Official Sony VAIO AW Series 18.4" Owners thread

Yes it is bilingual. The only ****-off is that the shift key is split in 2/3s, with the other 1/3 on the right is | and \ followed by some funny symbols. Other than that, not much other issues with it

 

I have just ordered my Vaio VGN-AW11XU/Q should get it sometime this week

 

Hehe, so guys I just read this entire thread because after buying a FW and falling in love with it (And then back out again 15 minutes later when I found out that the 3650 promised to me by the BB Rep turned out to be a X4500MHD which is complete garbage for gaming (1000 in 3DM06!?) was returned) and I've been wanting one ever since. The 9600M GT apparently has some amazing OC'ing ability (9700M GT is the same card with some higher clock shader and memory speeds- should be pretty painless to do) and so here I am trying to make up my mind as I have a M17 Alienware on order...

So, my question to you good people who own them or will be receiving them shortly- is there a slot in there that's easy enough to get to put in a second HDD for myself? I have a 160GB 7200 RPM that would love a nice home inside this machine. I saw some mention of it before, but I didn't see a specific response, so I am asking it again. If that is the case, I will highly consider yanking the AW order and go with this, since I really want the Blu-Ray and the wonderful screen. Hopefully someone can get back to me soon, and thanks!

 

never trust what BB employees tell you, always a good idea to write down the model number and check it against the sonystyle website.

 

Well, having done some research, I knew they COULD have 3650's in them. He seemed quite a bit more knowledgeable than the average BB employee just because of the fact that he was able to name the 3650 and correctly tell me the model that it (could) come in. Since he had those pluses going for him, I decided to trust him.

They didn't charge me a restocking fee when I went back and talked to him about it, and they were all courteous and nice to me, so I had no problem what so ever with him or the other employees, and yes, I should check from now on for myself but they did not do me wrong in any way. We all make mistakes.

 

That's good they treated you okay about it! I think I've seen that model mislabeled at Best Buy, so that could be why he was confused-he may have genuinely known what he was talking about (yay!) which it sounds like, but was going by wrong info Best Buy had.

That Alienware has GPU configurations that just destroy the 9600GT. I mean the 9600GT is yet another 8600GT variant-32 processors versus 96 or 112 on the higher end mobile Nvidia GPUs (and in some cases you can have TWO GPUs with 96 processors). It's okay for today's gaming-I mean it's a bit faster than the 8600GT was (just clock speeds though) and that seemed fine when I played with one last year, but no question that Alienware can be configured MANY times more powerfully than this.

Why that's out for me is the lack of LED backlighting that this offers on some of their systems. (I'm STILL confused as to whether the AW190 Premium has it though, or how you'd check after you bought it, as it just says LED backlighting is "available" or something on the black models).

 

Yeah I ended up realizing that I dont want or need SLI / CrossFire (I have the 8800GTS w/ 64 Stream 256-bit) and since I'm ok with Med graphics, I'd end up saving a good 5/600$ by getting Newegg's Viao AW, which is always nice.

If I can just get a solid answer as to the state of the second HDD, I am almost certain that I will go with the Sony - the design is so amazing and the laptop itself is so classy that I can take it to work and have it be very professional on the job, yet still get some decent gaming out of it. Trying that with the Gateway P-6831FX is IMPOSSIBLE, and it would be the same with the M17!

Plus believe it or not, the Sony weighs a LOT less than the Alienware M17... the power brick is 2.5lbs by itself on top of the nearly 10lbs system! The Sony sounds okay with 8.8lbs since the Gateways only 8.6 with dual HDD's. Plus, I've a nice 17" leather carrying bag already that would fit the Sony



If not, I will buy a really nice vinyl skin and get the 8800GTX in the m15x and try and make it work-place acceptable! I just really dont want SLI/Crossfire after reading more on Micro Stuttering, terrible drivers, weak performance increases and the like.

Thanks for any advice, and hopefully someone can answer the HDD question

 

Yeah, hopefully somebody can answer the HDD question. I'd love to put one of the new Intel X-25M 80GB SSDs in this thing. The review say it is insanely faster than other SSDs. Its $621 at NewEgg, but still.
I believe that in order to have 2 hard drives in the AW you have to order it with 2 hard drives. You could replace it with whatever you wanted, but I think it is missing a connector or something if you don't order it with two drives.
I was going to order it with two 320GB 7200 RPM drives, remove the primary and replace it with the Intel SSD and use the second for storage, and put the 320 GB that I remove in my son's laptop.

 

You probably know this, but just in case, the mobile 9600GT only has 32 processors, so it's considerably less powerful than the mobile 8800GTS if you've already got a system with that.

