Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Is it possible to combine BCB with ordering online at a Best Buy store (for shipment to store)?

 

It was about the crappiest packing job possible, the laptop box was chucked in a bag with zero padding, just the bare box wrapped in the baggy. Not only was that bad, but the laptop itself is wrapped in a thin sleeve of foam material (a few mm thick) and that is loosely fitted in the Sony cardboard box (hence Sony's packing job suck IMO). My last Compaq at least had foam inserts to hold the laptop securely so it did not move around. When I picked the package up you could feel the laptop inside shift around a bit....not good and BestBuy's packaging just adds insult to injury.

Laptop seems to be working fine though. I'm in the process of adding antivirus and will decrapify before running benchmarks.

 

Ship to store was not an option when I ordered it last week.

 

Yes. It can handle Mass Effect 2. As far as how high you can crank the details, I don't know.

 

Can anyone tell me the state where the laptop was Bestbuy was mailed from? I ordered one and I'd rather be home to receive it on the day it is expected to arrive.

 

^ Ohio
@Znutar : Didnt you get air bags in the BB packing?

 

For the most part, right now it is a ship only product. It isn't available in store, at least not yet. But BCB works with instore pick up.

 

I did not get airbags in my Best Buy delivery. The Sony box was in a large vinyl UPS bag. You got a padded box from BB online?

 

Sony box in a bag, zero padding from BB online

 

I live in CA and ordered from BB online on Friday. It shipped Mon. (yesterday) from FRESNO, CA and is due to arrive at my house today. If I had known it would ship from Fresno, I probably wouldn't have paid extra for expedited shipping. I'm a little freaked out about the potential plastic/vinyl bag packaging; I'll let you know how mine arrives. Maybe the packaging depends on the distribution center used?

 

Post #275 indicates you can pick it up in the store if you actually place an order in the store. I don't know how this works though since I've never done it, so I don't know if BCB is possible.

 

Please do let us know how it was shipped, and if in a bag if it still okay. I still haven't opened mine because I have vinyl bag trauma. Thanks!

 

You made me laugh because I have vinyl bag trauma and haven't even received mine yet!

 

Glad you're laughing, I'm still huddled in the fetal position and shaking like a baby! Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit... For what it's worth, I couldn't get a clear answer from BB other than saying bring it to the store if there's a problem so I gave Sony chat a shot and here's what the rep said:

"Sony box has enough protection for every product inside of it. Rest assured that your item is safe and perfectly secured. However, if anything happens within the delivery or should you find the item damaged when you received it. you can return the item and have it replaced."

I guess it helps a little hearing them say the box has enough protection, but it doesn't make the delivery any less lame. Keep us posted on your delivery later!

 

Can you comment on the contrast and viewing angles of the screen? I'm getting reports that it's crisp (but what LCD/LED ISN'T crisp...). I have one on order and this would be a complete deal breaker if it's not up to par. Unfortunately the only CW in BB that I could play around with was the 14.1" was the 1366x768 panel. That panel was unacceptable for me.

 

It's nervous laughter. I don't usually spend this much on anything so to hear it's possibly being shipped in a bag is not helping my uneasiness. At any rate, it is good to know that Sony will replace it. Just fyi - I ordered a CTO from Sony last week (while they were on sale and I didn't know about the BB one) it arrived in the Vaio box inside a larger box with air filled plastic loosely wrapped around it. I haven't opened it yet because it looks like I'll be getting an RMA for it and sending in on back. The Vaio box is so nice I don't even want to imagine it getting dented. I anxiously await the UPS van...

 

Thanks. I live near Sacramento and mine shipped today so hopefully I'll be receiving it tomorrow. Woohoo because I already have tomorrow off from work so I don't need to take an additional day off. With the storm we've been having, I was afraid that the notebook might get soaked if left outside by UPS.

I'll post pics tomorrow when I receive it (assuming it arrives tomorrow).

 

forgot to mention that I got the plastic bag treatment AND paid for expedited shipping. Maybe they wanted to get it to me so fast they didn't want to waste time packaging it properly.

