Official VAIO FW Series Owners Thread

Well I went ahead and ordered and now I can't wait for it to get here After getting the wrong FW three times from Newegg I just want to open a Sony box and see the computer I ordered!

 

I've just got my hand on my FW and I'm trying to play HD video and the notebook is struggling to play it. I know somebody posted in this topic the right directions to play HD content properly as a Core 2 Duo computer should have no problems playing 1080p video... Can somebody point me in the right direction?

Thanks

 

maybe you have codec issues? unless you are playing back a blu ray disc in that case, I would suggest new software for playing back dvds.

 

Bro muahahahah sorry for laughing but it's hiliarious, i went through the same issues with my 285d that i got at futureshop!!!!

i went through 5 and i gave up.

but the touch pad in general i had a problem with the left click, where it would not click at all, then i punched it and it started working.

i find the touchpad on the vaio is very weak , even the matieral used on it

 

Yeah it only costs a buck to make or something.

http://www3.alps.com/WebObjects/catalog.woa/E/HTML/InputDevice/index.html

Works fine for me. You can always return your VAIO FW and get a Macbook Pro and multitouch support.

Or you can just BUY A MOUSE from Logitech or something.

 

Yeah, the buttons seem kind of ghetto. They feel like they won't last for 20,000 clicks. I just use the touchpad as the clicker. Just tap it and it left clicks. Kind of nice. It work a lot better than my Powerbook G4's tap click. It doesn't register any unintensional clicks at all. Pretty neat in my opinion.

Why do I get the distinct feeling that some people have had their FW for like 2 or 3 months and still don't know that you can click with the trackpad.

 

It would help a lot if we know what you're trying to play. Someone figured out that VLC doesn't like to play HD content that's bigger than 4GB.

Here's an easy fix I can think of right away.

http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html?&no_cache=1&sword_list[]=binary

http://www.koepi.info/xvid.html

Install that. When it ask you if want to decode all MP4 content with it, say yes. You should be able to play any sort of non-blu-ray HD content right in Windows Media Player.

If your blu-ray is stuttering, take the blu-ray disc out and look at the bottom. Is it full of fingerprints? Wip it clean and you should have no more problems.

Blu-ray is super vulnerable to fingerprints since the data density is so high.

It took experience to figure out why blu-ray playback was stuttering for me. It never occured to me that the disc might be full of fingerprint oil.

 

I can't find any specs on the HD 4670 Mobility card. The regular desktop card has 320 stream processors and uses 59 watts.

The 3650 has 120 stream processors and uses 30 watters so I guess they figured out how to do it better.

But the FW only uses 110 watts though. 60 watts is a little excessive. I'm guess they'll clock it slower quite a bit. But that still means that there are 320 stream processors though. That's gotta be nice for the antialiasing. Oh well...

 

Hey autumn,

I'm trying to play a mkv and after installing the codec you suggested the video is still stuttering. I even tried playing with media player classic but the results are the same. The video is in 1080p resolution. Anything else that I can try?

 

I have a mouse, but why spend $1,200.00 on a laptop when the mobile part of disabled (ie. the trackpad). I have a $4,600.00 desktop in the other room, which has a mouse

 

It says the new 390 has 8 gigs of ram, is my 285 capable of upgrading to 8 gigs?

 

Yes but you have to use 64-bit OS to use all 8.

 

In fact, if you try to CTO an 290 from the US sonystyle.com, you can order 8GB of RAM

 

Download K Lite codec pack, had the same issues and DL the codec pack and played with Widows Media and the MKV worked perfectly.

even DL'd an 11GB Dark Night and it was perfect

 

Thanks autumnale, but I´m looking for something similar to the picture and not like a backpack.




Thanks anyway.

 

Well thanks a lot, it worked!

I had installed K-Lite before, but after that I've installed coreAVC, XVid and other stuff on top of it. So I just decided to uninstall everything and reinstall K-Lite, now it's finally working. Just watched Wall-E in 1080p


Thanks a lot!

 

I have a doubt, I'm going to buy a FW290 from Sony Style Mexico and when I was building my order I noticed, it comes with DDR2-667 but in US Site comes with DDR2-800.

