After 3 years of misery and no end of hassles with my AR31S (crap build quality and components) it finally bit the dust - laptop died - power supply fine (however due to the 4th battery also having recently failed I could not test battery supply). Opened it up and found the power as expected on the motherboard then lost it in amongst the silicon spiders.... nothing on teh back of the on/off button. I should add at this point that my previous 2 other Vaio laptops had been real fine work horses - travelled to many distant lands and survived to go again. Both were still working and became hand me downs.... alas the AR31S... no chance. What the hell happened to Vaio ?!? They used to be real quality and reasonably robust machines. Well 6 months ago I bought a Dell Alienware M17x and it absolutely rocks the Vaio range for quality and performance, I paid 400 quid more than I did for the AR31S and got a far superior built machine. Sure its a hefty 5 kilos but I am not of slight build either. Reason for going Dell..... the 15" Studio I bought my missus 3 months after I bought the AR31S is still going strong and on its original battery too.
As the title says bye bye Sony Vaio - the quality is gone in your product.