Out of curiosity, why? Maybe it's just where I work, but I wouldn't think twice about brining ANY laptop, and certainlly not that Gateway. I mean it just looks like a normal laptop. Granted the giant alien heads or flames on those Toshiba models are a bit much, but even those would be fine for me.

Of course this Sony really does look great though!

Yeah, I've been surprised by that. Considering it's technically one of the largest screens ever used, it's weight is really impressive. In a store when I played with one, it gave me the impression of being huge yet small in all the right ways. I don't know...seemed like a nice size to me.

No idea about the bag though. I guess if I get one, I'll have to get that crazy $200 bag designed for it, as I'd have no way of knowing if I could find a 17" bag that fits it. I've heard so many people say they can't fit their 17" notebooks in a supposedly 17" bag, so...

And yeah, I'm not crazy about SLI at all. I just want a single fast GPU. Just too many driver issues and whatnot. Like right now, I'd much rather have the 9800GTX over two 9800GT GPUs. The former has an extra 16 processors, and you don't have to worry about driver weirdness.

Even worse on a notebook. You can at least force the regular reference drivers to install (what I'll do with this notebook if I get it), but I'm not sure if that allows SLI to work or not.

 

Ah, as for work, I am a PC / Server technician, so I usually get the fun of dealing with the housing authorities in my region- which either leads to attention in the wrong way from the big orange and carbon FX on the back of the Gateway to the snotty desk workers and owners snide remarks about the glowing orange all over the keyboard and "aggressive" styling... and since I am an on-site PC tech, I need my PC everyday.

And yeah, I did know it has the 32/128-bit bus, but I was glad at least someone noticed it, an uniformed buyer would be lucky to have the wealth of information all these members share
The only reason I consider it OK is that for a while I had a Dell 1520 w/ the 8600GT (a friend ended up buying it off me making way for the Gateway) and that card was OK so getting a higher clock / mem / shader / and having some decent room to OC to the 9700GT (which isn't really an aggressive OC at all, fairly lightweight) or maybe even a little bit more would be acceptable for me.

Since I've already got the bag which can handle the 17" Gateway with plenty of room to spare, the Sony seems it will fit. It's size and weight really do amaze me, 18.4 that feels like a 16-17"...

Whats nice is in about a year the market should be very different what with the 4xxx series ATi cards leaking into the market, hopefully prompting nVidia to do something... even if that something is just lowering prices.

 

Wow, that's weird to me. That Gateway looks pretty normal/conservative to me. Have these people not seen a computer since 1991 or something?

 

Like I said, "Aggressive" styling. I think its perfectly fine, but hey, to get rid of the hassle *shrug* it's just an added bonus in favor of the Sony

 

You should really blow their minds and go with either a giant-alien-headed Alienware, or a huge red flames Toshiba

If they think that Gateway stands out...

 

I was seriously sitting here a minute ago saying to myself hahaha imagine if I walked in and sat down with one of those new Qoisimos

 

hmm interesting, I do hope the CTOs ship with english only keyboard.

 

Well guys, the price just dropped another 50 at Newegg, 1499.00... Comes with a nice P8600 too, and a 7200RPM drive... Might just finally jump at this one...

 

The AW120D that I ordered on Wednesday night finally arrived a short while ago (Monday afternoon).

I tried an Eddie Bauer Adventurer backpack for a 15.4" notebook, http://www.eddiebauer.com/EB/Bags--Gear/Backpacks--Messengers/index.cat?viewAll=y#ppl={type%3A%22hide%22}, and the AW120D (still in its protective packaging) just fit when I put it in through the top zipper. When I tried to take it out through the side ziipper, it looked hopeless. I took it back out through the top zipper again. It was a tight fit.

I'm a little surprised this Eddie Bauer backpack fit since it says it's for a 15.4" notebook, when this is an 18.4" notebook. I hope it fits a little easier when I take the protective wrapping off now and maybe the backpack will stretch just a little bit too.

 

Grats! When you get a chance to play with it, (if you can) could you possibly check the status of the 2nd HDD bay? Or if not, just how good the audio quality is of the speakers

 

I'll be a little afraid to open it up since it's brand new. A little booklet inside the box said there's a User Manual installed on the computer, so I'll see what it says. I'll definitely let you know what the audio quality is like through the speakers. I like how the AW Series has the separate 2W subwoofer.

 

Thanks! Hopefully there's some info in the instruction manual- I dont want you tearing your new baby apart!

From what I was reading about the speakers should sound excellent.