I know it's a pretty dumb question, but would I be able to upgrade to DDR2-800 memory?

You know in case I want to improve a little bit the performance of the Lap.

 

Hello all

Hopefully this will be a quick question. A friend has just bought a UK FW21E and I'm helping her get going with it. She has no options for screen resolution other than 1600 x 900 - is that right?

I've looked at the display properties in Control Panel and the usual slider which lets you select a screen resolution (I have about 6 choices on my TZ) is fixed at the right side and greyed out. Is this normal?

Any ideas? Thanks - and Happy New Year to all

 

Yeah you cant install other codecs it just messes up the K Lite.

I asked just like you did and was pissed it was stuttering like a mofo.Than i installed K Lite and boom it was perfect

Happy to help, this forum really is a helpful one.

 

You can use DDR2-800 but you won't see a noticable performance difference. If it makes you feel any better I bought 4g of DDR2-667 and I am happy with that decision.

 

Uhm well the 1600x900 is the highest it should go to on the laptop lcd, but I do believe there are some lower resolutions, which my 290 had, notably 1024x something and 800x600, I posted the info somewhere in this thread, probably right after I got the laptop.

But ever since I installed the modded ati drivers for the laptop and hooking it up to the hdtv, I now have a bunch of resolutions on my laptop, not sure why.

 

Did you use the Omega drivers or the modded ones from Driverheaven?

 

Well he'll be able to put it in.... Whether it'll run at DDR2-800 speed is anyone guess. The Sony VAIO FW BIOS is like kindergarten scissors. You can't set ANYTHING.

The memory speed might even be coded into the BIOS itself. If we're lucky, it'll just go with what's programmed on the SPD. If not...

I don't like to think about what happens if it's not. I'd have to sell the non-returnable 4GB of ram I got from newegg on ebay if not. :-D

 

Maybe. You can put the ram IN, but whether it'll run at DDR2-800 is anybody's guess. It's because you can't manually set the speed in the BIOS so the BIOS might just run the DDR2-800 ram you just bought at DDR2-667 speed.

But since you can't overclock the processor anyway, you only need DDR2-667 speed. It's complicated but the current FSB system only has enough bandwidth to accommodate the bandwidth of DDR2-667. Anything higher is just wasted clock cycles without overclocking the FSB.

It's like driving a sports car in LA traffic.

 

from ati, I modded them using mobility modder form driverheaven.

 

No, that's not normal at all. Go to the Device Manager and check what the version of the driver is. I'm not quite sure what the latest drivers for the 3470 is, but it should be at least from July of 2008.

You might've overwritten the newer drivers with a Windows Update or something.

 

is the full HD screen worth the extra money?

 

err unlikely. lol. my driver according to the ati control centre is 8.11, 8.12 is the newest one according to driverheaven, I may update it, but I am too lazy to.

I found one of my posts,
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278446&page=159

The resolutions on a FW from the store here:
1600 x 900 (16:9)
1280 x 768 (5:3)
1280 x 720 (16:9)
1024 x 768 (4:3)
800 x 600 (4:3)

These were all available in the display options in vista.

also note what wolf said.

I believe wolf was one of the first FW users to upgrade his display driver for his card, this might be why he has the other resolutions as well.

And here is my other post, 1/2 down
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278446&page=162

This was the stock 290 from sony, with no updating, 1 day after I got it. IF I open up displays manager in ATI CCC, in the desktop area, there are a lot of options, but not all are 16:9, only a few. In windows display settings I have the following:

1920x1080
1680x1050
1600x1024
1440x900
1400x1050
1360x1024
1360x768
120x1024
1280x960
1280x900
1290x800
1280x768
1280x720
1152x864
1024x768
1024x600
800x600

In the ati ccc, I have even more, and a lot more lower end resolutions as well for some reason. In the device manager, it says the version of the driver is 8.552

 

I just got my Fw in the mail last week. Its great! I love the way it looks and performs. No regrets!

 

Uhh, actually the chipset and any of the processors in the 2xx series FWs have enough bandwidth to run DDR2-1066. Too bad they don't make DDR2-1066 notebook memory. Maybe sometime in the future a new series' of Fws will use DDR3-1066 like the macbook pro.