We should take a poll and see what kind of packaging we got with a particular shipping method. My informal look indicates that expedited = baggy and standard = box/packing material

 

Haven't played with any settings yet, just using standard OOB settings and Sony's rather washed out background in my unlit office in Seattle.

That being said the screen looks really nice to me with no bad pixels (despite the crap shipping) and even lighting across the panel. Off angle viewing seems pretty good compared to my work Dell (matte screen) with the standard limitations of LCDs that when you get to extreme angles the color gets washed out and you lose contrast.

With the office lights on you definitely get some glare, but it is not ridiculous levels of glare for a glossy panel.

That being said, while running PC decrapifier (and there is a lot of Sony software that I am unsure about on this machine, but not a lot of other extraneous programs installed beyond that compared to some other vendors)...does anyone know what oasis2service 1.0 is? Google has been no help.

Die Norton Security Die!!!!

 

So I finally got around to testing the blu ray drive on my new Sony Vaio.

First of all battery life is pretty bad. With full screen (nothing else running), I barely managed to get through the new Bruce Willis (the suggorate) blu ray new movie today. That's a 90 minute movie and I was down to 10% by the end of the movie. Maybe blu ray consumes more power?

But that's not really bothering me.

What concerns me is that I am hearing excessive noise from the optical drive. It sounds like the optical drive is struggling to run the movie (even though the movie playback is perfect). I can hear it go "roo, roo" every 2 seconds.

But with regular DVD playback, I hear little bit of noise, but not as bad as the blu ray playback.

With playing CD music, I don't hear any noise.

Installing programs off the optical drive, I just hear regular optical drive noise.

So does blu ray playback cause excessive noise?

Can some people chime in for me? I am going to keep this laptop but I want to know if it's just the blu ray or just normal for this kind of noise?

 

Does your CW have the 1366 x 768 or the 1600 x 900 screen resolution ?

 

What is the model of the blu-ray drive? Perhaps you can find an updated firmware for the drive?

 

His is hte 1600x900 I believe. He mentioned that he had the icy white/330m/i5 520 so it has to be that resolution.

Good stuff.

 

Sorry to hear so many of you got crappy packaging on your shipments. Like some others my shipment was in a large cardboard box filled with air filled plastic baggies so the actual sony laptop box was snuggled securely in the middle.

 

Bad news gang. I can't run 3DMark Vantage as the minimum spec requires a 1024 wide resolution...I'll try and run 3DMark 2006, but I don't have a license for it so I'm not sure how accurate the info will be.

 

For those of you who have gotten the laptop already, would any one of you mind measuring the dimensions of the Sony box and getting back to me? Your response would be greatly appreciated.

 

Just received my CW. It was in a very large plastic/vinyl bag sort-of wrapped around itself and half ripped open. The Vaio box inside has two slight dents but looks ok. The UPS driver was surprised at the packaging when I told her it was a laptop.

So: Shipped from Fresno, CA to CA location. Expedited shipping. Plastic Bag.

 

3d mark 06 with the 330m is 6150ish. Pretty respectable. i couldn't get orb to give me a liscense for vantage though.


Just did a rundown test with battery eater pro 2 in classic mode and came up with 1:54 That's supposed to keep the cpu and GPU loaded.

 

me 2 plz i have been asking but no one replied

 

approximate dimensions are 19" (48 cm) x 12.5" (32 cm) x 4" (9 cm)

 

Thank you so much for this! ^_^

 

Get the free one of 3dmark06.

The thing is "official" 3dmark06 scores are generally at 1280x1024. Tests that are performed at lower resolutions usually will be mentioned.

My express shipping is on it's way! Good stuff. No turning back now .

 

Exactly the same thing here. Have you opened it? Initial thoughts, likes, dislikes, reports?

 

I haven't opened it yet and I have to leave for a while. But I will post more of my thoughts of what I've received once I can spend some time on it.

Also, to the people who asked for box dimensions, as I said earlier, I ordered from BB and from Sonystyle and they came in different packaging. Even the Vaio box from Sony seems different than the BB model. I will measure the boxes and packaging for you when I get back later.

