You know, for a company that insists netbooks aren’t actually computers, Best Buy seems pretty eager to push the low cost ultraportable laptops on customers willing to spend nearly 4 times as much on high performance ultraportables.
Well, kind of. I’m sure if I walked into a Best Buy today and asked for the best subnotebook money could buy, a friendly salesperson would direct me to a $2000 computer. But when one customer who bought a $2200 Sony TZ series notebook last year along with the optional damage protection plan came and asked for a replacement model, Best Buy officials pointed him to a $600 netbook.
On paper, the two netbooks are quite similar. Both weigh less than 3 pounds, have 1GB of RAM, around 100GB of hard drive capacity, and CPUs with clock speeds in the 1 to 1.6GHz range. But here’s the problem – you can’t really judge computers on those basic specs anymore. What’s missing from this equation? CPU performance, hard drive RPMs, RAM speed, display resolution and a whole host of other factors.
In a nutshell, Best Buy didn’t have the Sony laptop model that the customer had purchased, and instead of directing him to the nearest replacement, someone looked at a misleading list of specs and decided that a PC that sold for $2200 a year ago was about the same as one that sells for $600 today. It’s not.
That’s not to say that netbooks aren’t capable little machines. But the current lineup of Sony TZ notebooks have Core 2 Duo processors, biometric fingerprint scanners, DVD-RW drives, 11.1 inch, WXGA displays, and other features tha tdevine them as premium devices. Personally, I’m not sure I’d want to pay the extra $1000 – $2000 to pick one up. But if I had one and someone tried to replace it with a netbook, I think I’d be more than a little annoyed too.
The warranty that best buy offers is not based on comparable specs, but rather comparable PRICE paid. Something went wrong there. When I had a sony with a 333mhz CPU back in the day, I got full coverage for 3 years. That was a $2200 laptop. 2 years later a 3 screen replacements they offered a laptop replacement, equal to the same price paid 2 years ago. That bought a 1ghz laptop that had a gig of ram and a dvd drive (big wow at the time)
I also bought a HPtx1000 tablet convertable bran new for $1050, with the 3 year performance/accidental warranty. The pen silo broke the next day, did a simple exchange, then the next week I dropped it and busted the screen. They did a full replacement with the same model…got home found out it wasa open boxed item and took it back again. Come to found out that week they discontinued the Tx1000 and replaced it with the TX2000 which was a MUCH nicer design with the duel digitizers for both touch and pen. The tx1000 has 2 gigs of ram and a 2.2 core duo. The Tx2000 they gave me as a replacement had 3 gigs of ram, but only a 2.0 core duo..fine by me.
I was very happy with best buy’s warranty service, just make sure you know how the system works so you can use it properly.
Well as someone else pointed out for just a few bucks he could have AND SHOULD HAVE added his hardware to his house or aprtament insurance. Why he bought the Best Buy coverage was just a bone headed move, which should be added to the stupidity of buying a $2,200 laptop at a retail store.
Best Buy was doing its best and actully didn’t try to sell him the Netnook, but rather a more expensive machine. He could have also had the machine replaced with the SAME system since Best Buy does sell it and can ship any item from one store to another store. Simple.