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

Goto Sony Style now. It appears the GT230M is back as well as blu ray I just placed my order with the $100 off coupon. I got what's in my sig for $1000 shipped...

EDIT: Looks like its the Blu-Ray burner not the reader that's back. But that's ok I got that anyway. My ship date is 12-29 which is fine I'm in no rush...

 

what is the coupon !!!

 

I got the coupon when they canceled my previous order. It was a one time use.

 

i'll sell you my coupon, haha. for real.

I don't think I will be ordering another laptop from sonystyle, while jr saved my life.

 

Not one website other than Sonystyle has the right CW that I am looking for. That's the only reason I went with Sonystyle instead of Newegg or amazon.

 

So is there anything we could do?

 

damn they raised the components price abit

 

Yeah they did. When I ordered on cyber monday my cw was like $820 out the door. Now is was about $1000 out the door for the same specs...and I had the $100 off coupon...

EDIT: Never mind I got the Blu-Ray burner this time so that added about $100 to the price

 

Anyone else have this ^^^ problem? I don't think it is limited to only a few laptops, it doesn't make sense to me.

 

Maybe the browser is zoomed. Hold CTRL and spin the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

 

Nope, it's on the default

 

Can you post a screenshot? Hit printscreen, paste into Microsoft Paint, save as JPG, and upload here http://tinypic.com/

 

Sure, this is the first:

http://tinypic.com/r/35avzuv/6

I will take a couple more pictures as well.

 

Here are 3 more pictures:

http://tinypic.com/r/51ty89/6

http://tinypic.com/r/zwakuu/6

http://tinypic.com/r/2jetpur/6

 

Looks identical to what I get, so the problem must be your screen.

Does the image of Youtube on my PC look bad to you also?
http://i45.tinypic.com/wmfig5.jpg

 

Yes it looks bad also -- it looks identical except for the text is bolder in your picture, but the image looks exactly the same. Does this just mean that I'm crazy?

(by the way, I got the other images from NHL.com and from an espn.com video)

EDIT: It looks good to you, non blotchy?

 

wow that sucks lol. im so glad i got mine before anything was out of stock

 

yeah it sure does! I have been looking for a laptop for a month now and when I finally decide which one I want, the damn thing is out of stock.

 

The text is bolder on mine because I basically compressed your image a second time.

It doesn't look good, it just looks like a normal low quality Youtube video. I guess it is blotchy. Could it be that your new screen is better than your old one, so you can see the blotchiness better?

Try higher quality videos.

Edit: Well it seems like the problem is your monitor, since the screenshot of mine looks bad to you also, so try looking at some high quality pictures. If they look good, I'd say it's the screen highlighting how crappy YT videos are.
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/downloads/date/any/

 

I posted a problem regarding the fan being on all the time but somehow the problem fixed itself. I didn't really install / uninstall much but I'm glad the fan isn't on constantly anymore. The fan would now shut off when the CPU reaches 37 degrees. Thank God for that.

On a sidenote: I am really enjoying this laptop on a daily basis. It handles everything so well. Watched transformers 2 IMAX edition on it and for those who haven't seen the IMAX scenes it, I would highty recommend it.

As for games, I have only tried out NFS:SHIFT so far and that plays beautifully as well. I will install some other games and see how they perform on this.

Overall, I am very satisifed with my purchase. A free blu ray burner / 230M coming out to $810.00 is pretty awesome.


Has anyone downloaded the new drivers from NVIDIA (195.xx) yet? I would like to get that so I can get flashplayer 10.1 beta 2 and play those damn HD youtube videoes without stressing the CPU so much!

 

Thanks for your help winkosmosis. Those images do look clearer, however this one:

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/D0d7983f/02111_powerful_1280x720.jpg

Has a little bit of blotchyness in the lower clouds?

I actually just compared my screen to another laptop, which is also new but of a different brand. They both have the same resolution, except the other laptop has a 15.4 inch screen. The images/movies in both look pretty similar... except... my laptop's screen is so much brighter and whiter! I have used the other laptop a few times but never noticed the lack of white in the white color. The CW's white is very white and crisp instead of a darker white. I think perhaps I am just not used to having a screen that is so crisp and clear where everything shows.

