2. The Sony UX180P Micro PC: A Trail of Upgrade Tears

I love Sony products. The company is an innovator in a variety of areas, including mobile and desktop computers. But, innovation can be both good and bad.

The good is that the Sony delivers impressive new products.

The bad is that impressive new products are quickly replaced by newer, usually more impressive products.

The really bad is that replacement often happens so fast that purchasers of the original product are left holding the bag as little as a few months after they buy a newly released product.

This happened with Sony's UX180P Micro PC. When I first saw the UX180P, I nearly fainted. It appeared that Sony had finally built the near perfect micro PC. I wrote about it as soon as the first press release hit in June.

When the UX180P came to market in mid-July, Sony was unable to find an evaluation unit for me to look at. So, I borrowed a friend's brand new UX180P and did a full blown review. The review was mostly positive and MobilityGuru presented its Editors Choice Award to Sony for the UX180P, mostly for the company's innovative spirit.

So, then a little more than two months later I got another Sony press release. The release announced the UX280P. What's different about the two models?

The UX180P has 512 MB of memory; the UX280P has 1 GB of memory The UX180P has a 30 GB disk drive; the UX280P has a 40 GB disk drive

What's the same? Everything else, including the price!

What's really annoying? The UX180P needed more memory and a larger disk drive from the get go, especially for it to be considered truly Windows Vista ready.

The Sony UX180P and the UX280P. What's the difference? Outside, nothing. Inside, a couple of very significant internal parts. Trade secret: Both images are the same photo of my friend's UX180P, as if you hadn't already figured that out and as if it makes any difference given that the 180P an 280P are identical externally.

And, what does Sony have to say about the short-lived UX180P and why it has disappeared from the market? Basically: We only made a small number of the UX180Ps. The UX280P is so much better.

At this point you shouldn't be surprised that UX180Ps can't be upgraded to UX280Ps. Why? The memory is soldered to the motherboard and for some unexplained reason the UX180P can't handle the higher capacity disk drive.

I showed the press release to my friend who bought the UX180P. Here are his comments as paraphrased by me.

As a buyer of a UX180P, I'm not impressed by the excuse that Sony made only a small number of UX180Ps and is now selling the "real" UX as the UX280P.

First, no one told me that this was going to be a short run product. My guess is that no one knew the product would be dumped for a revision until reviewers and maybe buyers started complaining about memory and disk size.

Second, how do I or Sony's potential customers know that the U280P isn't just another short run product to be replaced by a unit with more flexibility in screen size, zooming and the ability to see all of some third party printer and other dialog boxes? (Barry here. See my review of the UX180P.)

Third, given the circumstances under which all this crap took place, why can't Sony figure out some way to upgrade me to a UX280P. After all, if they only made a small number of UX280Ps, how much would it cost to upgrade us early adopters?

Fourth, essentially, in buying the UX180P, I paid over $2,000 with taxes and shipping for the privilege of funding the development of the UX280P and belonging to a product testing group that should have been convened during the UX180P design phase.

Back to Barry: My friend and I tried to get someone to do something about this mess. The UX180P was purchased from a Sony dealer who refused to take it back. Sony's highest level customer service people assured us that they felt my friend's pain, but that they couldn't do anything about it. It was up to the dealer. A most elegant example of finger pointing. They also noted that if the product had been bought from Sony's online or brick and mortar Style stores, the company might have been willing to take it back. To this day my friend likes to do a bit of finger pointing of his own when he passes a Sony portable in a store, but he points only with the second finger from the thumb.

Put simply Sony often leaves a trail of customer tears as it dashes merrily through the forests of product updates. Should it stop innovating? No, but it should introduce some sort of product upgrade program where a decent credit is offered to a buyer who wants to upgrade to this hour's latest and greatest. Even better, perhaps Sony should have patience in its product release cycle. If a newer product is a couple to a few months away, the company shouldn't introduce a less feature-filled version. Also, Sony should get more end user input before a product is released.