The theory is that they're going to start replacing more boards (if
not entire products) rather than do a lot of board-level repair anymore.
Again, this is all hearsay, and I haven't gotten confirmation about it.
But it's in keeping with Sony closing more and more of their factory-
owned service centers. For example, there's no more Sony consumer
factory service in LA -- a city of 10 million people. Pretty startling.

I've sent e-mail to a friend at Sony. Hopefully, she'll let us know in a few
days.

Seattle -- not a small city, either -- lost its Sony factory-service shop about
a year ago. Their charges were not especially attractive (whose are?), and in
one case I had to lecture the manager about how a dictation machine should be
repaired. (It turned out their diagnosis was wrong and mine was right. Oddly,
they performed the repair at no charge.)