EDIT: I already gave you a rep once, if I could give you another one I would!

 

for people who are having trouble with finding cheap CW's i suggest looking at the Sony Vaio Outlet center they have really nice prices!
Note: not everything in the outlet is refurbished, look for clearance items, since refurb items come with 90day warranty and clearance come with the same 1yr standard warranty
for $939 right now you can get
Features:
Base Unit : 4040
Display : 14" VAIO Display (1366x768)
Graphics Card : NVIDIA® GeForce® GT230M GPU (512MB VRAM)
Color : Jet Black
Wireless Local Area Network : Intel® WiFi Link 5100 (802.11abgn) with built-in Bluetooth® technology
Processor : Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
Memory : 6GB (4GBx1 + 2GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
Hard Drive : 320GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
Optical Disc Drive : Blu-ray Disc™ playback
Channel : CTO\BTO / FA09-IRX4950
Operating System : Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit
Software Optimization : No Fresh Start
Software : Microsoft® Works
Software2 : Works w\ HST / FA09-IRX4950 (4159)
Photo Software : No additional Photo Editing Software
Video Software : No additional Video Editing Software
Finance Software : No additional Finance Software
AntiVirus Software : Norton Internet Security™ 2009 (30 Day Trial)
Battery : Standard Capacity Battery (VGP-BPS13)
Warranty : 1 Year Warranty / FA09-IRX4950
Limited Warranty Term : 1 Year Parts & Labor

there was a post few months ago for this Z series laptop that was almost maxxed to the limit and it was up for 1200 clearance price. so you can really find good deals at the outlet.

 

Hi rehangohar77!

I was wondering if you had any good photos of your CW? I am waiting on mine being delivered on Tuesday or Wednesday all being well but the wait is hard to take! Any photo of your laptop would be great as it just happens to be exactly the same secs as the one I hve ordered. I felt the black option was the most stylish, particularly compared to the pink

Also do you play games etc? From what I have read it seems to ope well with all diensions of computing. How do you find the screen for blu-ray? Any difference to DVD?

Thanks

 

There are pics of a black one somewhere in this thread

 

No problem.

I can see the blotchiness in the clouds. It's from the JPEG compression

 

Do you have a clean install (personal) windows7 ?
My laptop have the same problem, it's really disturbing, if you have any idea...

 

Ha I just canceled my order and re-ordered one of the sony outlet CW's. It has everything that the one I ordered has, less the blu-ray burner which I could care less about since blank blu-rays are way to expensive anyway. But it does come with Blu-ray playback and 6 gb of ram. And I called them and asked if they could apply the $100 coupon to it since I canceled the other one and they let me do it So I got it for about $900 shipped and it will go out tomorrow instead of a month from like So I got

P8700
6GB Ram
Jet Black
Blu-ray Playback
7200 320 RPM HD
Intel 5100
$900

Not bad and I get it before Xmas...

 

congrats.

 

Wow, I am curious to know what you did to make the fans stop. I was under the presumption they were bios controlled.

All the Vaio CWs ive looked at in stores have the fan running constantly, as well as mine and my wifes.

 

I did a semi-install for the laptop. Disabled a lot of the sony services. I am not sure what I specifically did but I can tell you when the fan does stop spinning.

CPU core 1 - 37 degrees
CPU core 2 - 28 degrees
GPU (230M) - 24 degrees

The fan wasn't that annoying to begin with but it is much quieter now that the fan only comes on when the CPU gets heated.

Can anyone tell me what a reasonable laptop CPU and GPU temperature should be when it is idle and under heavy load?

 

Do those temperatures climb or do they stay the same when just simply web surfing?

Mine idle about the same as yours. Under load I get about 70C on the cpu and 62C on the GPU

 

The temperature does increase when web surfing but not all the way up to 42C. That's when the fan kicks in. Usually this happens when I have multiple windows of browsers open + other programs. But if I have only one browser open, the fan does not operate at all. I have the T6600.

