Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

If you're buying from JR.com, you won't be able to get the productivity/mobility bundle. It's EITHER the $100 rebate or the bundle.

For me, the bundle was too good to pass up and the $1282 of the JR model (after cashback, no rebate) is too much of a premium over a T6670, 2gb SR490PBB model from cdw. Or you can get the JR model down to $1181 BUT you'll lose the bundles (been thinking about this for the entire last week).

NM: in the process of checking out and they charge sales tax even in WA. .

 

The $100 rebate only asks for a copy of the UPC. I don't see how both wouldn't work.

 

Yeah the SR430 is not among the elgible models for the Trade Up promotion. It's not in the pulldown menu and I contacted Sony and they said that the list of elgible models is current. I have an old Dell that I want to trade in and it qualifies for $300. Plus P1 has the SR490JBB listed for $1100 or so.

The promotion ends in September so I guess I'll wait and see if the SR430 makes it into the Trade Up list or hopefully P1 gets some SR490s in stock before then.

I'm tempted to buy the SR420 from ABT.com which qualifies for the Trade Up promotion in addition to the $100 rebate. An SR model for $850 after all said and done. Of course I have to settle for the T6500/800Mhz bus/2MB L2/etc.

Any comments? I don't game but I'd rather have the cooler running chipset.

 

Read closely: Serial Number required, COPY of invoice, COPY of UPC. AFAIK the Serial Number is part of the UPC label, but if anyone can clear this up it would be much appreciated. The bundle rebate requires original everything - Serial + UPC, so the box would have to have 2 Serials to work.

Again, any help be appreciated.... been spending a week finding deals and keep getting discouraged.

This is the Bundle rebate:
Submission must include serial number and copies of dated purchase receipt/invoice and original eligible product UPC code, and must be mailed to provided address.

This is for the $100 rebate:
Serial number, copy of dated purchase receipt, and copy of eligible product UPC code are required.

 

http://www.jr.com/media/Rebates/Com...books/SON4_20090930_v1_m56577569833523680.pdf

Check out the rebate form from J&R. They aren't asking you to send something in for the serial number, they just want to know what your serial number is. There is a space to fill in your serial number on the form. They specifically say "Enclose" for the copy of the reciept and the copy of the UPC, but not for the serial number.

 

Thanks for the catch! This SR has been more trouble than buying 2 cars.

But buyers should still be wary: I called the rebate center previously and the person I spoke to said "original UPC required". Knowing rebate companies, I'm sure they'll have something up their arse to prevent you from getting the rebate back. Sigh... what to do (don't know if having copies of the rebate materials will help a case at all).

 

Well, I would make sure to send the original for the bundle because it's worth more than the $100 rebate.

 

I ordered the VGN-SR430J/B from J&R last week and it's coming on Wednesday. I guess I'll find out what happens with the rebates in a couple of weeks.

 

Well if they reject it we can be bro in arms

 

Just send in all the required documents & you should be good for the rebate. Good luck.

 

The heat difference between the two CPUs is theoretical. In reality the difference will be minimal. With the use of undervolting there won't be any difference.

If you're into gaming it would make sense. ATI 4570 is twice as powerful as Nvidia 9300.

 

Is the productivity/mobility rebate available in Australia?

 

Looks like new VAIO SR490 supports audio over HDMI! Yay

 

not to mention slightly loewr than the ones in canada..

 

Noman, I moved your question to "What Notebook Should I buy":
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=401047

 

my post meant that i did my selection & just need a confirmation of forum's users!

 

Okidoki Can someone give Noman confirmation that Sr490 is good?

 

Is this confirmed? If yes, it is really great news.

 

90% true. Since I haven't got my VAIO SR490, I can't confirm it.

I was going through eSupport's page and I saw "Realtek® High Definition for ATI™ HDMI™ Audio Driver" on audio section... It made me to search for more info and I downloaded the VAIO SR manual. On manual it says both video and audio over HDMI is possible. Even Dolby Digital, DTS...

Here's the manual:
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/VGNSR400_series.pdf
Pages: 99 (line 2); 194 (how to change output)

 

Cool. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

 

The SR290 with ati video card does support audio over hdmi, so I imagine the SR490 would as well. You just have to choose it as your default audio device in the windows control panel.

 

The J&R give you $100 mail in rebate.

Sonystyle give you $100 instant rebate.

PCNation you get to choose extra battery and other things for the rebate.

Why are they all different and which offer is better?

 

the rebate is available from all of those retailers. HOWEVER, from what i've been reading, you can only have ONE of the rebates. value-wise, the mobility/productivity bundle (extra battery, ac adapter, etc) should be worth more than the 100 dollars.

 

The $100 rebate asks for copies of the receipt and UPC while the bundle offer asks for the original UPC. I don't see any reason why you couldn't capitalize on both.

 

Thanks for these settings. What OS are you running? I have Windows 7 x64 RC1 and when I try to DL the latest drivers from ATI/AMD the installer completes but none of the drivers get updated. I'm using the driver from 4.24.2009 and even if I try uninstalling and manually updating the drivers, it's a no-go. Any tricks on how to bypass it (if you're running W7)?

