Official VAIO FW Series Owners Thread

I got a Hitachi on my FW. Are you sure you have a Fujitsu? You can easily check. Just a few screws.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

No drop sensor, but it's 80 bucks for a 7200rpm 320GB laptop hard drive. Not bad really.

 

I own my FW for about 4 months and I didn't notice it until you posted the pic. It doesn't bother me really. Mine is out of line for about 0.25 mm.

 

The same situation !

 

I made an XP on FW guide with HDD replacement. Pictures are in the guide if you decide to replace, it's very easy.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4320502

 

Though not as evident as in your case, my left barrel thing is not perfectly aligned. I either hope that it falls before the warranty ends or is solid enough to last until I get my next laptop (hopefully 3 years from now). I will try to get some pics to compare.

And I also agree about the plastic around the keyboard. I've had my FW for 6 months and the area on either side of the touchpad (the area that's raised) already has multiple small scratches and scuffs and I'm usually a very careful person with my stuff.

 

Indeed the barrels are the major weak weak design of the FW, infact not sure how sony didn't catch this. :/

my goal is to get a new laptop either late this year (unlikely) or early next year (more likely) depends though how much nehalem will affect the battery, and if the new types of batteries will come onto the market allowing for longer battery life.

 

So I'm guessing Sony didn't fix the problem in the FW 2xx or maybe in the 3xx. I was thinking it was only an early problem on the first batch of FWs.

You're already planning on getting a new laptop next year?! So early? I dragged my first laptop around for 5 years and I guess the only reason it lasted was because it was a Toshiba tank. As for the Sony, I'm hoping to keep it for at least 3 years.

 

when my dvd drive is in the closed position there is still room left to push it in further (prob 1-2mm gap). it'll spring back into the original position though when i let go. anyone else have this loose dvd drive problem or is this normal for FWs.

mine is a FW290CTO from www.sonystyle.ca

 

I'm surprised so many people have the same thing on their's. The barrel hinge isn't loose but like people have been describing, it's not perfectly lined up like it is on the right side where the power button is. You don't suppose it's supposed to be like that? I was in best buy a few days ago and i don't think the fw was like that but that one wasn't a 290. At least that's what i have. I do have a 4 year accidental damage warranty(that i payed an arm and a leg for) but i seriously hope nothing happens. What would they do if it broke? Would they try and fix it? I don't know if the 290 will still be around if it breaks in the future. I really like the design of it.

 

I believe all laptop optical drives are like that. As long as it doesn't stick out, you should be OK.

 

Lot's of nit-picking going on here. Everyone here should just enjoy their FWs.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10146909-1.html

Avoid Seagate generation 11 drives. Them be brickin'.

 

Do you plan to replace your laptop so quickly? I don't think Nehalem will truly be worthy of changing so fast, at least in its early days. But if you can afford to do it so quickly go 4 it. Who knows what else will be out in a year or 2, OLED screens for next gen FW or... pretty much anything. You shouldn't hurry for new CPU tech alone IMO.

 

Thank you for the guide. It's very thorough and useful.

 

The 290 has a SATA-150 (SATA 1) interface. I tried both the Hitachi drive and the Western Digital SATA II drive and there is no noticeable difference.

 

Hi guys!

After 22 days of waiting my FW290 CTO finally arrived yesterday but I have a little dump question, what's the key to enter the BIOS?

If I press ESC or F1 a boot screen appears to select to boot my Windows or check memory.

Thanks!

 

I believe its delete but there is nothing to change as I believe these systems use EFI with some sort of BIOS compatibility.

Someone who's spent more time could probably give you a better answer.

Cheers,

 

F2 when you see VAIO on the screen

 

Thank you both for your replies.

Just one more thing, when I open or close the Blu-ray drive it makes a weird sound, is not the usual mechanical sound, I don't know how to describe it.

Anyway does this sounds happens to anyone else?

 

Not really, OLED would be nice but a 11 inch screen is 2000 grand so even with a slight drop in prices a 13 or 16 inch oled could be 2400-2900

I'm probably only going to upgrade my ram and my hdd to a ssd.

 

It should be just a clicking sound when it pops open.

 

I see dead pixels...

They better replace my 1080 LCD screen or else....

