When selecting a notebook I thought one advantage that going with a Sony Vaio might have over another brand would be that my Sony Mini DV Digital Camcorder would work hand-in-hand without any glitches (you know, since both being Sony products, and that Sony markets the two products together on their website). I like the Sony Vaio overall, but the fact that it was a Sony did play some part in my decision.

So last night I went to Fry's Electronics and bought myself a Firewire cable. I was bummed to find that they had an extremely poor selection (read: only one cable to choose from, and it was a non-brand cable). But I got the cable and went home all stoked to import some Guttermouth footage to the notebook, and then to the website.

Step 1) Fire up the notebook
Step 2) Plug firewire cable into notebook
Step 3) Plug firewire cable into camcorder
Step 4) Power on the camcorder
Step 5) Run movie editing software
Step 6) Hit "Capture" button
Step 7) Watch "No Input" error message on the screen

How can this be! So I broke the code of the geek and opened up the camcorder manual, read the directions, try the exact method recommended, and it still didn't work! So then I went to the web and via google.com did a search and came up with DV editing page and read how some people have had cheap firewire cable fry their firewire ports on their camcorders!

OH NO!!! I thought. How suck would it be to have to send my camcorder or new notebook or even worse both of them to Sony for repairs. Especially the camcorder cos our 4 month old boy is doing so much lately and we've been using it a lot.

So I send Tyler an e-mail explaining the situation. Ty has the same camcorder as I (Sony TRV-900), and has a nice setup with a Mac that he uses only for his DV editing. So I schedule to go to his place tonight and test all my gear.

At first, my camcorder didn't work with his Mac. So we thought the firewire port was toast. He plugged his in, and it worked. Thus even more convincing me that my port was toast. Then we plugged his camcorder up to his Dell notebook, and it worked. Then we plugged mine up to the Notebook, and it worked! relief Then we plugged mine back to his G4, and it worked! weird

So then using his firewire cable (Belkin I think), I hook my notebook and camcorder together. BAM it works! So it turns out that I had just boughten a bunk cable, and nothing was ruined on my equipment. I still can't explain why my camcorder didn't work immediately with Ty's Mac the first time we plugged it in.

Two lessons learned tonight. 1) Non-name brand cables can jack with your high-end hardware, don't gamble. 2) Sony on Sony isn't necessarily better than Sony with Dell or Apple hardware.

Out.