Official Sony Vaio CW Core 2 Duo Series Owner's Thread

Is this the post you were looking for :

"To whomever was asking for the way to turn off auto color-change

Open Vaio Control Center
Go to Display/Color mode setting
Select "select from following color mode" and "do not apply color mode"

The worst "feature" ever, IMO. I don't even know why they put it in the first place"

Hope this helps

 

I finally pulled the plug myself on the CW series. My config
P8700, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320 GB HD, Nvidia GT230M, Blue Ray Playback
All for a gr8 deal of ~$850

 

Some results with SuperPI 1M

P7450 @2.13 = 23.931
P7450 @2.66 = 19.141

So the overclock by SetFSB does definately work.

 

WooHoo! mine has finaly shipped! Guessing it will hit the UK early next week

 

may i ask when you ordered it, and what spec you ordered? still waiting for mine to ship

 

I believe this is with the best graphic card you can find in a 14 inch laptop. Which possibally means lightest.
However, I have a problem for HDMI, when I have a 1920*1200 monitor, does this cw190 be compatible? Simply because the hdmi is good with 1920*1080 most of the time, while 1920*1200 is still a manufacture dependent problem. Does anyone know or in prctice connect it with a 1920*1200 monitor? Any problem or anything wrong?
I hope it will work because I am really intersted in it at the thanksgiving discount time.

 

Ordered on the 11th November, spec as follows:
P7450
230m
3gb ram
320gb HD
Colour - Black.

I chose 3gb as it gave a weeks less leadtime and I have spare ram sat here

 

well i maid research this driver is very stable and games runs very very good http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/25700-v19555-windows-7vista-64bit-nvidia-oem/

 

Hello,

for instant web button I think I can't have the feature anymore because I erased the recovery partition. Vor the VAIO button, I didn't install the software because I wanted to have the less possible sony utilities installed.

SONY DLL Utils (except if I misunderstood) are used when using windows XP, to be able to use sony's tools. In Seven we don't need to install these dlls (and they don't appear in the CW's driver section of sony support website).

I used a win 7 pro DVD with a genuine key for the installation, provided free by my school (microsoft MSDN Academic Alliance program).

 

Hum I tried 195.55 driver 3 days ago and had several pb:
-my 3dmark score decreased from 5800 to 5300
-The brightness FN buttons bugged
-I was unable to uninstall properly these driver causing me to have two Nvidia Control Panel link in the windows control panel (i had to remove it with regedit: I deleted the key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{0bbca823-e77d-419e-9a44-5adec2c8eeb0}]
@="NVIDIA Control Panel"
if it can help anybody)

 

Also good with hdmi output? Have you tried it with a 1920*1200 monitor?

 

ninja2000,
When did you receive your shipping email?

 

yes, Fresh Start takes out the usual bloatware. In terms of bloatware, Sony's Fresh Start removes all the trial softwares like norton, and quicken and other things that are sometimes really difficult to unintall. Fresh Start also excludes all Microsft office options, No fresh start comes with Microsfot works as default but you can add on office 2007 versions.
Sony doesnt take out its own Sony softwares as to them its a neccessity to have, but as users have proven they arent always needed, but then again they arent that much bothersome to others as its not really alot of bloatware. So yes, small Sony softwares that come with the laptop will still be there when you choose fresh start.. I think fresh start was made for ex. students or business people so they dont have to bother removing stuff.

 

I decided not to wait till tomorrow, being that I think all the Black Friday Ads are already all posted...see this link...but I could be wrong, they may come up with some other discount by tomorrow, but I doubt it...

http://www.blackfriday.info/sales/sonystyle-black-friday-ad.html

 

I hope it isnt the ram that is holding mine up. You ordered 5 days before me... and yours has just been shipped.... although shipped in 2 weeks? That's actually quite good. Christ the suspense is killing me Shoulda just got 3gb. I hate waiting

i think i could be laptopless for 2 week... i think the 9600m gt in my dv5t is about to fail... i keep seeing white vertical lines now and again, and in games horizontal scan lines

C'mon hurry up sony

btw thumbs up for the black (y) everyone else seems to have ordered a colour, thought i was the only one who didnt

Anyway ive been wondering... how quiet/loud does it run under load?

 

Awesome - thanks for the info. I am definitely going "Fresh Start" then. Saves a reinstall of W7!! The Sony stuff...ughhh....I guess some of it will be useful, but if not...I am hoping it is not hard to uninstall (like some bloatware).

Waiting for a nice refresh of the Sony Style TTL, and hopefully a better deal, although - what they have today is pretty good pricing compared to other brands. Perhaps this is the best we can get.

 

Its anyway 10PM.. I'm going to wait till I see some thanksgiving words on sony style website and go for it.. I would've definitely opted for that 150 off laptop if its not white.

EDIT: On a second thought.. No.. as I would like to go for P8700 instead of T6600

 

i wana buy mine right now but im hesitating thinking that there will be a further black friday sale for tomorrow.. i guess ill wait till tomorrow morning before i get it

 

Thats awesome scottybgood. I know you've been on this forum for some time, and have contributed a lot of your time with helping people. You computer price for those specs is fully worth it. Thats going to be a kick a$$ machine. Are you sure your going to like the indigo colour, as sometimes its more of a purple colour supposedly. Enjoy !

