Official Sony VAIO AW Series 18.4" Owners thread

Ok, now I comprehend your situation. That makes things a bit more difficult.

 

Well... on a minor note, some programs which require a 7,200RPM drive are Adobe Premier Pro (which requires a dedicated 7200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing with striped —RAID 0— disk array storage for High-Def., preferrably with SCSI disk subsystem), AVID Xpress Pro and M-Audio's Torq MixLab to name a few.

Either way, if you read the 'recommendations' of most current rendering or audio/video editing software, these suggest a 7,200RPM drive. Although no specs. are indicated for SSD's, I'm assuming these will eventually become the higher standard. Specially when their capacity continues to increase and their prices continue to drop.

Cheers!

 

The Solid State drives are really pricey. For the AW premium $1420 is added to the price with a 500 GB hard drive (still 4200 rpm) and two 128 GB solid state drives-how are they that much better and how would they handle one of those Adobe programs that requires a 7200 rpm drive? Plus the non premium model can only be configured with a 500 GB hard drive and a single 64 GB solid state drive which seems a bit weird. and as far as the SATA drives go, does this mean the 756 GB model still has one hard drive slot open (albeit without connectors) Where do they put the solid state drives? Also has anyone at all seriously considered Alienware? I definitely wouldn't after reading the complaints but I wonder if others were even thinking of that option?

 

I'm pretty sure the SSD's are located in the available drive bay space as that would make the most sense.

Alienware offers serious customization and very high-end options such as Quad-core processors with speeds up to 3.06GHz, dual nVidia or ATI cards for 1GB video memory, two internal hard drives (2 x 250GB for 500GB of drive storage at 7,200RPM or 2 x 500GB for 1TB @ 5,400RPM) in addition to a third swappable drive in a smart bay (you remove the optical drive and replace it with the 3rd hard drive) and up to 8GB of RAM. All that power comes at a price, though. Besides the price on the tag, these computers are quite heavy and heat up considerably.

Still, Alienware's computers are less expensive than Voodoo's, Falcon Northwest's and Vigor's (among other obscure yet powerful brands).

As for the impact of SSD's on computers' performance, as I've read, the most considerable is boot-up and application launch time. How specific software performs will depend a lot on the processor and available RAM (then again, I'm not exactly a tech-savvy guru).

SSD technology is still undergoing development and although it will surely become the technology standard in the next, say... five years, it's still not there as SSD's are still very expensive and have some limitations to overcome such as limited write cycles, power requirement (as DRAM-based SSD's require more power than standard drives and they still use power when the computer's turned off) and unlike DRAM-based SSD's, flash-based drives feature slower write speeds during small writes and are prone to fragmentation.

So... the bottom line is that spending a lot of money in SSD's is not worth it.

Yet.

;-)

 

The RAIDs for those systems is more about uncompressed raw image HD playback then about editing, my experience has been that a fast processor makes more difference in editing then a 4200 RAID vs 7200 RAID.
At my place of work the editing part is done on fast non-raid systems and reviewed on a RAID system. Part of that is because of budget since giving everybody a RAID is expensive and viewing in half-HD is adequate for the job.

 

Well... there you have it!

:wink:

 

It has always been the combination of available RAM and the processor for me. I simply have seen that there is access lag in comparison when using a 4200 RPM drive vs the 7200. Regardless, a decent processor with enough RAM would suffice for most any work you have to do but speedy drive access gives an additional edge. You can always save the money and upgrade it later so it no big deal.

 

Is the 360x2 7200 RPM AW a RAID thou? The impression I got from those buying the AW's 7200 RPM is that it is not a RAID and may not be configured as such and the Sony site is unclear on that.

Since the 360x2 7200 RPM costs less then the 4200 RPM RAID so I suspect it is not a RAID.

I guess one could open up the AW and put different RAID drives in but I wonder if that voids the warranty?

 

I strongly suspect the AW1XX models are now discontinued and you will have to wait until the AW290 arrives in Canada or buy something else.

My three month old AW170 is now discontinued... I feel great now.

 

well my RGB Led 170 y/q showed up today.

I AM BLOWN away as to how nice the screen is.

I got this lappy that was configured for $3300 (3 year warranty) for $1500
smoking deal to say the least.

anyways, has anyone done a win 7 install. I would like to keep the functionality of the Sony software if possible. Also, the computer didnt come with the recovery discs so can someone walk me through that.

