Hello

My wife has one and its shit. The charger broke so I bought a cheap one and the wires came out of it, so I bought another cheap one and that one blew up the other day.

What I want to know is are all Sony laptop chargers interchangeable? The model of the Vaio we have is an FZ series.


Do all the input voltages have to be same or could you put a 14.5v charger into a Vaio that was 15.5v or whatever

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks

E2A Hi Scribble , I know you aint here now but you will be

iv got a sony vaio all in one pc,
and i would be lost without it,

but i aint got a clue about the vaio laptops m8

ill ask me old man in the morning ..he has a vaio ..looks nice big widescreen multiple postioning and all that ..hopefully hell buy a laptop soon and donate it to me to put linux on ..woo hoo

its a weird power supply ..19v 4.74 amp ..not your everyday power supply ..a low voltage probably wont work

You certainly can't use ones of a different voltage, but you can often get away with ones that are rated for different *current*.

Like an older Dell laptop I was looking at the other week - broken 90W PSU, but managed to salvage a 75W version that otherwise works. The machine appears to notice when it boots up as a BIOS message warns that it's 'not compatible' and may not be 'reliable' but it works, the battery just takes quite a bit longer to charge up is all.

I would be worried about using power supplies on an expensive laptop that are of such poor quality that they physically fall apart just like that though.


e²a: And yes - Sony Vaios are shit - nice styling on some of them, but the hardware's shite.

¿Can you not salvage the power supply with the broken wires using a soldering iron or whatever, Martin?

There is a little tolerance in power supplies - with the think pad series i think you could pretty much use the same power supply between models as long as the power adaptor fits.

Must admit i avoid sony like the plague - if u ever try to resetup one and need to get drivers from sony its just too painful - last time i think they wanted to charge for the drivers!!!

I have a Sony Vaio, its great
It came with Vista, which is horrible
But now its sports XP Pro, and runs like shit off a stick
I dont know anything about putahs, though. So am of no help to you
Just saying, they are not all crap. Well, not for my purposes, anyhood

Cheers for the replies guys. I have decided to buy a variable laptop charger and strip off the Vaio style jack plug off the cheap one and fix it to the new variable one. Its the cheapest fix I think. The Vaio is on the way out anyway.

I hope this thread can warn people off Vaio, they really are shit so do not be fooled by how good looking they are in the shop. Putting some perspective on it, I can pick up an IBM keyboard for my laptops for around £10 and a battery for £20. To replace the battery (Which is knackered after less than 18 months) on my wifes Vaio is £100 and to replace the power pack with a genuine Sony part is £100 too. The machines are built very badly, the plastics are shit and the whole design and construction is shit, and to really add insult to injury they are more expensive than other brands.