 

Just to answer myself and let people those need the information: CW's HDMI is not officially support for 1920*1200. I get it from technical support.

 

Thanks...yes, definitely for the price I'm getting alot...other than the GT230m, probably one of the biggest reasons I'm going with Sony is their superior build quality, at least from the peoples experiences on this website with the CW and from the few reviews out there on the Web. If I only planned on keeping the laptop for a year or two, I might not be as concerned, but I plan to keep this laptop for as many years as possible, hopefully at least 5, maybe more...I know I'm probably dreaming!!

I'm pretty confident I'll like the color, the older Dell Inspiron I have now actually has quite a bit of purple on it as well...and from these pictures (see below) I like it the way it looks...on my monitor it looks truly Purple! I guess I will find out first hand pretty soon...I plan on posting some real world pictures, once I have it in my possession...It's funny though, on this Sony site they call it Blue, what I'm thinking is that maybe in other countries outside the US, what we call purple is to them called blue...

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/image_l...ral/notebooks/detail?archive=0&asset_id=42012

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/image_l...ral/notebooks/detail?archive=0&asset_id=42009

 

I followed your steps, and it worked out pretty good, however

1. Regarding the FN keys, volume works fine, but brightness only goes to the third bar.

2. I have an unknown device labeled "Base System Device".

3. I used the SD driver you supplied, but I don't see the MS anywhere in the device manager?

Thanks.

 

Hi,

does anybody tried to do a "semi-clean" install on the CW ? meaning interrupting the recovery process by killing the program running it after you "think" W7 is installed and before the bloatwares are going to be installed.

My reasons (for now) to prefer a semi-clean rather than a clean install:

- don't have the W7 pro DVD
- even if i download one, don't know where to get my key
- want every vaio key to function
- want the vaio control center and other vaio utilities
- no one having done a clean install reported all keys working

please, otherwise convince me to do a clean install by addressing my above issue.

thanks
nalooti

 

I finally got a CW.
My configuration is:
P8700 @ 2,53GHz
HD 500 GB
RAM 4GB

I am not at all skilled in the tricks of getting out the best out of a laptop and i welcome any basic suggestion for the installation and the settings of my laptop.
Thanks all

 

I received my email at 1am on the 26th.

It is currently in Brussels with UPS should be with me on monday

 

Yeah I prefer a business look of black. I visited the sonystore to buy one in the UK and they dont offer the black hence why I ordered a custom build. They only other colour I liked was the red but I couldnt see myself pulling out a red laptop at work!

 

Gah, looks like mine won't be shipped till next week then :-/ The suspense!!

 

Well now i too founded problem with fn brightness , and that when you plug off computer its impossible to run graphics demanding applications. Hm, maybe you founded witch one is good, maybe you can link it ?

 

I dont know if you overclocked your CPU and/or GPU but when i usually got this problem before it was becuase my power settings were set to put the CPU on low settinsg to get more battery life out of it. so i had to manually change that setting so i still got the same amount of graphic power and CPU power as i did with or without charger plugged in. I dont know if ithis is relating to your problem or not just thought it might help

 

Hi,

My ship date got pre-poned to 4th Dec from 8th Dec. I'm taking this as a positive sign. I ordered my laptop on the 26th. Cant wait to get my hands on this laptop.

 

engraving or not?... Do anyone here had engraving done on their CW.. I'm going to buy one today.. Any problems that I should be aware of if I engrave something on it..

 

Hoping it's not already been discussed, could not find this mentioned.

New Sony CW
Very happy overall, except that the HD will not stop operating. There is a steady disk access with the HD light coming on about once each second. This goes on well after boot. Does not stop.

All the stock software is in place except the Norton. It's been replaced by McAfee. That did not change anything. Has anyone else seen this?

I have the 320 GB HD
Nvidia 230 graphics
4 GB mem
upgraded processor
extended batterey

Thanks for your Help!!

 

The NUMBER one reason I wouldn't do engraving is that you can't return the Laptop if you have it engraved...maybe after you get it and you decide to keep it, then maybe you could send it back to Sony to have it engraved.

 

Thanks. I finally placed the order. Costed around 850 after tax (7% student discount).

P8700, GT 230, Bluray, 320GB, 4GB

I thought of waiting till Monday, but shipping estimate is getting far and far away and also may be by Monday they might get rid of the free bluray and free GT230.

I am hoping they will send faster than their current estimate (12/15).. But anyway not a problem as I will be having my Dell till then..

 

Yess I finally got mine. Mine costed 749$ without tax.
It has
T6600 @ 2.2ghz 2mb l2 cache
GT 230M
Blueray
320GB
3GB RAM
Its estimate shipping date is 12/15 also.. I can't wait!

