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

congratz man. They ship with FedEx in the US. It might take a few days for your tracking number to work.

 

I got upgraded to windows 7 ultimate from default pre-installed windows home premium. The upgrade happenned just within 10-15 minutes. another thing, I liked with microsoft 7 is that even though I was having windows 7 ultimate 32-bit operating system key, after entering in upgrade section, it got connected to internet, verified the key, and done the upgrade within 10-15 minutes. windows 7 ultimate in cw series just rocks

 

just got my indigo cw. its a beaut
abt the sleeves, i just got a sleeve from the sony style store. fits pretty good and also comes up with a seperate case for the adapter, was around 30

so i was tryin to connect to my home network and my cw wouldn't. my 3 year dell would but my sony wouldn't. any help would be much appreciated!

 

Better double check that your Windows 7 Ultimate resisters properly. I had a problem with that when I upgraded... Click the Windows START button, select "Computer". At the top of the window select "System Properties". Scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the "Windows activation" status.

I suspect that my problem occurred because mine was delaying the automatic activation for a few days, and hadn't registered the initial Win 7 Home at the time I filled in all the registration info, even though I WAS connected to the Internet at the time.

 

does CW come with Windows 7 CD?

 

I had no problems getting my CW to connect to my router with either the wired or wireless connections, and then onto the Internet. But connecting to the shared resources on my XP Pro desktop, that was a pain, and I'm not sure what finally fixed it.

I went through the network configurations on both at the same time, making sure everything matched, checked all the firewall settings on both machines, and checked the router settings. I eventually shut everything down, and pulled the power plugs on the router and cable modem for about a minute. I plugged in the router and modem, and waited for the modem to connect to the Internet. Then turned ON both computers. Everything worked then, both computers were on the same network and could see each other's shared folders, and the laptop could reach the shared printer connected to the desktop. I suspect that one or more pieces of equipment needed a full cold-boot to let the configurations take effect.

 

No, it comes with no CDs or DVDs at all, and you need to burn your own recovery DVDs.

 

Hi

I bought my cw a week ago everything good but there is a tic tic type of noise randomly coming when i take my ear closer to the laptop is it the hard disk sound or the fans is this normal and secondly my fans running continuously?

 

guys and girls, how is the dpc latency on your cw? still run in red colour or Sony fix this issues already?
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

Thanks
one more question my recovery DVD only used one CD , does it right?

 

I do not hear any ticking noise, but yes, the fan does run all the time.

 

I don't think so... I didn't even know that it took CDs. Mine took 3 DVDs, for some others it was 2. If CDs do work then it would be a lot more, maybe 6 or 7.

 

No. It will take 3 single-layer DVDs for a recovery set. The data can fit on 2 double-layer DVDs, but from previous posts here, it sounds like it's more reliable to use the single layer disks.

Also, be sure to check the box that tells the computer to confirm that the data is burned correctly. It takes longer, but is worth the peace of mind.

 

Thanks for your reply i checked out the harddisk is making the sound can you tell me one more thing i have seen that cw is coming with intel wifi link 5100 but mine have atheros which one is better

 

Supposedly the Intel card for wireless is better than the Atheros one. I don't really know what kind of affect the would have on browsing though.

 

Good to know you can back it up this way but I think if you create the 3 recovery DVD and if for some reason you use em to restore, they'll restore to the original factory state i.e. including creating the recovery partition.

But you must have another reason to back it up this way (?)

 

Hi vaioforme,
bottom right is exactly what I meant by tray icon (where you see all the running programs). This IS the vaio smart network. The icon is like two arrows left&right. Isn't it ?
If you found other ways to switch between 2.4 and 5 GHz I'm very interested to know!!!
It is pretty normal to lose your connection when switching to 5 GHz without doing it also on your router provided your router supports both bands. Not all of them support dual band and some supporting both bands but don't support them "simultaneously". For that they need to have 2 radios.

One think I can't understand is that the CW (smart network) supports an option with both channels 2.4 and 5 GHz. I don't think it has 2 radios so what does that mean ? Does it have 2 radios ?!!

I'll test it soon.

