Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

I do not have the time yet to get pictures up, but in a few days I should have them. As far as the mouse pad goes, I like it a lot. Buttons are not hard to click and the touch pad is very accurate. I believe it has a nice texture to it (not to smooth not to rough) and is just the right size.

The build quality in my opinion is excellent. It feels very stable and I would trust putting it in my backpack. The screen is thin and flexible, but to me this is a good thing (There's a reason why they make bumpers on cars out of plastic). The battery does not wiggle. The flex you were talking about by the optical drive does exist but is hard to notice unless you really push down. I tested that part out at a local store that had an SR190 and it seemed to flex a bit more than the 290 i have. I don't know if Sony decided to fix this or its just in my head. However this slight flex to me offers no negativity to the overall build quality of the laptop.

I have heard many complaints about the SR's screen. After testing it out with many pictures, videos, and websites, I can easily say this screen is amazing. Blacks are black and whites are white. Turning on the Sr for the first time and seeing the white color it could produce just amazed me. Others have said the screen is "washed out." I have no idea what they are talking about(possible different screen manufacturer?). I have the integrated graphics so I will not be able to comment on the HDMI because mine has none.

 

I have a link in my original post in this thread under "misc." that shows the extended battery. To see the standard battery in the sr, just look at any pic of SR on sonystyle. I don't think they have extended batt. pics w/ sr, all are standard batt.

 

this is an SR with the standard 6-cell battery



This is an SR with the 9-cell battery (Thanks Duke2007)

 

thanks for the pics. don't know why i didnt see them in the first post. =o

 

Thanks for all the terrific info in this thread. After WAY too much time thinking about it, I am ready to place an order. I just need one last piece of advice... should I get the extended or regular battery? I am concerned that the extended battery would make it uncomfortable on my lap or in a conference room chair with those tiny desklets. Anyone with experience in this matter?


VGN-SR290 Configure-to-Order
Customization Details

* DVD±R DL / DVD±RW / DVD-RAM Drive
* 160 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
* MOTION EYE® Camera
* Trusted Platform Module / Biometric Fingerprint Sensor
* ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3470 with HDMI™ Output
* Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz)
* Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology
* 13.3" WXGA (XBRITE-ECO™ technology)
* Titanium Gray
* Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
* 2 GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 1GBx2)

I will upgrade the RAM myself to 4GB for $60 and upgrade the hard drive to a 320GB 7200rpm myself for $99. Both a lot cheaper than what Sony charges.

Thanks!

 

Hi I would like to know if I need to configure my SR with dedicated graphics if I would like to plug the laptop, through VGA, to a higher resolution external LCD monitor. If the integrated intel 4500mhd does this, then I would prefer this option to save money and battery. Thanks for your help.

 

the x4500MHD can do that just fine

 

For those who own the SR and play WoW what kind of framerates do you get?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295866

 

Mark, congrads on your new lap top, what did you do about the warranty, go through sony or provantage, thx

 

I don't find the extended battery uncomfortable. I just let the extended part either dangle between my legs (spread legs open) or I just let it rest on my legs (legs together).

Either way, I got used to it. No biggie. I appreciate the extra couple hours of battery life (about 2 extra hours) it gives, so no complaints. I actually need those extra hours so I really like it.

 

i just got a vaio sr12g/b

u know when switching modes eg(business, entertainment), i wanna have specific wallppr 4 each mode 2. yet when i go 2 setting and click change wallppr, the wallppr that cmes out is not stretched 2 fit the screen!

eg 4 an xtra large image, i only see a corner of the image on the screen. 4 a small image, there'll be black lines at the corner of the screen.

shouln't images be stretched 2 best fit the screen size? how do i solve this problem?

 

im thinking on getting an SR, i was wondering about the screen, is it glossy? Is the glare too much?

 

It's a glossy screen, but the glare isn't bad at all. I can sit right next to the window and see the screen without any problems. Compared to my Sony at the same lighting conditions, my Toshiba's screen practically turns into a mirror.