 

I can tell you that the manual won't shed any light on the second-hard-drive question. We need an AW user with a screwdriver to open up the bottom panel and tell us what's there...a camera would be useful at that point I opened my (single-hd) unit, but couldn't find any clues as to how a second hd would be fitted.

 

Too bad there's no way to buy the AW190JAH at Newegg with something larger than the 250GB hd w/o jumping in price all the way to their $2,849.99 AW160J/Q - or dropping down to their $1,349.99 AW110J/H, which loses 1900x1080 screen and is therfore an unacceptable alternative...

If Newegg simply allowed buying the AW190JAH w/any of the higher hd storage options available on sonystyle.com for the same incremental cost as on sonystyle.com (or for even a slightly higher incremental cost), I'd be placing my order w/Newegg right now...

But with only a 250GB hd, I'll need to continue to wait (not being even remotely sufficiently technically proficient to consider performing any "surgery" to swap out or add hd capacity on a "DIY" basis...)

r-gordon-7

 

When you open these does it not invalidate the warranty?

 

No.

(And it wants 10 characters so la la la.)

 

What temps should I be seeing on high load like in wow?? I am getting around 50-53 is that normal?

 

That seems pretty low, from some of the others I've seen, but hopefully an owner can tell you for sure.

 

Yeah, I was going to say if anything that sounds really low. Hopefully that means this sucker has really good cooling.

 

40C idle/51C load here.

 

Swapping out a hard drive is REALLY EASY. I wouldn't let Hard drive size put you off at all, or you might miss out on a machine that is has the features you really want (features that CAN'T be altered by you).

Do you know somebody who might be able to help you out? Somebody around the age of 12 will be most profficient

If you go down this route, just make sure you create your recovery disks first. You can always plug your old hard drive back in if the new one doesn't work. It really is as simple as plugging in the new hard drive into the slot and rebooting with your recovery disks in.

 

While I was ready to agree with you- i can safely say don't do it if you can't change it. Will explain later!

 

OK! So, you CANNOT add in an addition HDD unless you opt for 2 from the beginning! Screen is great, speakers are wonderful but I cannot tell if I had a slightly distorted one on the right side... Audio is overall much better though, than any other notebook I've ever owned.

More to come!

 

Guys, I'm sorry, I feel like I keep asking this, but:

1) How do I know for SURE the 190 Premium comes with LED backlighting? It just says "Adobe RGP and LED lighting "available" on the black modles...which sort of implies to me that it's not all of them.

I just read in another thread that Everest and PC Wizard would let me see what screen is being used, and then I could Google that to make sure it really is LED lighting, but I'd of course want to know BEFORE spending the money. (The configurable option is over $500 less than the preconfigured models which explicitly say LED, which makes me VERY suspicious.)

2) This doesn't come with an OS reinstall DVD. But it does let you generate backup DVDs. Would those backup DVDs allow me to reinstall Windows from scratch AFTER swaping to a blank hard drive that I put in myself? Or would I have to buy a separate copy of Windows? And actually, moot point because...

3) I need 32-bit Windows. All the drivers I see on Sony's site are for 64-bit Vista. Is it possible to buy a copy of 32-bit Vista, and get it installed okay on here?
And if so-would I be able to install Sony-included programs I might want? (Like the Blu Ray player, TV Tuner software, DVD burning app that might be included, etc.)

Sorry about these nagging questions I like this unit, and I'm sort of toying with this, or a dirt cheap Asus, or an Apple (at least I'd KNOW for sure it had LED backlighting!) or continuing to wait for Dell to do...SOMETHING.

 

Thats precisely the reason I said to hold off on it in the response before- I do not know if you can go down to 32bit as there dont appear to be any drivers, though the Recovery disks you make SHOULD be bootable. As for the screen, I don't know, I assume I have the lesser one, but even this screen is fantastic compared to my other laptops... (The Reds of this screen are so vibrant)

 

Well thanks for that info, and keep me posted about drivers and bootable restore DVDs and whatnot if you don't mind

I thought the CCFL screen looked fantastic in-store too. I mean the whole thing just looked super easy to view and well made...but I for various reasons really, REALLY want LED, and will be super super disappointed if I ended up with CCFL.

 

I believe it was mentioned earlier in this thread that you can't "add" a second hard drive yourself, you can only replace an existing one. There's no bracket or cable or some such for the second drive.
You are going to need 32-bit drivers in order to install 32-bit Windows, and Sony does not now provide them and probably won't unless they start offering 32-bit Vista as option which they don't currently do.
I am kind of curious about whether or not you can use the Sony restore DVDs you create if you replace one or both of the hard drives. I'd imagine its linked to the hardware but I could be wrong. Would like someone with experience to confirm that, though.

