Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

I returned the F in favor of the CW. The F was big. I also personally had trouble with the offset trackpad and selectors. I was always clicking the wrong button. The continuous fan noise really bother me though. It was racing but I don't see why I should hear anything when idling and reading a web page. I rarely hear my Macbook Pro fan. I didn't notice any flex. The high pitched noise is not "fixed", but can be corrected until Sony provides a permanent fix. I have done little with the CW except plug it in, but I suspect it's a keeper for me.

Also, my local Best Buy had the white system, which has the lower res screen. You don't want to judge the mail order BB unit most here are purchasing with the white one. Some things will be the same, keyboard, LCD viewing angles, etc.

 

Thanks.

Anymore experiences welcome...

 

Hi I am new . I am looking at buying a Sony Vaio CW later today. the only thinking keeping me from the best buy one is that I really wanted a pink one but seeing I am ot a very patient person I may order the best buy one since I can get it sooner ( just cry a bit about it not being pink LOL)

I need a loptop that can open many windows at one time as I usually have 8 or 9 pages open at one time with Graphics running at times.Not playing games but the pages I go to do a lot of graphics.

if I did decide to order on the Sonysite can anyone tell me the difference between that one and the one on bestbuy? I was looking at the VPCCW290X on the sony site and upgrading the hard drive and processor.Would I be better off just doing the best buy one? Also which one on best buy is the best if I do get it from there? Can someone link me? tyvm

 

The Best Buy deal is hard to beat.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+VAIO+Laptop+with+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i5+Processor+-+Jet+Black/9723951.p?id=1218159867078&skuId=9723951

You can go to the Sony site and configure one the same way and you will see a significant price difference. If you can live without the extras from the Sony configurator, the BB is the one (at the moment).

 

Hi guys I have been reading this thread with much envy. I stumbled across the CW refresh in the new Argos catalogue here in the UK. Here is the machine I am tempted by:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produ...at_15701344|Laptops+and+Netbooks|16164797.htm

My worry is that when I go to Sonystyle UK the default graphics option is the 310 not the 330:
https://www.sonystyle.co.uk/SonyStyle/VAIO-Laptop-PCs/CW-Series-14/

To get the 330 you have to up the screen rez. I am worried that the Argos machine is misdescribed. They have a Samsung R580 that has been listed as having a 330m but has been confirmed as 310. Has anyone got any idas of the standard prebuilt uk model? The sonystyle pre built specs are empty!!!
Its moot at the moment as I cant find any in stock at local Argos stores.

 

I think I cracked it, the model nr is VPCCW2S1E/L.CEK. I googled this and found some other retailers selling the same one and its listed as 330m on all of them. Play.com has it for £649, and I think I can get a 5% voucher code to bring that down to £615 or so. Only problem is they say release date 15/02. Has anyone in UK managed to get one of the new CWs?

 

I've ordered the CTO from sonystyle uk - configs in the sig, waiting for delivery, its scheduled to be shipped from Japan(apparently) on 01/02 to the Netherlands and I'll have a tracking ID soon after.

 

My F series stock is 575/790/1265. I have oc'd to 675/900/1500 and my high temp right now is 68, so things are looking good here.

 

does anybody know how to replace the hard disk on a cw 27? is it even possible?

 

After using the CW i5 with the blu-ray drvie and with the 1600 x 900 resolution screen for a few days, this laptop is huge disappointed to me and my wife in the following areas:
1. Blu-ray drive
2. Screen

The bluray drive makes too much noise when listen to a cd, watching a dvd, and when watching blu-ray movies the drive makes a grinding sound.

The screen has its own issues as well. It has uneven LED backlight that makes the bottom part of the screen more gray than black. It also has terrible viewing angles that I had to adjust the angle on the screen many times and couldn't find the perfect viewing angle. My wife and I notice individual pixels on the screen as well and being too grainy. Her MacBook Pro with the 13.3 inch screen that she bought a couple of months ago has a better screen than this Sony screen.

This morning I called Best Buy to arrange a return on this laptop because of the defective screen and blu-ray drive. They are going to pay for the return shipping and they waived the restocking fee.

 

I just purchased a CW i5 from Best Buy for my wife. I agree that the viewing angle on the screen is horrible.

