out-of-box Sony bloatware (which I formatted away), lack of dedicated graphics, and it has absolutely terrible speakers.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#133

Post by petepete »

quanticle wrote: post #49
mikekchar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Japanese Toshiba KIRA V63 (only sold in Japan, for some stupid reason). It's a great machine and quite cheap for it's specs. I bought it for battery life (I can do a whole day of programming on a single charge in Linux), but it has good performance as well. I've been very pleasantly surprised at how well the Intel 5200U has performed. Also at only 1.2 kg, I can easily stick it in my bag and carry it with me…

>Toshiba has been my go to maker for the last 10 years or so because virtually everything they make "just works" on Linux. This is honestly a pretty shocking statement for me, because Toshiba has long been my go-to example for the worst-case scenario of installing Linux on laptops. I have never once had a Toshiba laptop that "just worked" out of the box with Linux. Whether it was power management, display drivers, or…

I had a Toshiba Tecra M11-17z and it worked flawlessly with Linux. Before I bought it, I made sure that the Wifi, Graphics etc were Intel and not some iffy RealTek/Broadcom nonsense.

The first boot after it arrived (to check it was working before I installed Arch) took an hour, it downloaded updates to the vast array of crapware that came bundled and did all sorts of other 'customisations', truly awful. Look at the bundled software list on the link below, it actually makes me feel sorry for Microsoft.

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/discontinued-products/tecra-m11-17z...

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#135

Post by nsomaru »

fiatpandas wrote: post #132
bpicolo wrote: post #128

I had a Vaio Z once (This was ~2010, probably the first Vaio Z series). Performance was good in the 11" package. But... the hinge was terrible, and I snapped it with a light drop. Agonizing 1.5 month repair sendout. $300 bill. Same day it came back, broke the hinge in the same place. Never bought another Vaio. And this is why I just buy Macs now. Repair is easy - a couple hours at the Apple store. And the things are…

Using a 13" 2013 Vaio Z right now. It's a really great machine: 2x SSDs in RAID0, HDMI + VGA, 2x USB 3, SD reader, ethernet port with an interesting hatch mechanism to support its very thin form factor, 1080p, good thermal design. The product design is quite nice as well, which was an important factor for me. When researching the model before purchasing, I found a YT video with one of Sony's industrial designers disa…

I have the same model (SVZ13), I'm sure. Is yours carbon fibre? It's super fast and hasn't slowed down with a little maintenance. I'm sure it will go for a few more years with care. The docking station external graphics are useless though (only marginally better than the onboard intel HD) That said...

Limitations I'm coming up against right now:

1) Cannot upgrade from 8GB RAM which is soldered to the board. I want to run more VM's!

2)I want two bigger SSD's to replace the current 2x128GB scenario. Once again, these are soldered to the board.

3)My sim tray broke and if I remove it it will definitely not be usable any more.

4) would love to install linux on it but not sure what the RAID0 story is there with this machine.

There might be a way to do it, I just need a guide to parts etc (for ssd and hdd).

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#136

Post by narag »

chemmail wrote: post #34

Japan is really behind in PC/Laptop. I was just there last week and the big PC and electronic stores only stock up to Geforce. Asus also has a big presence there now, but the prices are a lot more than US pricing for the same stuff. Not much innovation in the computer space. Home eletronics and appliances are amazing though. Their high end electrolux style vacuum stick cleaners easily clear $800 USD and are really aw…

Asus also has a big presence there now, but the prices are a lot more than US pricing for the same stuff.

The same Asus stuff or other brands?

I live in Spain and although I haven't looked recently, Asus was the best quality-price relation here. In particular, batteries duration similar to macs, for half the money. If I needed a laptop now, I would see their offer first for sure.

Time ago, I read that Asus doesn't sell in the USA, what explained how little comments I saw in specialized webs about their laptops.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#137

Post by VLM »

imglorp wrote: post #117
themodelplumber wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mcirowaves have built in toast oven in one unit, and it works amazingly well I had one in my apartment outside Nagoya in 1996. Still can't believe I have never seen one in the states. I wonder if they just can't justify the potential marketing friction.

It's the same reason we still have 2 piece washer/dryers: so they can sell two appliances instead of one. Until our market demands a combo mike/toast, we won't have one.

My Grandmother had a combo oven / microwave in the 80s. Sears model, I think. It was a full size oven and I believe it ran the microwave part off the 220 connection. The control panel was pretty complicated looking.

It suffered the inevitable result of TV/VCR or TV/DVD combo units where I don't remember which half burned out first but once one half broke it was time to buy two separated devices.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#138

Post by mkaziz »

basch wrote: post #129
kw71 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd buy another Fujitsu if they had any current models with displays that are up to date. Seems someone there thinks that anyone who is using a portable doesn't need a display taller than 768 (or some other absurdly low number of) pixels.

the problem is, this merger collapsed. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3056030/computers/proposed-to... now Fujitsu is looking to be acquired by Lenovo http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/27/business/tech/fu... and Toshiba is ending its consumer laptops entirely. http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/toshi... Toshiba Vaio would still make a good merger, one with sexy consumer laptops (the only PC…

I didn't realize Toshiba is stopping selling consumer laptops! Such sad news. :( I've exclusively bought Toshiba every since I got my first laptop way back when.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#139

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

pwg wrote: post #105
dep_b wrote: post #92

I bought a Sony VAIO MultiFlip 13A for my wife because she loves Sony's design and she wanted a touchscreen, so we bought the basic model with an SSD. a) of a 128GB SSD, only 90GB was left after Sony took wat they thought was necessary b) the fan was incredibly noisy, it would crash randomly and would eventually die and take the notebook with it c) when put in a less performant mode, it's really less performant and s…

> a) of a 128GB SSD, only 90GB was left after Sony took wat they thought was necessary > e) it still ran Windows Your "e" item indicates that it was not Sony who took 90G of the 128G SSD, but rather it was Microsoft who took 70% of the drive space. Lay the blame where it belongs, on Microsoft, they created an OS that consumes 90G of disk space. Sony did not create mswin, Sony just installed it because it is what most…

> they created an OS that consumes 90G of disk space

Was it some sort of Sony-only release? I've run every major version of Windows over the years and never had one come anywhere near this sort of size.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#140

Post by astrodust »

oblio wrote: post #130
Chris2048 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd happily call all of you out as the ignorant yuppie douchebags you are... no, worse, the 19 year old CS majors pretending to be ignorant adult yuppie douchebags. > Please fuck off if you don't know what you're talking about, for the sake of anyone that wants to ask a remotely relevant question on this braindead hellhole. Uh, what? did I miss something?

You missed a meltdown, I guess.

Degrees are expensive, and if you don't get to bludgeon people with them, what's the point?
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