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

Yep, the model I am considering is the basic store configuration (T6600, GeForce210, no Blu-ray), priced at 899. I went to another Futureshop today to hopefully see the other colors, no luck, but did talk to another rep who was only willing to toss in some accessories if I also got the extended warranty. A visit to Best Buy confirms what you said about them-- the rep had no idea about the specs of the machine, leaving me with little incentive to buy there, let alone negotiate with someone who does not care to learn about his wares.

So yeah, the first Future Shop guy said that if I take the 3-year plan (at 299), he'd drop the price of the unit to 799 (100 off), he even showed me how this was "magically done" on his computer. I also got the feeling he'd make a deal for other accessories. Since according to FS rep #2 the get their units "at cost" (hmmm), I guess the real cut in price comes out of the warranty? Anyways...

So now I have to bite the bullet and pick a color and go for it! My first laptop, so I am a bit worried about making the wrong choice, but based on all that I've read, seems a solid one. Also, FS guarantees that any price drop on/before January 3rd will also apply to your purchase, so there is no real reason to wait for Boxing Day. I asked quite clearly, recalling someone on this thread mentionned "exceptions" that they may try to use to get out of the deal.

Thanks for your insights!

 

Don't recall if this was already mentionned, but has anyone found a proper-sized sleeve for the CW? Are there accessories specific to 14" widescreens, or will I have to look at 13.3" cases? Thanks!

 

Sorry but no! These graphics chips are soldered onto the motherboard. I looked at it when I upgraded mine. Your only option would be to swap the motherboard

I am sure it would be a real struggle to fit an mxm module in a 14" laptop

 

I checked the Targus TSS077US Slipskin Peel case for 14.1" laptops with the display CW at Best Buy, and it fit very nicely.

 

Ditto on the delivery date. There are probably a whole bunch of ours on that same FedEx truck...

 

It's only backorder on Sony site. Pre-configured systems with GT230 is available on other sites.

 

I'm beginning to get slightly annoyed. I recieved an email on sunday night telling me that my CW went into production (which must obviously mean they have all the parts required right?)... it's now friday and i have yet to hear anything... surely it doesnt take 5 or more days to put it all together?

So much for getting it before my birthday hopefully it'll ship tonight and come sometime next week

 

Got my CW yesterday: P8700, 230m, 320GB drive, blu-ray etc....

Not had long to play with it but really pleased so far.

I can confirm surround sound does work through HDMI to my av receiver:

• Blu-ray is passing 5.1 dts. As expected no DTS master or True HD.
• Tried a WMV file with 5.1 and that was also fine
• Need to install some codecs to get MKV's playing
• Havn't had time to try any games yet

Shows up in audio devices as Nvidia HDMI audio when connected, seems to auto detect AV capabilities. Has speaker setup and test options which let me select 5.1 and tested fine.

Keyboard and trackpad are a joy to use. First impression of the screen was a little disappointing, viewing angles and contrast aren't great but no worse than my old Acer. This wasn't helped by the default colour scheme and background (lots of light grey), looked much better once I switched theme. The speakers are very average but good enough for youtube etc, for films and music i'll be using external speakers or headphones anyhow.

Performance is looking good, 5.3 windows index only let down by the hard drive otherwise everything 6.2 and over. May put a faster drive in at a later date. Only getting about 5800 in 3DMark06 but from what I’ve read here I’m sure I can safely get it up 7000 Runs pretty cool and quiet.

Will try out Need for speed shift and have a go at overclocking GPU & undervolting CPU this weekend.

 

May i ask when did you order yours?

 

Ordered on the 11th nov (site said 4-5 weeks).
Production email on 22nd nov.
Factory despatch email on 28th nov.
And shipping confirmation on 1st dec.
Delivered on 3rd dec.

 

i think ive ordered the same config as you I'm quite suprised at how long it takes them to build a laptop. ive ordered off dell before and the laptop i ordered off them was only in production for 2 days

Did you pay the extra £18 for the 1-2 day delivery or was that with the free standard delivery?

 

Well they are assembling them in Japan and it looks like they are very busy with CW orders and some part shortages causing delays.

I didn't pay the extra, not much point since it takes weeks either way.

 

Apologies if someone has already mentioned it, but for those that are in the UK and looking for a CW, then you can get a red or pink model, 230gt, 320g HDD, 4g RAM, P7450 etc. for around £530ish from Comet. They're £650 in-store atm, but buy a 15% off any Comet code from Ebay for £4.50 (saves £97.50 I think), and 3% quidco and it takes the price down to the one I mentioned.