Anyways, I am doing a clean install of Windows 7 and downloaded all the drivers from Sony's website.
However, I am having difficulties installing this specific motherboard driver:

Intel® PCHM SATA AHCI Controller 6 Port Driver, v8.9.4.1004.
https://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCCW27FX&upd_id=5358&os_id=45

Every time I run the program, it states that the program file is corrupted. I've re-downloaded that file 10 times already. I'm guessing the file is corrupt at Sony's end.

Can somebody please verify if the they can get the file above working?

Thanks!

 

Has anyone fiddled with the nVidia control panel? I adjusted contrast and gamma to my liking (really makes the display far better than out of the box). I hit the apply button, but upon reboot, it reverts back to "automatic" vs nVidia control. Any ideas?

 

Thanks, You are the first person with the new CW (other than me I think) who has complained about the loud/noisy blu ray drive on this laptop. Yes I got the same identical "grinding sound" coming from the blu ray. Although my loud blu ray noise only came from playing back blu ray movies. I never experienced loud optical drive noise when playing back DVD movies or my regular CD's.

I ended up returning it at the Best Buy store (it's much easier that way) plus I had them ship me another sony cw laptop to the store (will receive it next Thursday). If the blu ray noise is replicated again with my new CW laptop, than I'll just live with the blu ray noise.

However, your problem seems a little different than mine. You had a loud optical drive noise with DVD/CD AND blu ray? Mine was only with blu ray.

 

I remember someone else saying the same thing about the SATA controller. If you're doing a clean install on the i5 machine, could you please leave a list of drivers and the sequence you install them in. I am a bit of a novice and from other replies in the forum it looks like they are to be installed in a certain sequence to keep your function keys etc.. working..

 

ordered my cs27 form best buy all in all it cost me 1057 dollars guess still cheep compared to other online stores right?
and i check with sony own online store they have the cw 29 does anybody know whats the difference between the two? aside from the price on sony owns store cw 29 with same build as cw 27 from best buy cost 1160 dollars w/out shipping compered to best buy cw 27 949.99 dollars w/out shipping can anybody answer this does anybody ordered from sony?

 

Open Vaio Control Center
Go to Display/Color mode setting
Select "select from following color mode" and "do not apply color mode"

 

sure thing... I'll do just that once I'm sure everything is working properly.

In the meantime, I've used the recovery disc to bring the computer back. I've also emailed Sony support to see if they could check the integrity of that file.

I've also searched through Intel's website and could not find that specific driver version.

 

I am currently on an Acer with an ATI 3650 gfx. I have looked at some of the benchmarks for the GT 330m and it looks to score nearly twice as much in 3dmark 06. Has anyone on here got any experience with games on the CW? I saw some notes about SFIV but I am thinking Assasins Creed or Total War games

 

As other's have commented. The Best Buy sony vaio deal is the best one out there. Maybe Bestbuy.com has a special pricing with Sony? Maybe it ends Jan 30th? Who knows? But if you are in market for Sony Vaio CW, I would go for the $900 CW without blu ray or the $950 CW with blu ray. It's a no brainer.

 

Am I the only one who ordered the royal indigo color?

 

Thanks very much!!

 

so i replaced the 5400 with a 7200rpm drive and the evaluation score is still 5.9

Oh and i could not get the fn key to work too after fresh install

 

@pangetpanget
how did you replaced the hdd? coz i look at it in youtube and its freeking hard you have to screw and detach a lot of things does all vaio has the same way to replace it?

 

One guy posed that when ripping a movie on battery it was at 1.3 Ghz.

Can anyone else take a look - run something intensive while on battery and see if the CPU does not go above 1.2 - 1.3 Ghz. Thanks.

 

@aneftp just a thought maybe best buy cw is cheeper coz its different form the sony store which is cw 29 and from best buy is cw 27 hope some one ordered from sony and post a review so that we can know whats the difference

 

its very simple.

2 screws on the black cover.

another 2 black screws on the inside.

then use your screw driver and push the metal part of the hard drive caddy from left to right. kinda like prying it to the right. just do it evenly.

the hard drive assy has to slide to the right side so be careful.

once its slides you can just tilt the computer so you can let the hd drop out of the system.

 

does anybody know if theirs a compatibility issue with an intel x25-m 160gig ssd and the cw27? i was thinking cw27 with an intel x25 would be a nice notebook, it would be more faster more cooler and more battery life and with windows 7 trim it would be a power house

 

No, I ordered the indigo. I'd take anything over black, and from bestbuy, that means indigo. Got shipping confirmation today, yay . Can't wait. Going from an EEE 1000HA, this will be a great upgrade. Bigger and heavier, yeah, but I think it will be well worth it.