 

unfortunately, i haven't even ordered my CW yet, i was just posting up info for other members as i saw alot of members were getting frustrated not being able to order exactly what they wanted or what they wanted came out to be more expensive then it was earlier but im gonna get the Fiery Red color hopefully in few weeks, so yeah, but everything i posted was just info that i knew and the rest i gathered up from the rest of the members on this forum, sometimes people skim through to they miss the answers of the questions they ask or some questions come up repeatedly but im here to help anyone out

nice, if its the same one that i posted up the specs for i saw it for 936 or something, but anything of a price drop is nice beautiful specs you got, glad i could of been of some help

 

I posted these about a week ago. most of them are clear, it's just some of them that have went funny with the flash on my camera. hope it helps

 

I did get the one you posted Thanks...

 

I was wondering since it had 6gb of ram, will it still run in dual channel? It has 1 stick of 4gb and one of 2 gb. I hope its still dual channel...

 

Great thanks, maybe it is just the high resolution that I am not used to. I'm going to run a few more tests later to make sure everything is good.

 

Do you know which sony services you disabled? Maybe there is one or two specific services that cause the fan to spin. Did the fan stop spinning after your semi-install (clean install?) or after you disabled some of the services?

 

Had my CW for two weeks now, had no problem until yesterday, when I got 1 BSOD and one today. I checked the reports and asked for the solution from the action center and it says that the problem is due to the graphics driver and that updating might solve the issue. My driver version is 8.15.11.8647 (as seen from the device manager) and when I try to update it, it says it is already up to date. Tried running the 195.62 one obtained from Nvidia directly, but it says it is not compatible. Could anyone please let me know which version is the stable one out there. Cheers

 

right, i want to install ubuntu, but will it mess up the recovery and web button? i did this with my hp with win7 beta and it prevented the recovery section from loading. will it do it with the CW?

 

Hi, you should download the driver from Sony's website. On there you will find an update which will be the 8.16.11.8783 version.

 

i forgot about that, im not really sure, but from what i remember(which is really vague so dont take my exact word for it ) you should always have even number of RAM, like 2-4-6-8, im not sure about the six, but im sure about the rest, becuase when you have a 1GBx2GB to create 3 GB then its not dualchannel but i think it might work out with 6 GB
sorry im abit clueless

 

Thanks for the response. But I don't see it. Is it for the UK based model though?. In the driver section under downloads, there is no update for the graphics driver, only for wireless Lan and Bluetooth.

 

Just visited the US Sony support page, and they do have the 8.16.11.8783 available. But will it work on a UK based model as well?

Another thing I noticed there is 8.15.11. is actually considered a driver for 210 GPU. Did the US models also come factory shipped with this driver?

 

I don't think there is any difference between the UK/US versions. It is strange that it is not located on the UK support website as well, but I think that you should go ahead and download it.

 

there really isnt... the US driver even puts the UK version of color "colour" in the nvidia control panel so i'd definetely say that it is compatable with UK models

so skranjanin , i would definetely download it, solved all my bluescreen problems

 

how did you go about doing your semi-clean install?

 

I tried that driver and I still got BSODs from resume (either S3 or hibernate)
I am now using 195.62 with a modified inf and have not had a BSOD since. I dont understand why our laptops cant use the drivers from nvidia, it says the gt230m is supported.

 

i never got them from resuming from standby or hibernate, they were just at random times.

And yeah, it really doesnt make sense to why we cant use the drivers from nvidia. sony must think there is incompatablilities , but i'd say sonys own drivers have more problems than nvidias. hopefully in the future sony and nvidia will allow us to use the drivers off nvidias website.

 

Yeah, I also had the odd random BSOD whilst the laptop was idling. It made no sense, I would just be downloading or listening to music and bam! Still I have been running 195 for a week now and no BSOD. The only problem I have is the Brightness key has only 3 settings so I have to change it in power options