 

I wonder if some of the 32 bit Business drivers would work? If I was able to get a 2nd HDD going (eventually plan on calling Sony and seeing if they would ship the parts and id be happy to do it myself...) I could tell you since I have Vista x32 Business on my UX series Vaio (Which the discs I made from it do boot, though ironically the UX series has no CD drive in it so you gotta use USB lol)

Edit: I know very few of us in here care about gaming performance but I am loading up Bioshock as I type this will post again soon.

 

I have the 190 Premium CTO and it certainly is LED.

A small nitpick: the screen is difficult to lift open. The hinge is very tight and I have to told the bottom part of the laptop down while lifting the lid up. Tightest one I have ever used.

Still loving this machine, tho. As I said before, the screen is amazing, it runs fast, and I've had no problems with 64 bit Vista.

 

Wait...I hadn't noticed that! The Vista Business drivers are 32-bit?!? That should work! I mean why not? No reason it shouldn't work with home premium.

Good to hear your discs boot...if I do this, I'll make those discs before swapping drives. Does it look like you can install aditional software-in particular the Blu Ray playback software, even if you installyour own OS?

Should run really well I bet. I would have bought the PC version except it has activation DRM.

 

Thanks!

You guys think the 4 year, $500 warrenty is worth it?

Anyone run Folding @ Home on this sucker? 'Cause I'd be Folding whenever it's on, on both CPUs (and possibly the GPU )

 

Got my AW190 Premium today and have been playing with it for hours.

It's definitely an LED screen and it is beyond gorgeous - I've never seen a screen like this on a laptop EVER. In fact, it's taking some getting used to - in terms of color managing Firefox 3 and seeing colors in photos that I've never seen on a digital display before!

I've been spending most of my time uninstalling bloatware...and installing other important software.

I ran msconfig.exe to disable certain programs from launching at startup -- I don't see any options to disable "Vaio Care" and "Vaio Update" (both appear on my taskbar as already loaded whenever I startup)...does anyone know how to disable those apps on startup?

Thanks!

 

Vaio Update - do that via its own options, then via the task planer

 

Soooooo installing 32-bit Vista sounds doable since apparently Vista Business drivers they have are 32-bit, and they should work equally well on any 32-bit version.

But any way to install other Sony programs back in after you've installed your own OS? (The Blu Ray player in particular?)

 

Just thinking - Sony's drivers are model specific - i.e. you try to instal the driver from a different AW model it'll yome up with an error message.

But people have found a way round it - so this is just a warning.

 

Seriously? I'm really surprised. Normally companies share drivers between models, let alone different versions of the same model :-/

I'm not sure which model the AW190 premium configure to order counts as (maybe just AW190 with nothing after it?)

But...I'd still expect the Vista Business drivers to install fine on Home Premium...assuming they really are 32-bit.

 

Hy!!. Today I tried out the AW11Z/B in the store and it had two 320GB HDDs. I entered the BIOS but it did not have anything related to Raid configurations. Can you confirm wether the AW equiped with two HDDs can do RAID and if so can you post some instructions on how to configure them. I am planing on buying this machine and really whant to have RAID 0.

 

I can confirm that you can configure the RAID the way you want. You have to go into the bios and enable the option to show it during boot, then you press ctrl-I to enter the raid config.

 

Don't know about the drivers, yet, like I said, I'd try, but no additional HDD...

But, FRAPS was telling me that BioShock was giving me 25-30FPS in heated stuff and about 35-40 when nothing else is on screen and 60 if you look at a wall
So overall, pretty good stuff! Better than I expected. I was also pleasantly surprised when I loaded up Fallout 3 for the first time expecting to see the game tell me that I would probably be running it at Med. for default, but when it said High settings I thought it was crazy- though come to find out its VERY stable on high in doors and outdoors it was pretty efficient too! Frames were again on average around 20-30, but it was smooth, and thats what matters.

 

Has anyone seen any Sonystyle CTO coupons? From what I've seen, Sony coupons are pretty rare, unlike Dell, HP, etc. where you can take $400 off the top.

Also, the nearly $200 sales tax on the Premium CTO bites. Does Sony charge sales tax in all states?

 

Can you tell me exactly where that option is situated bios. I want to go to the store today and try it out before I buy it.

 

Is there an option to put the blu-ray burner into silent mode? The one in my AW170C sounds like a vacuum cleaner when I put a DVD or Blu-Ray disc in it.

Thanks.