This info should be pretty simple to find. What's your router's brand and model?
Put it on 20/40 MHz option. You may double your connection speed in some cases. However some reviews on various routers say they see no change. Wi-Fi really depends on your environment.

Usually, when you connect the ethernet cable, the CW should prefer it to the wireless but anyway to be sure, stop your wi-fi (just front-switch it off) and then do a transfer and see the throughput.
There may be a couple of related questions:
does your router support GigE ? Did you ever see a GigE connection with it ? Where do you see the indication for 100 Mbps ?
Did you checked your wires and connectors? GigE or 1000Base-T uses all four twisted pairs of the category 5 cable while 10/100Baste-T uses only two. Check your connectors' end (RJ45) to make sure you see all 8 positions wired. Otherwise change your cable and connectors.

The real measured throughput with a file transfer is the right indication to know whether you're under or over 100 Mbps (about 10+ MByte/s)

Also, there is a possibility that your router with a couple of switching ports, lower the overall speed to the lowest speed connected to its ports. I mean if you have say 4 GigE ports on your router and you plug a computer supporting just Fast Ethernet (i.e. 100 Mbps) and you plug another supporting GigE (i.e. 1 Gbps), then the overall switching speed will be limited at 100 Mbps. This is pretty normal.
But if you plug another GigE computer to a third port, you may still suffer a max of 100 Mbps between the two GigE computers!!! This is less normal.
Apart from cabling/hard problems, the reason is usually the flow control on ethernet. Basically the flow control system let the receiving end send PAUSE frames if it can't handle the speed of the transmitting end. I really don't know when this can be useful because upper layer protocols (i.e. TCP) take care of this themselves. Even for UDP (which hasn't any window mechanism like TCP), frames just will be discarded which is the expected behavior.

Anyway, you won't do any harm by disabling ethernet flow control. Start by your NIC properties to see if you can disable flow control. Do this at BOTH ends: receiving as well as transmitting. It's kind of odd but if you don't do it on the transmitting side it won't work.
If you haven't any flow control property in your NICs, do the same on your switch/router for each port (obviously not for the upstream one going to Internet!).
You may also try to put all GigE computer/devices on a separated VLAN.

However, before doing these, as your problem may be simpler, start by check your cabling and basic properties.

Hope it helps
nalooti

 

Hey hey!
I've just installed ubuntu karmic on my CW without any problem. I haven't updated the nvidia driver since it looks like it's not stable and needs a lot of workaround. That's probably why I don't get the choice for a 1366x768 resolution, only the 1280x720.

@jangidk, which ubuntu forum are you speaking about?

F'ail'o

 

Cool I tracked it and I get it tomorrow Its only coming from southern ca and I live in northern ca so its quick nice...I'll have it before xmas..

 

Small update on ubuntu install without the nvidia driver:
- Apparently the brightness Fn keys don't work, the OSD appears, but no change on brightness.
- After closing the lid (the laptop goes into hibernation mode), although pressing a key awakes it, nothing can light up the screen.

F'ail'o

 

To all CW-Owners:

I want to know about the quality of the Display! I read that the Display is very bad compared to Vaio SR Series. I actually have a Vaio SR41M with 13,3" LED-Display and the Display is very nice. Good luminance and high contrast...

Can anybody help me? Does anybody can compare the SR with the CW Display?

Because i want to buy the CW, but the only thing which prevent me is the bad Display.

 

I'm sure he means this one: http://ubuntuforums.org/

Ubuntu installs fine on the CW (and quite quick for that matter) but the massive problem is the nvidia driver. if you enable the restricted driver, you can be sure that once you boot again nothing will appear (unless you connect an external display), and without the driver, the resolution is stuck at 1280x720

Gah what hassle. i finally got my EDID of the screen (at least i hope/think i have).

i extracted the EDID wrong the first time. i had to use a different program since the one off that nvnews website just kept crashing. I'm currently in the middle of installing the 185 driver, (i had to reinstall ubuntu... dunno what i did but alot of stuff dissappeared ), and then ima gonna try again, and hopefully it'll work this time

It'll be a real bummer if ubuntu wont work properly on the CW.

