Official Sony VAIO AW Series 18.4" Owners thread

nvm got it. uninstalled/reinstalled

DUH!!! lolz

 

So even though it dont come with an extra 4 gigs of RAM, do you guys think it beat the AW-235J/B in power.

Also if I decide on getting two of those WD Black Scorpio 320gigs 7200 drives can I install them since the AW-160J/Q comes with 2 250GB drives. Also how hard or easy is installation with those drives. Also does this laptop support DDR3 RAM

 

If the machine alreay has two drives, swapping them out for two other drives is a cinch. One screw to open the main panel, and then 3 screws holding each drive into place, and then 4 screws holding each drive into its carrier. I've swapped drives around in my unit a dozen times or more.

The laptop does not support DDR3 as far as I've read.

For a subjective opinion on performance relative to the 235, hopefully someone with more knowledge than I will chime in.

Brian.

 

Got Spyder3 and tried to calibrate the LED RGB screen, now it is clearly too pink. Tried different settings, LCD, laptop, with suction cap and without, still same. What calibration settings would you recommend for AW?

 

Yeah I think it holds two 250 gigs 5400... Ive also heard that the 7200 can make some noise. Is there any preference between the WD Scropio Black and the Seageate HD's that are 7200

 

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

or get an actual lcd calibration kit online. they're not cheap, but they're for if you want absolute precision.

 

ehosey - wondering which model of the Zalman cooler you purchased, and how you like it. I'm hoping to find a cooler that will allow me to actually work on my lap most of the time - but all of the coolers I've looked at don't look like they'll be big enough for this Lap&aHalfTop

 

The Zalman ZM-NC2000 is the one I purchased from Newegg.com. It is quiet, the fan speed is adjustable, it tilts my AW190 at a perfect angle, it has 2 built-in usb ports, and supports up to a 20 inch notebook. It works very well and I am very happy with it.

 

Hi Andrei,
At the moment I don't think so.

From what I've read here Raid enabled machines allow you to enable Raid in the advanced options BIOS tab and you then get a CTRL-I option at bootup to configure Raid.

I have the same machine as you and I'm waiting (not holding my breath) for an updated BIOS to enable Raid and also for hardware virtualization. There was a recent BIOS update released but still no Raid.

Have you tried contacting them about it?

Cheers
Dave

 

So whats the finally verdict guys the Sony VGN-AW160J/Q or Sony VAIO VGN-AW235 J/B.. Is that Adobe RGB screen really all what its cracked up 2 be. Should I be concern that Im losing 4 GIGs of RAM by going with the 160JQ. I do video editing in After Effect and Premiere will 4 gigs be OK

 

where did you read that you cant upgrade the 160 to 8gb?? the sony marketing specs say you can go up to 8gb. I felt this offering from costco was a steal. been watching it for about 3 weeks. cant understand people who took the 130jh for 1200 plus tax vs this machine(granted most people dont know about all the options offered and costco really doesnt give great product detail). for me the price diff was 300 bucks or so after tax and membership. big diff is we can upgrade both of our hdd's and we have a blu-ray burner(didnt need it) and the rgb color fidelity(not to mention lightroom which runs about 300 on its own). about $1000 extra in build cost direct from sony for 300 more. no brainer for me. im just benching the machine to see if it really warrants this price given i would really like a quad core mobile for hd video encoding. My dell xps qc(q6600 4gb ddr2 8800gtx etc...) smokes this machine in encoding but i would say its only about 15-20% faster. i think the rgb led is a must on this machine. depends on your use of course. still not sure its a keeper but so far im impressed.

 

Borat1: Am I to understand that you bought the 160J/Q at costco for the price they list at 1499 and it indeed matches the spec on the sony website for the 160J/Q including the LED screen and even including adobe lightroom, etc?