Lastly, any guides on taking her apart as I have a T9800 on the way

 

Where did you score that deal? I looked at Sony's outlet thinking maybe it was refurbished. Boy was I wrong. You can get a brand new AW290 premium for about $50 more than a refurbished AW190 premium with the same options. How can Sony clear out refurbished computers at almost no discount in comparison to their brand new models?

 

ebay my friend. The auction ended at $1600 and then I had a 8% off coupon.

He even included the receipt from the sony store dates 1/17/09 and it was over $3300

insane deal.

 

Yeah I noticed that too that all the refurbished and clearance models were hardly deals at all. Why they can do that is because there's a small idiotic percentage of the population that will either refuse to get adequate goods opting for the bare bones and also some people think the only way they can get a good deal is to buy used and have no idea that they're wasting their money this way. With all the people looking for deals, they don't seem to be having any trouble clearing out their junk-but to me the prices for some of those year or older model computers is ridiculous. You can get a good deal there but you really have to look and know what you're doing and most people don't - of course aleicgrant is an exception to this.

It's not that easy buying one of these computers because there are so many factors in play not even counting price and I'm buying a premium after canceling the order for the standard just because of things I accidentally learned last weekend regarding the LED screen-before that I thought it was only the Adobe that made the difference but that really sealed the deal for me even if it is extra money since the screen on the premium is in a class all by itself.

And thanks to others posting here I now know about Voodoo and some of the other botique brands besides Alienware-very interesting that most of those brands charge far less for identical upgrades than Sony does but their base prices are higher-in some cases by a lot. Plus I can count on Sony to be around and continue to put money into R&D while that may not be true of the others-plus none of the botiques offer a 16:9 model yet.

So now I've FINALLY-after about six weeks-got the unit on track EXACTLY as best configured in my budget-640 GB Hard Drive, 4 GB Memory, BluRay read/write and 2.66 GHZ T9550 processor-the only way I could improve on that (if I had the extra 800 dollars) would be with the 2.93 GHZ T9800 processor and 8 GB Memory.

Just curious-the person putting in the 9800 processor-is this an easy task? Also I think that's a $300 upgrade from the 9550-how much did you pay for it and where? Now that I think of it, if I were to do that, wouldn't it make more sense to save the extra $150 and have the unit ship with the 2.4 GHZ processor if I install the 2.93 T9800 myself?

 

The more I think about swapping processors the more it sounds like a bad idea. I'm not exactly experienced with computers especially when it comes to opening them up and messing with things like processors. So now the question becomes is it worth the extra $300 to go to the 2.93 GHZ T9800-in other words is the T9550 a bargain basement type of 6MB cache processor? I don't play computer games at all but I'm writing a film and book so there may be some video work I may need to do in the future. For now, I'll mostly be using it for writing, web, HDTV, BluRay, music and the like.

Oh also I was going to add about the bargain hunters stuff in the previous post-Fry's had an AW with a 256GB graphics card and BluRay for about $250 less than the upgrade to the video card that ships with Sony's current AWs. It would seem to me running BluRay or like applications with only a 256MB graphics card would give the owner a great deal of trouble.

 

Hi!
Can anyone give their opinon on which of these 2 models I should buy?
The newer model has a slow HDD, 4,200 but also a SDD and better specs, but the older model has a 5,200 HDD, and not so great specs!
Should I be worried about the speed of the HDD?
AW11Z/B or AW21Z/B
This is my first laptop, I have a PC I built myself, [email protected], 4G ram, 3870X2 etc, so this will not replace my PC, but I do want to use the Blu ray writer.
Any opinions?
(By the way I am in Greece and we do not have a big selection of models)
Thanks!
D

 

hi i have the first model aw11z/b and its great computer
but if you have pc built at home dont buy 18.4 laptop its so big and heavy
buy the 14.1 cs
the bettery in the aw is 1 hour ! 1 hour its sucks !

buy small and good laptop

how much the price for 2 laptop?

 

I had asked this before but wasnt able to get an answer. Does anyone know if a AW170y/q can handle 8gb of memory? On spec says yes, one spec says no

 

Hi!