 

Leave?! Why are you leaving when you can be home obsessing?! Glad to hear it got there safe, even if only in vinyl, hope you enjoy it. By the way, I agree this Best Buy box seems different, it doesn't have the plastic handle protruding from the top.

 

Can you guys try running the SFIV benchmark on the Sony CW27FX and tell me if what grade you get?

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Street-Fighter-IV-Benchmark-download-2310.html

Run it at 1600x900 resolution.

 

HELP!

mine is due to arrive tomorrow and now i am panicking that the 1600x900 resolution is too high for a 14" screen, as i have read a lot of posts today that are saying that. They also say you can lower the res, but you might get a black bar, then others are saying you won't get a black bar if you check the box that says "stretch to fit" but that worries me as well.

Adjusting the DPI isn't really an option for me, as i've done that in the past and wasn't satisfied with some of the looks of certain pages.

Anyone that has just gotten one with the 1600x900 resolution, could you please comment if your resolution on 14in screen looks "too tiny".

(If anyone doesn't know where to find it, you just go right click on desktop/personalise/then display settings- the current resolution will show up under the ruler.

Please someone check it out and let me know, i'm not willing to pay 135.00 restocking fee if i take this out of the box and everything is teeny tiney!

Thank you tons! (i won't pleep tonite till i know what most of y'all think!)

[/COLOR]

 

Ran 3Dmark06 (pro version) on the system after all Win7 updates were installed and after a mild de-crapifiying (norton, quickbooks, and few other things, but kept all the Sony and Arcsoft stuff for now). It was a fresh reboot and I ran it at native resolution (1600x900) with antialiasing off, filtering set to optimal, and all 7 feature tests were run but I skipped the batch size tests:

5277 3D marks, CPU score of 2750.

Vaio model VPCCW26FX, 4 GB RAM, Win7 Home premium, 5400rpm 500GB HD, Core i5-520m (2.4 GHz), GeForce GT330M

For comparison, last night I ran 3DMark06 on my desktop: Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit, 2 GB RAM, 7200rpm 320GB HD, Nvidia 9600GT with mild overclock and Dual Core E5200 (2.5 GHz) and that got a score of 9106 3D Marks.

 

you can adjust font and icon size to suit your needs in Win7. I run it native with small icons/fonts and it looks great to me.

 

thanks, came browsing the sony forums for exactly this info on the 3DMark06 benchmarks

 

I gleaned much info from this forum prior to my purchase of this machine and am happy to help. DLing the SFIV benchmark right now as that was request by another member and I figured I would oblige...

 

Mine is 14", but still got me worried

 

i found this link for those of you who might be wondering with side by side coparison images- i couldn't tell but y'all might...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=370180

 

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, I have no idea what this means. Can you give a poor noob a layman's explanation? Is this a good score? Thanks!

 

Do the glossy surfaces get a lot of light surface scratches/scuff marks easily (like the old white iPods)?

 

its pretty darn good for a notebook. You would be able to play many current games at moderate to low settings and even be able to run Crysis...though with a lot of eye candy turned off. When my desktop had a lesser video card and processor (8600GTS and Dual Core @ 1.8GHz) it had about the same 3DMark 06 score as the Sony and I was able to play Crysis pretty well at low-mid settings...the only thing that kicked its butt was the outdoor ice level where I had to turn off volumetric fog completely. Mass Effect ran great so I think this machine for the price really can't be beat.

 

probably since its plastic and not metal...but then again what would you expect considering the material it is made of. I would recommend not storing it with kitchen utensils...

 

Actually, some laptops (which also have glossy plastic exteriors) do not scratch/scuff easily (coating?)

 

I honestly wouldn't know as I've always been pretty gentle with hardware and have never scratched a notebook. Among my Dell and work and the 4 laptops and 1 netbook (which the 5 year old uses a lot) at home I've never really dinged up a laptop (knock on skull). I'll let you know if anything happens as the icy white is sure purty...

 

LOL anyone who thinks 1600x900 is too high of a resolution for a 14' screen needs glasses.

For those that are worried it is just fine, nothing is too small, plus the 1600x900 panel is a much better quality than the lower res panel.