 

tbnb: the answer to your question is yes. if anyone else has any questions let me know. ill be glad to answer. for some reason there isnt much buz about this uber notebook beyond this owners thread and there is no info on the 160 except the marketing info from sony which thankfully was accurate. Seems like this is just clearance because the t9400 is no linger a build option on sonystyle. these units are from 2008 but they must have been $3000 plus tax back in october.

 

Borat1, thanks for the quick reply! Wow, need to think about doing an upgrade of my working older and slower Sony to a new one. The VT issue (lack of VT enabled in BIOS) is about the only thing giving me pause.

 

4 gigs of RAM is enough for all the video editing that you do - even HD video. The fact that you do video editing in itself is all the more reason to go for RGB LED screen of 160J/Q.

-J

 

Borat1: 160J/Q is still listed is listed at upwards of $2500 everywhere else on the web. Its just costco which is selling it for $1000 less

 

if it's like mine, you can enable VT.

 

i know but its an old model. i did my hw. im just saying, when this thing rolled off the line it was prolly around 3g. now its at 2500 if you are crazy enough to spend that on it at amazon or other retailers that are stuck with it. costco usually moves stuff that no one can. i like it a lot but i have so many computers(dell xps, sont tz, sony ar) to name a few. this notebook is my digital dream if it can live up to its bragging rights. like i said, im still putting it through the paces.

 

Hi All, Hope you can help.

I have a VGN-AW17GUQ that came with Vista Ultimate 32 bit. 64 bit is not an option and Sony do not offer 64 bit drivers for this model. I've installed Win7 64 bit and all is well except for the soft buttons and the CD eject button on the keyboard.

I tried the Sony Notebook Utilities package for the AW19 and it installs but I get an incompatible battery warning I can't remove and have to do a system restore.

So, does anyone have a working version of the Sony Notebook utilities package for Win 64 bit?

Thanks

Gordon

 

Is there a possibility of modifying the behavior of the Volume Control keys such that there is no audible "beep" when first touching a key to adjust the volume? That's a horrendously stupid feature IMO.

 

go here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Sony\VAIO Event Service\

and rename "pi.wav" to something else. "pi-old.wav" will do.

it will no longer beep.

if on 32-bit windows, just go to "C:\Program Files\Sony\VAIO Event Service" and do the same thing.

enjoy your much quieter system.

 

Well the pixs are a little confusing so let me ask you. Do the Sony VGN-AW160J/Q have that little cushion pad that the 290 Prem have. Also I thought that the most you can max out the ram is to 4 GIGS..

 

I ordered mine yesterday with Express shipping I wonder how long is it going to take to reach me..

 

took me 3 days to get mine(with express shipping). and yes it has the a700 slr grip material on it for padding. its firm but i like it.

 

Cool Im trying to decide once I get if I'll upgrade the HD with two 320gigs running at 7200..

 

im gonna wait for the 500gb seagates (7200) to come down in price and then make the switch. if i keep the machine. had a random bsod the other day. i wasnt even using the it...

 

I dunno about the seagate hard drives.. I bought a one a couple years back and lost valuable documents and files on an external drive. I wonder id WD any better

 

What are you guys talking about? Whats a BSOD

 

blue screen of death/system crash. and if you dont know what vt is then you prolly dont need to.

 

oh yeah i forget about that im use to the beach ball of death

 

JeromeAFranks:
VT = Virtualization Technology (from Intel). Number of laptops have BIOS option to enable that.

-J

 

yea. AW can have it enabled, though it doesn't support it out of the box.

 

So i've read through all 73 pages of this thread, but I never saw anything mentioned about the durability of the barrel hinge covers (I suppose that's a good thing). I know this has been an issue with the FW's and the AW's design looks identical. Can anyone comment? I'll be carrying this around a bit and was a little worried about it.

Anyone have any issues with the durability of any of the other parts also?

 

better wait for official sony update ..
it's comin up ..

 

AJ, that is fantastic! Thank you!!

Please tell... How do you learn things like this?

 

just a lot of computer experience.

it had also irritated me. I found the answer awhile ago and hadn't thought to post the "fix".