 

Wondering if anybody knows.

 

I could be wrong but as far as I know, the Productivity/Mobility rebate is only for the U.S. market. I'm really sorry to tell you that.

 

Well, finally got tired of waiting for the Asus U80V and decided to bite the big one and buy this puppy. Got the SR430I from jr.com. $100 rebate and 5% cash back from using bing, but no bundle. Can't freakin wait to get this laptop!

 

Well what do you know. Seems like I don't have to wait for the (silver) SR41 as long as I thought. It's getting shipped today, although not sure if that means from the retailer store, or from Sony to the retailer, but anyway. I'm feeling kind of giddy so I'm going to draft out a to-do list:

1. Recharge it fully
2. Make recovery disks
3. Remove useless software
4. Unplug and let the battery drain completely
5. Recharge again
6. Start figuring out how to get the free Windows 7 upgrade
7. Unplug and let the battery drain completely
8. Recharge the battery
9. Install Windows 7

+ Optional bonus point in parts 1-9: Curse because something went wrong

 

This problem is easily solved by Mobility Modder. http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php The instructions are at the bottom of the page.

This program worked perfectly for me on SR190 ATI 3470 Windows 7 x64 and Vista x64.

 

By the way, do the Vaios take Ati's (or any third party group's) mobility Radeon drivers directly or do you have to use some sort of Sony drivers for it (unless you use the desktop drivers, that is)? I've used an Asus laptop before which wouldn't install any sort of official Catalyst packages but instead needed Asus's own Catalysts.

 

Doesn't support 4570 yet.

 

No. Mine doesn't. Full explanation is at this page http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php.

 

Sorry about that... But I think you should try anyway.

 

Yeah, just finished reading that. A shame, really. It wouldn't be that much of a problem if the laptop makers just updated their drivers at the same pace as Ati does but we all know that isn't the case.

 

Congrats on buying a new SR! Now - as for your list, if you're installing windows 7 why would you spend time removing useless software when you're just going to end up formatting the computer for windows 7 anyway? As soon as I got my computer I put in the W7 DVD and said good-bye to Vista and all the bloatware. I kept the recovery partition intact if I ever need to revert back. Total time was about 40 minutes from formatting to installing to the W7 desktop. Well worth the fresh install, in my opinion!

 

Great advice - thank you. The ATI MR4xxx series isn't supported yet, but they say "soon" in the discussion forums. It's not a big deal having the OEM driver, but it would be cool to be able to install the catalyst control center to tinker around with the color saturation settings.

 

I kind of figured I'd first like to properly break in the battery and I'll have time to tinker with Vista while I'm doing it (mainly just want to test how a couple of games run). And do all the recovery disks etc. Yeah, I know it's kind of useless to start uninstalling the Sony stuff separately but yeah, we'll see.

Edit.

Oh, by the way. How's Win7 working out for you? Any performance issues or severe bugs?

 

for step 1, does that mean before you do anything you charge it to the max?

Also do laptop batteries still need to be "trained" like that? I thought you are just supposed to keep using it, charge it fully whenver you like, just never let the battery completely drain.

Can anyone else give any input on this long debated issue?


Thanks!

 

Refer to my guide, http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=401402, to install the latest ATI drivers to your ATI 4570.

 

I'm planning on using the computer as I charge it, sure. And I've heard from a few that modern batteries don't need that break-in period but I'm going to play it safe anyway. Especially since someone who did a thorough break-in for the battery didn't experience the annoying battery leakage problem at all, which sound to me like that might very well be the thing why peoples' batteries fail them with these laptops (and other manufacturers' too).

 

So I just ordered a SR490 CTO and I was wondering about the VT issues I was reading about in other threads. I want to know if this laptop will have the problem and does the method linked in the other thread for the vaio Z patching work to fix it if it exist?

 

I heard this notebook has a bad screen (the sr490). Is that true? Also does it have any heat issues?

 

I just got the VGN-SR420J/B today and installed a fresh windows XP with necessary drivers from sony support. Only have 25 processes running and battery life still sucks!

Brightness on 5, CPU on battery save, Fan on quiet, ILINK port disabled.

2:30 battery life? are you kidding me? This is getting returned tomorrow.

 

Yeah, that sounds wrong. That's pretty much what that one test got in a relatively heavy load (meaning playing a DVD etc.).

 

No and no.

 

maybe info meter is incorrect or something but my vaio laptop from 4 years ago with similar specs at the time got 4 hours of battery

 

battery meter is for sure wrong. Been at 2:30min for the past 30 min

 

Hey guys, I have two questions. Is it possible that you can take advantage of both the j&r rebate offer (including the bing cash back) and the bundle offer? And the other question is, does VGN-SR430J/H qualify for the free windows 7 upgrade?

 

We wuis discussing this earlier:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=272669&page=241

Answer is... SHOULD BE.