I went from thinking about buying one, to getting the code, buying on-line and then picking up from a local store in less than 40 mins yesterday, and I now have a lovely red CW

 

Has anyone thought about replacing the HD with an SSD to improve the weight and battery life? Which seem to the the two main weaknesses of this laptop.

Upon looking at the specs, the seagate inside it weighs 95g and uses 1.4-1.5w. If you replaced it with an ExpressCard SSD, that would bring the weight down to 20g (verbatim 64gb SSD), and judging by the battery lasting 4 hours (light use), and the battery being about 50wh rating, would reduce the per hour consumption from about 12.5w (50wh/4hr) to 11.5w (assuming the ssd uses about 0.5w average, thus 1w less), and give a boost of about 21 mins battery life (50wh/11.5w). I know it's not a big improvement in either battery or weight (8.7% battery, 3.1% weight), but every little helps :].

Also quicker boot time may help battery life a few mins as you won't be waiting around for startup/shutdowns so long.

It's not a cheap option, £100~ for 32gb Verbatim, but if you don't need alot of space, you could sell the 320gb and only pay an extra £50 for the modest improvements. Plus get 120mb/s read (=D) and 30mb/s write (Seagete looks to be about 72.1 MB/s read and 53.4 MB/s write).

Btw, before anyone says it, I know there's a Toms Hardware article saying SSDs don't improve battery life, but it's debatable cus SSDs reduce a bottleneck and make the whole system do more work in less time, and even THs article shows the power consumption being less on SSDs, so I don't understand how battery life can't be improved imho.

Any thoughts/opinions welcome! (Apologises in advance for any inaccuracies, so pls don't flame :/)

 

Can you boot from express card though?

I will eventually put an intel ssd in mine but they are still too expensive.

I removed my ODD drive to reduce weight as I so rearely use it (I keep a spare usb dvd for emergencies). I put another HDD in the ODD bay as storage is more important to me than battery life.

 

To put it into perspective, I ordered a dell 1745 the day before I ordered my CW. I have now had the CW a week and my EDD for the dell is 22/12/09 and still not in production

 

I like the idea of removing the ODD. Is it easy to get plates to cover the opening left by removing it? Could then get an external slot-dvd enclosure so it can still be used if needed. Does anyone know how much weight/battery the ODD uses?

 

No it is not easy to get a plate to cover the ODD bay. I put a thinkpad sata bay module in and it is close to filling it. I plan to make a plate myself to completely cover it.

The weight of the ODD is appriximately 250g

 

very sad and very pissed.. if no one wants their black cw anymore. holler lol.

Thank you for shopping with Sony Style!

Due to the heavy shopping weekend, we’ve run out of the graphics card you selected for your custom CW VAIO notebook order. Since we cannot fill this order, we will have to cancel it.

We’d like to give you a $100 VAIO eCoupon for this inconvenience, redeemable at SonyStyle.com from now through December 24, 2009. Your coupon can be used towards any VAIO notebook computer offered on our website, excluding the W series.

If you’re still interested in customizing a VAIO CW notebook with a different graphics card, we are currently offering up to $350 in savings on hardware and software upgrades through December 19, 2009. This offer is only good while supplies last, so we recommend placing a new order as soon possible.

Use the following code while checking out from SonyStyle.com to receive your discount.

Since we never charged you for your cancelled order, there is no need to wait for a refund.

Thank you for shopping Sony Style!

 

Hi there,

I'd like to ask you a question before buying my CW.

I will probably chose a CW with these specs :

P [email protected]
4Go DDR3
Nvdia 230m@512Mo

My question is about the processor : is it (the P7450) powerful enough to run games like Battlefield2, CoD4, Wow with high details ?

 

so angry. must destroy.

 

Thats harsh, does that mean they will not be getting any more 230m's for future CW laptops?

So glad I ordered mine when I did. I bought it to use as a secondary laptop as my sxps is a bit big to cart around everywhere, and since receiving it I havent even turned on my sxps!

 

I played with my CW with P7450 before upgrading it to a P9500.
It played COD WOW, BF2, DOW2, TF2 and LFD2 perfectly fine. I only upgraded the cpu because I wanted VT.

 

Thanks for your answer ninja !

 

was that automatic or did you ask to cancel your order?

 

Hi there ...
I havent done a clean install but have removed most of the components tht i thought were not necessary ...
I'm left with these ... I have no idea wht these are for...
can someone shed some light on wht these are for and which ones i need and which i can discard ...