 

Give me a few mins and I'll upload my Win7 drivers to rapidshare

Edit : Created a new thread with drivers and utils

 

guys, I need a little bluetooth help:

under "bluetooth devices", am I the only one seeing 4 tabs instead of 6 or 8? I have no "audio" tab in particular, and it's preventing me from using my new bluetooth stereo headset properly.

Could you guys let me know if this is what you see as well?



I'm not sure if it's supposed to look like this, or if something is funky with my driver. I didn't suspect a problem, as I use other bluetooth devices with no problem. thanks.

 

Hi
you need to update bluetooth
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNAW290&upd_id=4331&os_id=36

There is music streaming service ..

 

Hi ajreynol, this is my capture of Bluetooth. It has one more tab than yours but I can tell you it has nothing to do with sound. My OS is in spanish, sorry!
Evoss could be right though, driver update may do the trick!
By the way thanks for the beep removal post with the volume keys! Good one!

 

could be right ?

 

thanks guys.

yea, I installed that yesterday just to be sure. didn't resolve the problem for me.

the stereo headphones keep disconnecting or otherwise not working, though the BT driver detects the device and installs it properly.

sad, as these headphones work on an HP laptop we have here.

 

Question:

Hi, I am actually new to notebook review and the forums here but i had a quick question on the aw. I looked through many pages back and did not see any mention of graphics. My dad owns the aw with the 2.53 + 4gb ram with the standard 9600 card, and ive been considering replacing my (crappy) toshiba with a slightly higher spec aw than his, however, i have noticed that the aero graphics are horrid on his laptop. Half the time the win-flip will be perfect, fast, and smooth, and half the time it will struggle and be choppy like nothing other, worse graphics than i have seen on any other computer, not even opening and closing windows will be smooth. On my current toshiba i have a 7300m 128mb card and half the time it will be a complete dog compared to aw's graphics, and the other half of the time it will be 100x smoother and faster. I cannot test any games on it due to the fact that is not my computer to mess with, however, i was just curious if this was a single strange case of bad drivers, or if this was a widespread issue. Thanks for any feedback

btw: he does have the entire adobe cs4 design suite, visual studio, and office pro installed with alot of the visual studio stuff always running in the background, does the cs4/vis studio maybe mess with the graphics?

 

I wonder if it's a driver or bloatware issue?

You should be able to run the full Aero stuff with no performance issues whatsoever on any of these 32 core Nvidia parts. My 9650GT is silky smooth with it (and it has slightly faster cores, but quite a bit slower RAM I think).

It's solid for today's games too. Not mind blowing, but it works (and hey, technically it's better than the consoles' GPUs, so...)

I would have gotten a 9800 class GPU if I could have, but they still don't have any on a laptop with a LED backlighting

 

YES "COULD BE RIGHT". As you see it hasn´t worked for ajreynol! What works for some may not work for others!

 

hmmm...thanks for the reply wolfpup. Well I remember when we first pulled it out of the box it was the fast graphics i have ever seen (im used to a 8600 on my desktop, and a 7300 on my laptop). I know he does have alot of stuff installed on the laptop along with not removing any of the orig sony bloatware. Should i be afraid of this issue and stay away from buying my own AW or just buy one and hope it doesent represent the same issues (my other choice would be a Dell XPS 16 w/ sameish specs besides vid card)

Thanks

 

Tim018, instead of removing the 'bloatware' try disabling some of the startup programs.

Type msconfig in the start menu search box and uncheck what you don't want to load at startup.

 

Well i'm glad to hear that no one has has any issues in this respect. Makes me feel a little better about the purchase.

 

I saw a picture of someone who's barrel hinge had broken off.

the side where teh A/C plug connects. he was the only person, though. I wouldn't worry about what happens to one person. when you hear a chorus, be concerned.

 

The european Vaio page is undergoing maintenance right now and can´t be viewed. Let´s just hope they chuck in a new set of drivers for everything.