*UPDATE*

Ok so that never worked i blame SONY and their stupid altered crap.

gonna post on the ubuntu forums They might be able to help (i hope)

i'll post a link later on if i find a solution

I havent seen an SR display in person, but the CW's display isn't as bad as people make out. It's bright, theres no doubting that, and once tweaked (sony seems to dull the screen with its dull colour profiles) the colours are fine. the blacks could be a little blacker (there more grey).

Again can't really comment on the contrast. it has better contrast than my HP dv5 but i'm not sure if it's better/same/worse than the SR's. you'd probably be better to see both next to each other. why don't you take your SR to a store that sells CW's and compare the screens side by side?

I think the display is lovely, but it's better to see for yourself

 

You could use Hwmonitor, but you should be careful as it is outdated... Since the Penryn processors (like the P8700 I have in my cw) have a thermal specification of 105ºC instead of the regular 100ºC, and Hwmonitor doesn't take this into account, it actually underreads the core temperatures by 5ºC...
Therefore, if you have a cw with a processor of the P family, when Hwmonitor says core temperature is 36ºC, it actually is 41ºC...
You could use the program CoreTemp instead.

Anyway, just wanted to make this clear so we dont get any misinformation

Grtz

 

i do not know how the shipping works in US. I will be visiting Buffalo, NY on Jan 18, 2010. Can i order a laptop from India(through credit card) and have it delivered to a friend's place before i get there?

 

Here's the result on mine:


It does run worse when I'm browsing the net though.

 

Yes, because DVDs can get scratched. I like to have stuff backed up on hard drives also.

BTW, to access the recovery partition, you have to start the program for burning the discs. Go all the way to the point where it makes you put in a DVD, and the recovery partition shows up as drive H.

 

I got a bluescreen yesterday while installing a backed up Steam game. Need to figure out how to access the log. I hope it's just some driver problem and not hardware. I'll have to run Memtest and Prime I guess

 

The first time I looked at a CW at a store I thought it was horrible compared to the SR in the store. But the main problem was the screen didn't have room on the display to tilt back properly. If you view it from slightly above perpendicular, it turns washed out. From head on, it looks much better, though still not as good as the SR, at least without tweaking.

You should try to see one in a store before buying.

 

thanks. seems like not yet fixed.

 

On the DPC latency - try running WLan Optimizer. It's a third party program which makes some registry tweaks, and effectively solved this problem for me.

http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/

Edit: My mistake, my problems were purely latency spikes as a result of refreshing Wifi connections. This tool only addresses that issue.

 

Just updated the GT 230M drivers to 195.81 with the modified INF.
http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/25844-v19581-windows-7vista-64bit-nvidia-oem/

Now GTA IV is actually playable :] Although it's still pretty buggy and kinda ugly

 

Yeah a few weeks ago I was looking at one at bestbuy, the screen looked worse than the other laptops. I herd it had a pretty good screen, so then I went into the display settings and changed a few things. After doing so the screen looked better, if not on par with the others.

 

Just wondering if anyone with the 22nd ship date has received an email from Sonystyle about anything yet.

My husband and I ordered one on Nov 29th and we haven’t received any new emails about it being delayed, built or shipped. My husband did call Sonystyle about a week ago and they said they would expedite the order, but nothing changed.

So I suppose we will call again a little later, but just curious if anyone else had nothing from Sony yet.

 

How do you install those modded drivers. Do you just download the driver and install it?

 

You download the actual driver and the modified INI together. Extract the actual driver to any location you prefer and then replace the INI with the modified one you downloaded. Now run setup.exe.

 

I sill haven't heard a peep from Sony.
Ordered - 11/27 11am
Original Estimated Ship Date - 12/15
Estimated Ship Date when I look online - 12/08

Customization Details

* Blu-ray Disc™ playback
* No Engraving
* Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
* No additional Video Editing Software
* NVIDIA® GeForce® GT230M GPU (512MB VRAM)
* Fiery Red
* Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional 64bit
* 500GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
* No additional Photo Editing Software
* Fresh Start
* No additional Office Software
* 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
* No additional Finance Software
* Large Capacity Battery (VGP-BPL13)
* No additional AntiVirus Software

The laptop is for my wife, replacing a 5-ish year old Vaio TX650 and she is in no hurry so we wait patiently. I on the other hand can't wait to get My little TX back!