VAIO content metadata intelligent analyzing manager
VAIO content metadata intelligent network service manager
VAIO content metadata manager settings
VAIO content metadata XML interface library
VAIO content monitoring settings
VAIO control center
VAIO event service
VAIO original function settings
VAIO personalization manager
VAIO Presentation support

Thanks

 

if i decide to cancel my order, does anyone know a good site to buy a pre-configured laptop with my specs for 818$ or lower? (including tax) (no bluray, never really needed it)
Thanks!

 

Automatic. They should of kept the order and just waited. SonyStyle are d-bags.

 

Mine hasn't cancelled yet...
when did you order it?

 

Did anyone tried enabling WiFi both on 2.4 and 5 GHz bands ?

Mine is configured this way but I don't see what's the point because you can only connect the WiFi card to one network SSID at time. Sure the dual-band dual-radio router can be configured to run on both bands with the same SSID but it is even trickier because when connected to that SSID you don't know on which band you are!

The dual-band, dual-radio router is a must because you can simultaneously connect together via the router old g devices and newer n devices and in addition you can reserve the 5 GHz band for few devices with less interference.

Last night I connected simultaneously the GigE and WiFi interfaces. Both are connected each having a distinct IP address. But the traffic is routed via the GigE. I'm OK with this but I wonder if there is any preference settings.

 

I ordered it on 11/28. I thought I had it on time but I guess not.

I regret falling asleep and then ordering it. I should of just done it instantly!!!!!!! *teardrop

 

hey dubley, when did you placed your order and what is the specis? the live chat just told me that the black has more stock than the purple one now.

 

11/28
CW-CTO- Jet Black
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT230M GPU (512MB VRAM)
Blu-ray Disc™ playback

 

Sir, This definitely sucks. cant you call up sony and ask to Keep your order on backorder till they get the part. Why cancel it outrightly.

 

What time did you order it thou,? In PST plz

 

That's what I said, I even emailed them and I bet it's gonna take another week for a reply. I wouldn't of minded being on backorder as long as I'm on list but not completely cancel.

And if you guys are looking at your status in Order Info. That don't change man. Check your email from sonystyle. and get denied.

Raz sell my yours haha. but lucky very lucky

and I ordered at like 11:30 P.M. Central. but I'm pretty sure if you haven't received an email saying your computer is being built or your status still says shipping update....

 

Sir, they should at least double check with you if you wanted to keep your order

 

I ordered mine on the 27th and the sony customer service tells me it is finally being built now but the website only shows it is being "processed" so I guess the website isnt as reliable as I thought it would be.

 

Thats what I was hoping for if no one realized lol. I kept saying I hope they don't cancel and look they did. Without even asking. but if someone wants 100 dollars off and wants to get rid of their cw haha. and If only the SR had gt230m id maybe get that.

 

11/30. was 11/29 and 11/28.

 

I read some forums that the SR is now available with the ATI 4650 Graphics in Europe which comes in pretty close to Nvidia GT230M. Not sure if its available in US as yet, but you can call up and ask.

 

OMG I'm on the same boat with you. I think they sent out mass email. I tried customizing again, but I realize they don't even have the Blue-Ray ~_~ It's even pricier now. >_<

I don't know if I should still place an order on it with the spec of CD/DVD playback and the Nvidia GeForce G210M GPU (256MB VRAM)......(a big downgrade!)

I'm planning to get:
4gb ram
500gb HDD
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.20GHz)

Coming out at $745 after their coupon $100 off =(

I was just chatting with the Live Assistant and he said Blue-Ray won't be back until after New Years and there's no such thing as a "backorder".....they canceled everyone that they couldn't fulfill. And kept repeating that new models are coming in next year like I didn't understand what "no such thing as backorder" mean -_-

 

I mean that there is a estimate shipping date in the your email that they sent it to you with your confirmation #

 

The places that have preconfigured CWs with G230s, are all around $900...at least what I could find...

Such as here for $899:
Sony VAIO® VPCCW18FX/B 14" Notebook - Jet Black
http://www.jr.com/sony/pe/SON_VPCCW18FXB/

 

when did you place your order?
thanks

 

28th at like ~11pm EST. and the Order Confirmation said expected delivery 12/22 but the site said Shipping Info: 11/30 ~_~

 

my order date was 11/27 late afternoon, but i also have the same order confirmation and shipping info as you; 12/22 and 11/30.

 

Sigh......I think with the new model thing that the L.A mentioned, I have a feeling right now they're just trying to get rid of whatever they have left for the year......

Anyone has advice if the new specs is worth the $745?.....

 

do you have any details on the "new model". does it make sense that I should just wait this mess out or cancel my order and order the new model when it comes out.
...any advice will help