Register your Vaio - Advanced lesson about ergonomy

I bought one week ago, a fresh notebook. My current (soon previous) one is a HP nx9420. Not a bad computer specially now that I 'upbacked' (downgraded is not appropriate as moving from Vista to XP was really a move to more for less) to Windows XP. Still the machine has only 1GB of memory and running virtual machines, Netbeans etc is still not obvious.

My policy for buying computers remains to find the best I can, on stock, for a fixed (in advance) budget. This Sony Vaio CS31 was well under 800€ for 4GB of RAM - 320 GB of HD. So basically 4 and 3 times bigger than the HP I bought a year ago.

For the first time I decided to downsize my screen. I started years ago with a Toshiba 12" (not sure anymore) then Compaq 14", next Fujitsu 15" and finally the HP 17".

The ratio changed with the HP. This is a nice screen but not that portable anymore... Also I bought a compact video projector so the big screen is much less needed.

Netbooks (Asus ee pc) are still not for me. May be one day. The screens are too small to work -- at least for programming, the horse power too weak and the autonomy still not good enough.

So here is the Vaio. I usually give our computers a name from comics heroes. The HP was 'Paddle' (Kid Paddle). I will name the new one Batman because of its glossy black piano like surface (to avoid as you see immediately fingers traces on it).

Sony encourages you (via a popup) to register your computer online -- an easy and supposingly no time consuming task...

Once clicked, the desktop icon (your desktop is filled with adware) your IE opens and brings you to the registration page. The easy process now prompts you for a 2 parts serial number.

As usual, all these numbers are on the back of he computer. Putting a secondary serial number sticker near the screen is too much for one of the biggest electronic manufacturer of the planet (its full of stickers but none of them is relevant) .

All the ergonomic, usability lessons are now forgotten as you move up your portable to see what's written under it... without disconnecting your network cable... if you can (no wifi in my office which is an cave). Of course there are multiple numbers. Which one is the one?

Don't imagine anybody thinking: let's write this is the 'serial number'. You dream. Why not use the web instead? Isn’t that more modern?

On the web a link is there - how to find the serial number... great (still I would prefer not having to ask) then a secondary window opens with a link to 'how to find a serial number... cool. One more click and there, finally I learned that the serial number can be recognized because it is a serie of 17 digits separated with '-'.

Practically speaking you can recognize it as it is made with the smallest typeface one can use to print a sticker -- so keep up your portable with one hand and use the other one to bring your magnifier close enough to read the sticker...

Desperately, I learned on the same web page that there is another way to get this number:
reboot (so loose your registration data),
press F2 enter the Bios config and ... it is there.
Great idea but why a giant such as Sony has not designed a small Active-X control to read this and make the registration easy that's a sign computer are still not designed to make every day user life easier...

After a couple of trials I finally entered the serial number.

The interactive web site, gives you the option to answer a small survey. But as the computer is damned fresh I decided that I could not say anything smart, so I skipped the survey. May be I should review this after all - just to see if they question customers about the registration process...

I then clicked to the Vaio club finally reaching home… huh a familiar 404 error page fired by Tomcat... I gave up, happy to know that I can expect now two years full of services.