I don't mind about the weight!
One reason I want a big screen is so my kids can watch films on it and play games, so I really do want the big screen!
thanx
D

 

ok so I want to see the RGB in action. Does someone have a file they can share and walk me through the process of loading the profile.

did I mention I LOVE this laptop

 

What's Is The Different Between ~X-Black LCD With Double Lamp Technology~ To ~X-Black LCD With RGB 3chip LED Technology~

i have aw11z/b with X-Black LCD With Double Lamp Technology

thanks

 

I found a couple of things last weekend. Someone had written a piece comparing a brand new Apple with LED against an older Apple with CCFL and concluded there was significant difference (they posted some pics as well but they aren't the best detail) and someone else on an unrelated note posted a You Tube video of themselves being filmed opening up the AW upon arrival and showing all the various stuff that comes with it-its gray so its the standard model. Also I found a piece comparing LED and CCFL from an engineering aspect which explained key differences- for example, CCFL screens lose their brightness over time while LED screens last longer and work like new until the moment they permanently fail.

 

Yeah, I love LED (although remember that just because the lighting is LED, doesn't actually mean the LCD screen used is any good. They are in these Sony's, and in most if not all the Apples too, but I've got an Asus who's screen is just decent, not spectacular).

 

Thanks-that makes me feel better about spending the extra $600 or so-also, do you think I should opt for the 2.93 processor right now for an extra 300 dollars since I can't upgrade it later or does it really make much difference-right now at $2718.99 plus tax I'm pretty much over budget by quite a bit...

 

I wouldn't worry about it then if you're already overbudget. I mean it would be 10% faster (at best), which for video encoding could be useful, but is it $300 useful for you, versus spending that towards a new far faster laptop in a few years?

Right now, for video encoding having four CPUs-even the slowest of quad core chips, would be a bigger benefit, but there are hardly any of those unfortunatly. (And the Core i7 based chips that should hit laptops late this year will be faster for video work too.)

But Penryn-even dual core Penryn-is already really fast! I've "only" got a 2.4Ghz/3MB/1066Mhz Penryn dual core, and it blazes through everything I throw at it. If I had had a choice, I would have gone with the cheapest one with 6MB cache, but this thing is still over twice as fast as the 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 it replaced.

 

That's interesting-I'll stick with the 2.66 GHZ then I think since it does have the 6MB cache and there aren't even any quad processors available for the AW290s. Also just found out Alienware is really Dell (another reason not to buy one) and Voodoo is really HP. Those botique computers look really great with the customized paint and all and really stand out but they hardly seem practical.

 

I thought I was going to have a chance at a great deal to rival aliecgrant. A student at my school is trying to sell one, and I had heard it was "fully loaded". I assumed it would be an AW190, but was an older AR series (or something like that). 17" screen, 2GB Ram, 2GHz processor, 160x2 GB HDD...etc. Not even comparable to the AW290.

I didn't even want it before we got to price, and then I really didn't want it. Poor kid wants $3k for it (spent over $4k about 2 yrs ago). I showed him what the AW290's were going for and what they had for specs...I think I broke his heart. He said he would try eBay, but he is still hoping for $2,500 (he's basing his price on what he wants to buy to replace it...15" Macbook Pro).

 

I probably have a better chance of being hit by lightning than getting another deal like this. I knew I had a chance of scoring because the number of bidders was so low. Another reason is with Sony having so many bloody model numbers in this line I dont think people realized it had the RGB screen hence the low bids

 

I've really never heard anything good about Alienware. I mean I like Dell a lot more. The Alienware stuff just isn't built well, has poor support, etc. Haven't heard it's improved any with Dell (and I know like the 15x or whatever is supposed to be shoddily built, versus Dell's equivalent...)

Those Botique dealers are really rip offs IMO. You pay outrageous prices, and get worse designed hardware a lot of times than what you'd get just buying a something more 'normal' and cheap.

I think a Toshiba model is the cheapest I've seen with a Quad core, but no Blu Ray, no LED backlighting, and it has giant flames on the lid, so...well it's a trade off

Oh wow. At least it sounds like he's accepted that it's not worth that. I'm just astounded when people think some old outdated system is worth much. The AR at least is only one model old. I mean I wouldn't touch one unless it was SUPER cheap, but at least it's not unusable. But I saw this person on Amazon trying to sell an old Dell laptop for nearly full price. And when I say old, I mean this was a model from 2003! I know, because I looked it up on their support site.

It had a Pentium 4, etc., etc. She claimed it was a year old, and a bunch of people were offering her what she wanted for it! I pointed out that it was at LEAST 4-5 years old (since at best it would have been sold for 1 year, and possibly less), and that ANY $400 (let alone what she was asking) laptop at Best Buy would absolutely destroy it in performance, be brand new, have a new battery, full warranty, etc., etc., etc., etc.