Jim

 

My REcovery disk burned on a single dual layer disk...!

I think it depends on how much bloat ware you got with your computer...!

i had my CW with a fresh start so didnt have too much bloat ware on it...!

 

unfortunately that might be tough...since Sony makes it mandatory to have the same billing and shipping address...so you could ask your friend to order it for you via his credit card... since an Indian card wont have an US address and hence Sony wont accept that...!

 

Two quick questions for all you smart people out there:

1. What kind of difference in battery life and performance would I be looking at between the T6600 processor and the P7450 processor? Would I even notice a difference at all?

2. Would the 210M be able to handle blu-ray fine?

 

1) the difference in performance wont really be noticable...but i would say in both ways P7450 is better...since it has a lower power usage and also its bus speed is 1066 which is same as the ram...! if you get T6600 the bus speed is lower than that of the DDR3 ram and it will just slow down your ram...! this is what i know...!

2)Yes.

 

Has anyone experienced BSODs while running Win7 yet? Win7 reports that it is a driver problem - all drivers are updated.
Any solutions?

Someone already posted his CW Display Settings - any Ideas on how to tweak the Display a bit more?

I'm really happy with the performance of my CW, but one thing is really annoying: the left palm rest squeaks even when using light pressure (= resting my palm on it)
Don't want to send it back

 

Has anyone tried out a CW clear skin. I saw it on ebay and its a Pre-cut laptop skin protector film. It sounds good, and it seems to have the correct layout. It might be a good way to protect the laptop, and this way I won't be bothered by the smudges as well. Here's a link to the item.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-VAIO-CW-se...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item45efc832ef

 

I got a bluescreen but I don't know why. I'll look up how to access the crash log when I go home

 

I had BSOD couple of times but then I updated my graphics driver to 8.16.11.8783 (mine was shipped with 8.15.11.8647). Since updating, I haven't got any BSODs (touch wood). It depends on how you encountered BSODs. For me it use to happen after long period of inactivity and during random web browsing. I haven't played any game on it yet mind you.

 

Hi F'ail'o I did not found any problems...
I just made new bacckup dvds because I read somewere that modifying partitioning could results in making unuseful the dvds made before.
Therefore:
1 I shrinked tha partition under windows (and reboot)
2I made new dvds
3Rebooted with the 9.10 installation disk
4installed ubuntu in the free space left.
The only proble is related to the fact that windows allow you only to reduce your partition of 50% but that was enough for me.
I've never heard about tattooed pc... but I've a dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu 9.10... so I think you can have it too...

Some problems comes activating nvidia driver... but there are some guides online to solve them... follow this link:
http://forum.ubuntu-it.org/index.php?topic=331837.msg2646742
Good luck
Alberto

 

You should update your driver to 187.83 of the sony usa website. in the driver description it says that it fixes a problem with bsod's. i also got the bluescreens like when skranjanin did - random browsing and inactivity. after i updated i havent seen a bluescreen since. i hope thats the end of them
.
As for the display, there isnt really much more you can do than tweaking the contrast, brightnes, gamma and vibrance.

if your palm rest is sqeaking then you could take it to wherever you bought it, (if you bought it off sonystyle you could take it to a sony store) and get them to look at it and possibly fix it there and then. would be better than sending it back

 

My husband called and really didn't get anywhere with Sony. The rep said something about checking a warehouse and she would email him within 2 hours to let him know if it was in there. It has been about 3 hours and still no email or any other change.

And even though my husband told her a few times it wasn't a gift, she did keep telling him that he could go someplace in the Sony website to print off a Sony gift picture to put under the tree.

 

fedex delivered my laptop today.. too bad I'm not in ATL.. I will reach there in two more weeks.. cant wait to get my hands on CW.. I will post some gaming benchmarks once I reach home.. Really glad I received it amidst all these cancellations and out of stock orders.. Good luck to all those who are still waiting.. Hope you get it soon