 

ok, thanks!

 

Hi All,

Great website, great SR Owners thread! I spent about 5 days reading most of the posts in this thread before making the plunge and buying an SR today. I bought an SR240N/B at the local Fry's Electronics for $1149.00 Sadly, the first one had a funky keyboard, with some keys producing two different characters with each key press

Fry's exchanged it for a new one and so far, all is well. What a sweet machine it is. My first notebook and I think I picked the right one! I really like the display and the keyboard (now that it works). Pretty snappy too, once all the pre-loaded software finally settles down.

P8400 CPU
3 GB ram
Motherboard Intel graphics
320 GB 5400 rpm HD
Standard battery
Night Black
Vista Business 32bit

I'll play with it for a week or so and then do a clean install of the OS using the excellent guides found here.

Ed

 

Congrats enjoy the laptop
and Welcome to NBR!

 

i m sitting on the fence right now on whether to buy or not to buy the sony sr, the last thing i m thinking about is whether i will regret the screen size and should i go bigger and get a FW or even another 15 in or so laptop from another brand

 

I just got a vaio sr12g/b with vista home pre but I lost my hidden recovery partition. I am very appriciate if anyone can help me to upload the recovery part over the internet.

I have just install the Vista ultimate, all function is working well, except I can't find some utilities for my vaio such as: Magic i visual effect, and the camera capture utility which has face detection function. Anyone can help to show me where to download these utilities (full version)?
Thank you very much in advance.

 

I am a huge flip flopper. I decided that having my 17" and then buying a smaller laptop is the only way for me to go. The only thing holding me back is I want to see video or hear details how well World of Warcraft plays on a SR or Z. I call myself a gamer but if I do game it is usually just that one so having portability take priority. My 17" Gateway doesn't like to move and is no fun on my lap.

 

Well seeing as the new SR290 series has a 256mb 3470... it will crush the 256mb Geforce 9300 on the Z... the 128mb 3470 was quite close in performance to the 9300...so the 256mb 3470 will presumably be more powerful....

 

Where does it say the SR290 has 256mb video memory? When I looked at the CTO options, it indicates 128. Hmm.

 

It's a typo.. unless the CTO verison is a cheaped out verison.. If you go look at the Pre-Configured models.. it says those have 256MB of VRAM

 

The saga continues…
I really hosed the original Vista install yesterday. I tried to install Ubuntu 8.10, and even though I know better, I let the Ubuntu disk partitioning tool re-size the Vista partition. The result, Vista would no longer boot, it wanted to run chkdsk so I let it, but then it just sat there with the streaming green progress bar running endlessly. Oh, and as expected, Ubuntu 8.10 doesn’t like the Intel onboard video chipset so that didn’t work too well either.

I tried to use the recovery partition to restore Vista, but when that was completed, all I got at bootup was a Grub error. So I then pulled out the recovery disks I had burned before attempting the Ubuntu install, but when that restore attempt completed I still couldn’t boot into Vista.

The errors I encountered could probably have been corrected by someone with a bit more knowledge than me, but I decided to bite the bullet and try a clean install from my Vista 64bit Ultimate OEM disk that I bought a few months ago for my desktop.

Fortunately, before doing any of the above, I had used ABR 1.0 (I learned about that nifty app a few days ago while cruising these forums) to grab my authentification info from the original factory Vista Business 32bit installation.

I booted the Ultimate 64bit OEM disk, chose Vista Business and installed it without entering the prod. key. After finishing the install, I used ABR to re-install the authentification info and Vista accepted it.

I used my desktop to grab all the 64bit drivers from Sony’s website and installed them without trouble. Way too much drama for a Sunday afternoon, but at least it ended on a positive note…

 

what option did you choose in the VAIO recovery program?