Regardless, there is a performance difference of DDR2-800 over DDR2-667. DDR2-800 will run with at 400MHz and has a bandwidth of 6400MB/sec (a 20% improvement over DDR2-667).

All of this means nothing for those who want to upgrade if the bios settings can't be changed.

 

Is that with an external monitor attached? I get plenty of options with an external monitor on my new FW290, however, the built-in laptop display only lists 1920*1080, 1024*768, 800*600.

Cheers,

 

Hi all, new to the forum.
I have the FW285J model - Vista Home Premium 64 bit. Did a clean install with instructions from the forum - great info, then tweaked IAW the various threads. Machine runs great. But despite re-loading the Sony Video drivers (ATI) I don't have the ATI Catalyst Control Center anywhere on my system. Did I load something wrong or miss a file in the clean install?
Specs: P8400, 320GB hard drive, 4 GB Ram, Vista Home Premium, ATI 3650

 

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

Follow the directions there and you'll get the ATi Catalyst Control Center installed.

 

I actually bought an FW280 and an FW285, machines that are identical except one has XBrite Eco the other has the Xbrite full HD/ATI. Price difference was $119.

The full HD screen is very nice but so is the Eco. To me it was worth the price difference, but I do like both machines. Nate that the full HD has significantly worse battery life (as you might expect). If say you tried to watch a movie on a plane the battery probably wouldn't last through the whole movie unless you turn the brightness down. But if you use Amtrak they have 110v outlets at every seat...

Neither machine had any trouble passing hi-res video and multichannel audio through the HDMI port. Unlike my HTPC with an ATI card, the drivers worked right out of the box with no tweaking. Both control the remote display differently (Intel vs ATI drivers) but both worked equally well, and on the remote plasma I couldn't tell any difference.

 

Thanks much - worked like a charm...

 

Has anybody has issues with the brightness control (Fn+F5/F6) not working properly? When I do a fresh start-up the brightness controls work just fine, but when I bring it back from hibernation they no longer work. Or also when I am on A/C power and then unplug the charger and move to battery power, the brightness controls no longer work. When I hit either Fn+F5 or Fn+F6 I get the brightness OSD bar, but it only shows 1 bar and I can't adjust it up or down.

I tried doing a search in this thread, but I wasn't able to find anyone else with this problem, so I'm hoping somebody can help me out. Is there a specific driver for the brightness controls that I can delete and reinstall? Or does anyone have any idea what else might be causing this problem?

 

nope. I don't use an external monitor, all within the laptop.

 

I'm about to pull the trigger and order one of these awesome machines, but I have a couple questions first. Does anyone know if the Sony 'Accidental Damage from Handling Protection' warranty is available in Canada, and what exactly does it cover? Second, I assume that opening it up and replacing parts would void the warranty? And finally, on the Canadian site, it says that you can purchase the extended warranty at any point before the original expires, but I've talked to 3 different sony stores and they all say that you have to buy the extended at the time of purchase for laptops. Does anyone know the truth?

 

If I press the AV buttons before my antivirus loads, they stop working. I think it's because nothing is supposed to run before the antivirus and if something does run before it, the antivirus treats the program like a virus and quarantines it.

As far as my brightness buttons are concerned, I've never had them not work. But whenever I turn on my computer, the bright goes back to the highest and I have to set it back down to the level I've set them before. Kind of annoying, but I understand why you'd want the brightness to be at the highest whenever you start the computer. Better it'd be too bright and you have to set it down than you can't see the screen loading up.

 

1920x1080 16:9
1680x1050 16:10
1600x1024 16:10.24 (?)
1440x900 16:10 (also the maximum resolution on a macbook pro 15 inch)
1400x1050 4:3
1360x1024 1.32813:1 (also ...)
1360x768 1.77083:1 (Very close to 16:9)
1200x1024 1.17188:1
1280x960 4:3
1280x900 1.422222:1
1290x800 1.6125:1
1280x768 1.666667:1
1280x720 16:9 (Heh)
1152x864 4:3
1024x768 4:3
1024x600 1.70667
800x600 4:3

So basically 1360x768 and the 1280x720 (720p) are your best bets. That's only 3 resolutions.