And she was absolutely incensed, and again claimed she bought it last year! And no one listened to me, just kept making her offers.

It was just surreal. So...yeah, I believe someone would actually try to sell an AR for $3000, when it's maybe arguably at best worth $800ish (and IMO that's kind of pushing it).

 

Don't you think that AW with LED screen renders shadows incorrectly? My calibrator says the gamma is almost perfect (2.21), but it's like there are no sufficient steps in deep shadows... I mean, it's like a step between pure black (0,0,0) and almost pure black (1,1,1) is much too big...
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
The difference between step 0 and 1 should be almost not visible here - on AW it's like step 5 on regular (calibrated) screens... I don't think it's a matter of calibration profile - I can see it even with Sony's original profile... I'm wondering if it could be a GPU driver/firmware issue... Deep dark shadows look slightly "posterized" even if I calibrate to gamma 2.4...

 

Hi All

i Have Sony Vaio VGN-AW11Z/B

http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...=1218032875460

I Have Problem With My Webcam In Flash Sites . when i Try To Use My Webcam In Flash Sites My Internet Explorer Is Fall Or Restart

Os: Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bit
Ie: 7.0 Version: 6001.1800
Adobe Flash Player: 10.0 Version: 10,0,12,36

Iv'e Read In Google Some And I Understand That My Webcam Bump With Flash Player 10 And Internet Explorer 7 And I Need To Install Flash 9 . I Did This And The Problem Is Still There

Can SomeOne Help Me Please ?

Thanks All

P.S

What's Is The Different Between ~X-Black LCD With Double Lamp Technology~ To ~X-Black LCD With RGB 3chip LED Technology~

 

I think someone already answered this a few hours ago, and plus it's been explained a bunch of times in this thread, but basically:

Advantages of LED instead of florescent:
-lasts much longer
-doesn't fade with age
-brighter
-uses less power
-often better color reproduction
-instant on
-no mercury
-(probably) no UV radiation output

And probably other stuff I'm forgetting. For me it was mandatory, though I think Sony's florecent lit screen looks really really good for a florecent too.

 

what can i do with my problem?

 

You can access the ICC profile set up by simply doing a right click on the desktop, selecting 'Display Settings', then 'Advance Setting' then choose the 'Color Management' tab. If you have a screen calibrator you can create custom profiles but the Adobe RGB profile looks great for image work as expected. Using someone else's custom profile isn't suggested though as even though it may be the same type of monitor each screen has slight color shifts.

 

The 360x2 7200 is a RAID set up.

 

Not to mention no light leak on the bottom.

 

I found that problem with all the LCDs I've seen, maybe there are some monitor LCDs that dont but I have not seen one yet. Looks like OLED might be better.

 

I would say go for a AW2xx since they are the newer ones.

 

is this true with the AW290 as well?

TIA
bruce

 

Yeah that little $2500 OLED HDTV looks amazing-apparently when it was brand new to the market Steven Spielberg bought one for George Lucas to celebrate the latest Indiana Jones installment (South Park parodies and all) but what is the difference between organic light emitting diodes and light emitting diodes? If its anything like organic and non organic raspberries its not much if anything. But I guess we're talking a different type of organic here? Also apparently the AW has 32 LED's. Does anybody know how many OLED's that little HDTV has? And quite interestingly Sony Style in Beverly Center is using a little psychology with that OLED HDTV sitting it smack dab in the middle of a table of displays of their new ultra portable P series line. I wonder how many suckers...er, customers...are going to buy that little computer thinking it has an amazing picture (to be fair, I haven't actually looked at one and have absolutely no interest in that line since the HP is probably just as good for a lot less money) because of that little showmanship gimmick?

 

ok I am a little green at this RGB stuff but I dont see that profile.

this is what I have

 

and I have asked a few times but no reply. Has anyone done a Windows 7 upgrade. Did you upgrade right over vista or do a clean install.

 

No, I'm comparing it to typical LCD - that's why I'm surprised... It makes deep shadows look more "noisy" than they really are... It's a little bit like using Shadow/Highlights tool in Photoshop - it always shows more noise when you bring some shadows up, but with gamma set to 2.2 I should not see that in unprocessed pictures...

 

They were talking about the florescent lighting versus the LED lighting. Virtualy all notebook screens with florescent lighting have some leakage.