 

LOL, the wrong one, I think. I don't recall the exact details, but I think it was the complete restore that involves reformating the C: drive (I wanted to blow out the linux partitons created during the Ubuntu install). When it was over, the restore partition was still there.

 

That is the right option.. Did you click "SKIP" after you clicked on "Complete System Restore"?

I don't know.. your experience just sounds a lot more complicated than it should be :/
At least you got it to work after all

 

Does anyone have this one with 256MB to confirm it?

 

anyone can help me pls?

 

it's on the recovery discs

 

I'm not sure if I clicked skip or not. I am pretty sure that most of the problems were my own fault (insert forehead slap here).

Like you said though, at least I got it to work again (and got a clean install out of the experience)!

Ed

 

I looked around and found this:

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/270627/product/vgn-sr12g

hope it helps.

 

it doesn't have the Magic i visual effect..

 

I can't find the magic i visual effect and Vaio recovery center in the official support website for sr12g in S.Prime's link

 

those programs are on the recovery discs...

 

Just wanted everyone to know that the review I had mentioned on the SR290 is now up.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=324821

 

has anyone converted from 5200rpm to 7200rpm for their hd? i want to know the difference in battery life, noise, heat, vibration, and performance.

 

I swapped my stock toshiba 320gb 5400rpm hdd out for a western digital 320gb 7200rpm hdd
noise and temperature are still about the same.. there is slightly more vibration but not really noticeable
battery is still about the same for me, i'm still getting about 3 and a half hours of battery life..
the 7200rpm hdd loads vista and applications a lot faster

 

ya a 7200rpm drive is golden, I couldn't go from a 7200rpm drive in my desktop to a 5400rpm drive in a laptop,

btw I am curious, what program can I get to check the temperatures of various components such as gpu, cpus hdd etc.

 

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

 

wow, is the SR loosing steam, it 5 pages back, 11-26 since it has any info?

 

well, I barely even come to this forum any more, I'm just too busy. I'm sure others are too. After all, I got this SR for school work..and that is what i'm busy with I'm sure the same goes for many others out there for business and school work as well.

Everything is going great on my end. I just started using that battery care function under the "vaio control center" menu. It stops charging my laptop at 80%, but I like it. One thing I noticed by doing this is that there is no battery drain. I power my laptop and it stays at 80% for a good few minutes before dropping...Unlike how It would drop to 96/97 when i didn't use the battery care option.

anyway. i probably wont check this forum yet again for a week or two, so if you have questions about anything i just said, i wont get back for a while

take care SR owners

 

How works games in this laptop?

 

I can kind of join this club since I just used almost $1200 to get an SR on sale (Black Friday week sale, $300 off) from sonysyle.com for my brother. He gets the P8400 processor, 2GB ram, 160GB Hard drive, Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and the ATI Radeon 3470. It is the SR290 that is back-ordered and ships near the 16th of this month. And it is black.

 

$1200? Is that tax included? And did you use a study discount?

 

That sounds a bit too expensive for the spec you got

 

Seems good since no where else do yo get this small laptop with such nice features

No student discount. Price for CTO SR290 on sonystyle.com is $994.99 ($200 Black Friday discount). Add P8400 and 3470 graphics card as only upgrades equals $1194.99-$100 (Black Friday extra discount)= $1094.99. Add 65.73 tax (free shipping) and get final price.

 

I know what the SR has

I think there was a coupon for 200$ off (you can combine discounts)

Last week, there was this one guy on here got an SR with almost the same spec as yours for 800$ (he had the student discount + the 200$ off coupon)

Well $1200 is still a pretty good deal for a 13.3" Sony

 

Would have gotten it for $100 less, but didn't jump on the offer until after the coupon code expired yesterday. And I'm not a student in college yet, only 12th grade. I will get some discounts when I buy my Calpella laptop in 2010.

 

Wow you are a nice brother!... lol
I remember how my brother used to curse at me when I tried to touch his laptop...