I was too lazy to check the math so some of them might be wrong.

 

Hell yes. Will do :-(

 

How would they ever know that you opened it up. I mean they had to open it up to build your Configure to Order right? So there is no way to seal the laptop with stickers or something.

Besides, the memory and hard drive seemed to be designed to easily replaced. It only took one screw to gain access to the memory. It takes 8 screws total to change the hard drive counting the 4 screws holding the HDD to the metal retaining thingy. I'd post pictures, but I'm too lazy at the moment. I might post them if someone asks. You don't need pictures though. It's all very intuitive.

It looks like upgrading memory and hard drive on the VAIO FW will only take about 5 minutes each.

That's just good engineering design in my humble opinion. You don't have to take the whole laptop apart just to add more ram or upgrade a HDD. They might as well be hot swap.

Heck, on the VAIO AW they probably COULD BE hot swap with AHCI enabled. That is if you can AHCI working on Vista.

 

Yes!

http://wallpaper.skins.be/sarah-wayne-callies/32294/1920x1200/

This picture looks great on the 1080. Much better than the default Vista desktops. You just need desktop pictures that are actually 1080 to see the difference. The 1080 screen is an extra hundred dollars. It's better than the hard drive or ram upgrade you'd get with a hundred bucks.

 

Im deciding between a Dell Studio 17 and an Fw285 right now. One thing im looking into the screen.. its between the:

- 17 inch, 1920x1200 RGB LED on the Dell
- 16.4 inch, 1920x1080 CCFL on the Sony

.. my current laptop is the VAIO TZ with an excellent 11.1 inch LED 1366x786 screen.

If the Sony had LED backlighting, i would pick it up in a heartbeat.. but, it doesnt and im not sure if i can go back to non-LED backlighting. So, how do ppl like the 1080p screen on the Sony? How does it compare to the TZ (or TT) screen? Thanks.

 

I have a FW190 with a 1600x900 hi-color screen, and a friend recently got a FW290 with a 1920x1080 FullHD, and I like it a lot more. I think the screen is amazing. Text can be a bit small on some websites, but overall well worth it.

 

If the text is small, just change the resolution of the screen.

 

I have a Dell Studio 17 and the palm rest gets very warm, almost uncomfortably so.

Just curious if the Sony FW280's / 290's have any problem with this.

 

It's pretty cool on the FW as far as mine is concerned. There is nothing under the palm rests for the FW though. Just the hard drive, the card readers and a bunch of empty space underneath the trackpad. Wasted empty space if you ask me. They should put a molex connecter and sata port there. :-D

The hard drive is thermally isolated from the laptop though. It's like suspended in some sort of metal cage and that metal cage connects to the laptop.

Almost all the heat comes out of the top right side of the FW. The CPU and GPU are there.

 

You can also change the DPI of Vista. The correct DPI for the FW is 135. The side of the LCD is 8 inches. That's 1080 divided by 8 inches, which comes out to be 135 DPI.

The default DPI for Vista is 96. DPI is dots per inch so you do the math.

I like to keep it on the default 96 DPI though. Everything looks dorky at 135 DPI. It looks like a screen for old people who can't see as well.

 

It's not just about the money. Even if you have all the money you want, you need consider the pro and con of Full HD screen, money not withstanding.

Full HD @1920x1080 will give you full 1080p resolution which is great for watching Blu-ray movies BUT and this is a big BUT, your 3D games will run slower. ECO screen @1600 x 900 would make your game run a lot faster since it has lower resolution, but the color richness is poorer, and it is more reflective. You can lower the resolution of Full HD screen, but as with all LCD screens, lowering the resolution would make the screen looks ugly.

Another thing that some people don't like about Full-HD screen is the font is too small to read, but how small is too small is very subjective. You can increase the DPI to compensate the small font, but it may make some programs look odd.

Some older FW100 series come with screen that is as good as Full HD but with lower resolution 1600x900. But its graphic card (Radeon 3470) is slower than FW200 series that has Radeon 3650.

So, there is really no clear cut solution here, even if money is no object. Only you can decide, which feature is the most important for you.