 

Finally finished the order for my CW.
I was trying to order yesterday though Sonystyle.com but was unable to order b/c the stupid website kept asking me for the CC security code. So, I called and after 30mins still nobody answer the phone, so I said I will do it tomorrow.
Today, after clear the browser cache out, I finally was able to make the Credit Card go though, but I noticed that promotion code wasn't there. So, I called again and still nobody answer the phone after 20mins, so I went again and ordered mine. I really think Sony need more sales representatives and improve website functionality.

Anyways, mine before tax is $829.99 with
Royal Indigo
P8700 @ 2.53Ghz
GT230M
BlueRay
320GB
4GB RAM
Estimate delivery date 12/8.

I had my old Sony S170P for about 5 years before MB finally gave up. I hope this one will last me pretty long too

 

OMG, im playing with drivers and cant find normal one. please help.

 

Which ones are you looking for. I've done a clean Win7 Ult and I've got everything working.

 

There is new review on TrustedReviews:

http://www.trustedreviews.com

 

I'm talking about video card drivers from laptopvideo2go. All have some strange issues. liked 187.66, but when plug out cable. video card clocks goes very low, very strange tried many variations to fix it, but just nothing.

 

Maybe i'll make clean install also. But don't know about win 7, its slow. Maybe xp, all drivers are for xp. http://www.laptop-software.com/sony-vaio/sony-vaio-vpccw-vpccw14fxr-windows-xp-drivers/

 

What specifically is wrong with the default Win7 x64 HP that the CW came with???

Only us geeks are doing clean installs of Win7 to claim back HD space and to ensure no Sony bloat

 

Whats the BEST driver for the 230m gt? I've been looking, and the good ones have flaws, like not allowing you to adjust brightness on the computer.

Only able to play mw2 on high with 2x AA, not ultra with default drivers....27-50fps

 

IMO the one that came with the laptop. Not a single problem for me and the highest and most consistent framerates out of all games ive run on it compared to some drivers from the LV2G site

Have you tried overclocking the GPU?

 

I want to thank everyone here for all the information provided - a huge help on making my laptop buying decision. I ordered the Vaio CW today:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
Standard Capacity Battery
Blu-ray Disc™ playback
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT230M GPU
Fiery Red
Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit
500GB Hard Disk Drive

$859.99 plus tax, shipping was free

I was pleased to see that the the blu-ray player and the upgraded video card were free. Not to happy about paying the tax though. I was charged just over $60 for taxes. I never had to pay taxes online unless buying from retailer in same state (Florida). I called customer service and a rep said all customers from all states pay a sales tax. Considering Florida doesn't collect online sales tax from retailers outside of the state, I'm wondering if Sony will send Florida my $60. My guess is that Florida could use it a lot more than Sony.

Oh well, I'm still quite happy with my purchase and look forward to playing with my new notebook. Actually, I ordered it for wife, but we'll see...

 

For you guys that ordered today or yesterday what was the estimated ship date while you were filling out the order and what was the date when you placed the order? I'm getting 12/29/2009 as an estimated ship date while filling out the order. The 230m gpu is pushing that date from 12/07 to 12/29.

 

I ordered it around 11:30 (EST) this morning and ship date was 12/08/2009. I also have the 230 gpu. I wouldn't be that concerned about the ship date - who knows how accurate that is? It'll get there when it gets there

 

I placed my order yesterday around 10:00 CST. Initially my order was showing Out of Stock with a ship date of 12/08. Today it was available with the Ship Date modified to 12/04. I too ordered the GT230M Nvidia GPU

 

Any one smoothly run games like GTA 4, Left For Dead 2, NFS Shift. at medium or high setting.

 

Thanks a bunch for this thread- it really has helped me in choosing to purchase this laptop(my first =])

I was wondering what the difference will be between the 210 and the 230 graphics cards... I'm not looking at this for intensive gaming, but maybe some CoD 4 or Team Fortress 2 at medium settings with 25+ framerates... not sure if that sounds crazy but it seems reasonable. If it makes a noticeable difference I am going to take the premade one at Best Buy back and switch out the 500gb hard drive to a 320 and the 210 to a 230 when I make it custom on the Sony website.

Thanks a bunch for the help.

Edit: Did some research and the 210 got a score of 3310 on the 3DMark 06 test, while the 230 got a score of 5676. Seems like a pretty big difference... I think I am going to take the premade one back to best buy and go with the Custom on the website... I would be getting the Accidental Damage + Handling Plan for both, but the Best Buy version(Geek Squad) seems like, and probably IS a much better program than the Sony-run version. Geek Squad makes me a restore disk, wipes all of the pre-installed crap off of it and does a clean-install sans removal of the specific VAIO button functions for the same price of the normal Sony protection plan... gah this is a tough choice.

If anyone could chime in on the graphics card differences that would be very appreciated. Notebookcheck does not have specific games up with their framerates on low/med/high for the 210, and it does for the 230. Also, the test that they ran the 230 with is a CW with the same processor I'm getting, so I know those would be just about the exact scores I would be getting with my own laptop.

Thanks again, hopefully someone can supply some input on the cards for me =]