 

Hi Guys,

Just got my FW290C. I love it, it is a great lappy .

The only thing I am not happy with is the 64-bit Vista. I am having trouble installing many programs I need.

Would it be a good idea to request a 32-bit recovery disks?

Thansk,

Louai

 

Like a slight burp before it opens? If so, yes mine does that too. Works fine tho.

Cheers,

 

Got a FW140D last year, but have only been lurking around the forums till now.

Upgraded to Vista 64-bit and 4GB RAM, replaced the HDD to a Seagate 7200.3 320GB Drive.

I find that the 1600x900 16.4" screen is very nice too, and has more elbow room to allow for work on things as compared to my older 1280x800 15.4" screen, without having the DPI being to fine to the point where things are unreadable (e.g the Vaio P IMO, having a 1600x768 pixel wide screen on a diagonal 8.9" screen)

Presently, using it to run image editing and creation programs such as Photoshop, and soon, Maya + XSI Softimage for animation school.

Vaio VGN-FW140D
P8400 2.26GHz | 4GB PC2-6400 | 320GB 7200 RPM | ATI Radeon 3470

 

Yeah like a slight burp. Glad to know is normal.

Thx

 

Absolutely not. One Care (or whatever it's called) is being discontinued anyway, I believe.

I use Avira (free) for antivirus, sometimes I run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (free). The only Windows security I allowed to stay active is the Firewall & Defender, although my system always is telling me the Security Center is off... whatever.

I'm hardly going to put the company responsible for the bloatware that Vista is, in charge of the security too... and pay them extra for the privilege? Ha! I hear Windows 7 may not be as bad - I should get a free upgrade in that case. (2 actually, as I wiped Vista off my desktop when I got that over the summer - didn't even try Vista then - the machine was Vista 'capable' - I knew I'd be installing XP right away and it was cheap).

I got my FW-140E a few months ago. It's my first laptop. It came with Vista, of course. After a near nervous breakdown, I was able to shut down a lot of STUFF, so the computer functions acceptably. Although I've gotten used to Vista, I still don't particularly care for it, and feel the machine should be, well, snappier. So I have a new hard drive ready to go (to replace 250G@5400 with 320G@7200) for a 'downgrade' to XP - figured I can't botch it too badly if the original drive isn't touched, plus it's a faster drive - that can't hurt.

All those 'trials' and stuff were dumped FAST (CCleaner - another free download). I'd dump IE, except for the fact Windows Update seems to require it (anyone know a way around that?).

Have fun!

 

yeah, the free avira is nice. kind of naggy though. the paid version is expensive if you want more than one license. 20 euros only gets you one license. 20 euros will get you 3 licenses for a bunch of other antiviruses.

I was just thinking that I have antiviruses from the czech republic, slovakia and austria or something. It's veritable love fest of former soviet satellites.

 

When it updates, it displays one screen, you click it, it goes away. I'll sacrifice one click a day for FREE software that works without sucking all the system resources.

I'm getting ready to do a fresh install on my desktop because my brother gave me Symantic (Norton) AV. That thing thrashes away -- I don't know what it's trying to do. It REFUSES to uninstall (even using their own 'special' uninstaller) too.

By the way, I hope you're only running one AV product. You don't want two going from everything I've read.

 

hey guys, tell me what you think, I'm thinking... i get a base model of the 390 config, I up to the blu ray writer. and I'm thinking of upgrading the CPU, memory, and hard drive myself.... has anyone have experience changing the CPU on this note book? easy? hard?

 

AV is a ridiculous resource hog. Spend your money on a good firewall and practice safe surfing.

That being said, if you are going to install one, make sure it is only ONE and that it is resource efficient ie: AVG or Avira or if you are willing to pay ESET NOD32 3.0

I personally don't use one realtime, my system runs far better. I have NOD32 installed but have it disabled most of the time. Periodically I will run a complete system scan just to be sure, but have never found anything of any significance.

Of much greater concern is spyware and malware, which most AV software simple can't address. Take you pick but find a good spyware tool, this is a far better use of resources in my opinion.

 

I know this issue has been discussed already (I followed what has been suggested) but still I'm getting very poor YouTube performance.

I did the following but it didn't work:

- I updated Flash Player to the latest one (10.0.12.36).
- I unchecked Enable Hardware Acceleration option.
- I set High Performance Mode under Vaio Control Center.
- Latest Firefox version.