And to the person who said about the LCD color/shadow thing...have you only used TN panels? IPS/MVA should look really good. Even my older ones look good.

 

I feel kind of like I should apologize sort of to Sony for implying that displaying the 11 inch OLED HDTV next to their new P series mini computers is dishonest in any way-it's not and I would do the same thing-and if someone buys a P series thinking its going to look anything like that its their own fault. But then again there are a lot of stupid people out there as evidenced by all those people who ignored sage advice regarding that 4-5 year old Dell computer that woman is hawking that was written about in another post that people were bidding higher on oblivious to the fact its no longer a top notch computer. I'm glad for websites like this where we can all learn from each others experiences and its quite amazing to me the number of people out there who don't actually use their computers to find out useful information easily Googled that could save them lots of time and money.

On a more positive note, I FINALLY have my AW290 PREMIUM all configured and in the building stage after canceling my AW290 standard order earlier this week after reading everything useful I could find on the subject and am very excited about that and very thankful to everybody here who provided valuable information and look forward to learning more about it as I start to use it when it arrives in the next two weeks or so.

 

I'd imagine the P series has a really good screen though.

 

I'm sure it does and if I were in the market for one of those I'd definitely at least consider it-but the image is what I really want and in store the AW premium blew away the much larger HDTV above it-not really a scientific comparison but the difference was huge-I'm sure Sony already has mini notebooks in the project stage that use an OLED screen and those will be amazing-if I get a chance to play with one of those mini notebooks I will and I might even decide to get one since taking it everywhere is so much easier than with the AW. Briggs and Riley makes a really top notch computer carrying case on wheels the BR 260 which will likely fit in it and like all Briggs and Riley products it comes with a lifetime no matter what warranty-you pay more upfront (I think its $399 last I checked) but all their luggage is top notch and well worth it.

 

So how bad off are the colors without custom calibration?

How would you go about fixing them if you don't have a color calibrator?

I ask because I've been looking at laptops for about a year now and I haven't found one yet with a screen that doesn't bother me. I want to be able to look at most angles and it be relatively the same. I'm not using it for professional things in PS and editing (Although I do use the programs for smaller projects), but I'd want it somewhat accurate, and I don't want it to look like it's diseased, or too off... ^__^ I'm getting this for college as well so I know most people will say get another for college, but I'm not satisfied with the other Laptops' screens. I've looked at all the major brands, including other less known ones like alienware and sager (Saw the sager in person and they have the worst screens I've ever seen.) I've looked at my home LCDs and it turns out they are PVA and S-PVA Panels. I want a screen that is as close to these as possible.

I don't mind getting a little bigger laptop if the screen is good and I don't have to worry about it. But I don't want to get it and not be able to calibrate it on the same token, and I don't want my programs to look wrong because they cant read a profile. As you can see I'm very new to profiles, so Any explanations to these problems would be appreciated. I've been reading this thread, pretty much since it started, but since the people explaining the profiles have already used color profiling before, I'm kinda confused when they are so vague about fixing the issue (if it really is a big issue for non business situations).

Anyways thanks for informing me thus far, it's been very helpful... If I've been too vague in my question, or you just need me to explain something I'm asking, I can add more...

 

Hi,
I've same notebook in dual boot xppro32 and Vista ultimate 64, because I think that Vista Home 32 bit is too bad SO.
Mozilla firefox, work fine expecially with flash site. IE 7 has too problems...

Which are the link with flash site problems? So, I can check your problems with my configuration.

Please, post the links.

bye

 

hi

when i try to take photo from the facebook i press "take a webcam picture"
my internet explorer crash

when i enter the "adobe flash player setting manager" and right click and enter the setting i cant go to the icon of the camera to see me when i go there my enternet explorer crash

and many many more examples

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8569/68733101.jpg

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8209/15843950.jpg

 

Hi,
In my position, it's impossible to know if it's an hardware problem or drivers/software problem, because with vista 64 and firefox, every thing work fine. I tried with IE7 also, and the setting manager of the camera in AFP 10 is right... A F P 10, finds my hardware how Sony Visual Camera without to crash.

If you want to boost your aw11, I suggest you to install Vista 64 and Mozilla Firefox. Please, remove vista home 32... too bad!!

Anyway, you must try again all, starting from factoryl condictions. Restart the notebook and press F10 key. Attention, this cancel every data from your notebook. Backup your documents, before!

After this, if the problems remain, contact Sony Vaio support.

Good luck.

Bye