And still the performance is very poor. Any idea guys?

 

Is the same thing happening in internet explorer?

 

Time to liven up this thread a bit, with pictures
Here's mw FW with it's baby brother, the TZ












And the wear on the front left of the wrist rest after 3 months.


Sorry about the photo quality, only had my Nokia to hand.

 

Yeap man, same thing happens in IE.

 

Which spyware tool do you use? Is McAfee antivirus any good?

 

Avoid McAfee like the plague (my opinion). It is probably the worst resource hog of all the name brand AV software tools. Again, there is no tangible difference between the software that uses the most resources and the one that uses the least, in terms of protection, assuming a good firewall and safe surfing habits.

Thus choose the least invasive tool possible for the least amount of money possible, preferably free!

That being said, I also do not run my tools in realtime. This eliminates any resource utilization (at the risk of getting infected). However I do not open files or attachments from people that I do not know. If I receive a file that I do not recognize but need to open, I will save the file to a secure folder and run my software on that file.

Regarding Spyware tools, I use PCTools Spyware doctor. Again I do not keep it active. I run it periodically to check for spyware or malware. Adaware and Spybot S&D are also good tools for generic threats.

See this forum for more information: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=190538

Most importantly, I would argue that the most important piece of software is your firewall, if you are going to spend money on a piece of security software this is the place to spend it. You may also look at your network interface device, many routers have built in hardware firewalls.

With good browsing habits, using Firefox, not IE, don't open unknown files in email, you should be very safe.

By the way this is not my advice, this advice is essentially what I got from a senior IT manager that I used to work with at Intel. He and I were discussing home network security, for computers that WERE NOT connected to the company network

 

One other point on all this. The worst (virus) threats are not generally intended for individual users of the internet. They are intended for corporate networks and or the public network itself.

The primary threat to individual users are "keyloggers" or software intended to capture your personal financial/credit information when you access online financial resources. Thus the need for a good firewall!

With a good firewall in place, even if you are infected, the ability of that agent to transmit the data it has captured back to its intended target is essentially eliminated. Your firewall will often be the identifier of an infection either way, by notifying you of a new request to access the network by a new process running on your system. On the few occasions I have gotten an infection of some sort this was always how I knew.

 

I just got Band of Brothers on Blu Ray and i am playing it on the FW!

But its not really fullscreen, how do i get it full screen?

When i click fullscreen it goes like 3/4 of screen

 

Does anyone have a picture of a FW in white?? I want to see what it look like. All the store display model are black or silver.

 

Search for a thread by CeeNote, FW first impressions, he has a white FW.

 

An AV program being a resource hog was the IT professionals mentality 5+ years ago. I'm surprised by the IT manager's view.

 

My FW290 is the white model, once I get home I will take some photos.

 

LOL, this conversation took place about 4 years ago. And as I followed up with, this was an opinion relative to a personal computer.

I would argue however that the resource utilization argument is still valid, as the heavy resource dependent programs primarily restrict data throughput, specifically internet traffic. The effect being slow surfing.

Turn your realtime monitors off for a few minutes and go surf, note the difference in speed. Doesn't matter if you have a quad core with 16gb of memory, it is still slow.

 

Anyone help me, i am going nuts

 

I work for a college so unfortunately the students do a good job of sucking up bandwidth and not the AV. Our old Netware 6 systems is the only platform we see performance issue with AV but they are at least 5 years old.

I don't have any issues also with McAfee's security suite on my FW. Turning off on-access scan or the firewall doesn't give me a performance boost. When running a full scan (ironically it's doing it right now) my cpu spikes to 50%. If it got to the point where it would interfere with my work I would find something else. At this point it's not noticeable.

 

Go to Catalyst Control Center > Notebook Panel Properties > Attributes, then select "Full Screen"....see if it makes a difference. This will basically stretch out the picture.

 

Here is great pictures of a white FW.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=287369

Regards,

Louai

 

I too use McAfee's AV and play games all the time. I don't load the entire suite, just AV and since this is primarily my mobile game system (work system is a Mac) I don't worry about coming across much spyware. I do not notice any real difference between loading or not loading the the AV software.

Cheers,