 

I checked my bing account this morning and still nothing...

I hope it worked...

 

does any one know how to get the cashback from bing?!?!?!
when im performing the "sony vaio" search i do no receive any link for bb.
and i do not have adblck prog installed as well.

any suggestions?

please help.
thank you.

 

After a few months of driving myself crazy comparing laptops to replace my dead HP Pavillion DV2000, I decided to pull the trigger and order the VPCCW27FX/L from Best Buy. Part of this decision was made based on the helpful information found on this forum. It is a big decision for me as I would have to live with the new Lappy for several years. That is unless I bought another HP, then I would have to replace it sooner! HA HA! Anyway, I feel as most of you do that this is a great deal for the price. I am not as knowlegable as many of you in regards to Windows experiance scores, and overclocking. I used the information that I found here to compare those specs. I knew I wanted the i5 520 or 540 processor, 4GB DDR3, 500 GB hard drive, Blu-Ray and a 14" or less form factor. The only sacrifice was it did not have a backlit keyboard. I wanted to share my experiance so far. It arrived in a plastic bag. I selected standard shipping. Received it very quickly. Shipped from Fresno and I live in San Diego. The box the laptop was in was a little banged up but the computer was fine. After a couple days I can tell you that it seems to be a very nice machine. I played 2 Blu-Ray movies on it. One on the Laptop screen and one through the HDMI to my 52" LCD. It ran VERY COOL incomparrison to my HP which would burn my lap. A little heat but nothing major. The Blu-Ray drive made a little noise but I would not consider it excessive. I really like the keyboard. Never had one this style before but I really like the feel of it. I like the upgraded 1600X900 screen much better than the standard screen on the CW's in Best Buy B&M locations. I may not have the same expectations as some of you. I am usually sitting in front of my laptop when using it. I find it very difficult to type and stuff when I sit along side of it or hang from the ceiling. Sorry I got a little carried away. But there are a few things I do not like which combined may cause me to return it. First and least important is the color. In case you did not know, Indigo Blue looks like "Purple". I thought i would get something other than black but was expecting "Blue". Second would be the Battery Life. Sony's website advertises 4 hours with the standard battery and 6 hours with the extended battery. I was looking at a Mac Book Pro with a 7 hour battery life but had decided that I could live with 4. After fully charging the battery to test it I ran it down in 2:30 by just surfing the web and streaming some video from Apple's website. This was VERY disappointing. Now I know I can spend $250 for an extended battery that they advertise as 6 hours. If I use the same math it will actually last me 4. If I add the $250 plus shipping to the price of the laptop it is not as good of a deal. And last but not least is the sound volume. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this a negative 5 (-5). It is by far the worst of any laptop I have had. I am not even nitpicking in regards to "Not enough base" or "Too tinny sounding". Full volume is about 30-40% on my old laptop. So I tried headphones and it was not any better. I could barely hear with the volume settings turned all the way up! So I have to decide wether to keep it or send it back. I know there is probably no perfect laptop for me but I am not sure if the Pro's outweigh the Con's. Please do not beat me up as this is my first post and I am only giving my honest opinion. I am sure others may feel different!

 

Your experience is similar to mine though I've not given the battery a workout yet but was not encouraged when I was on battery and it reported 3hr 10min on a 100% charge, but then again battery life is not my key concern as I use a netbook when I need serious battery life and don't really use the Sony except in desktop replacement/secondary computer mode and when travelling use my work Dell which gets about 8 hours.

As for the speakers...yeah, they pretty much suck. In fact, my 5 year old Compaq has vastly better Altec Lansing speakers, the Sony's seem even worse than my Asus netbook...they are pretty pathetic especially for an entertainment style notebook. That being said, I rarely use my speakers and with earbuds (I was using the ones from my iPhone) everything seemed fine on the Sony so I'm surprised you are having problems.

One thing I did notice was that when I used my Kyocera bluetooth headphones, the sound quality was abysmal on them with the Sony (think tin can and string but in stereo). They sound great with my iPhone so I'm guessing it must be something with the A2DP implementation on the Sony so hopefully this can be fixed in software. I have a set of Samsung BT headphones coming in the mail and will see if these are any better.

 

Thank you for the in-depth review, well done! I feel almost exactly the same as you about this machine. The things that concern me are the blu ray noise, sound and screen, but it's good to hear you like the screen compared to some. So you didn't fine the BR player noise too distracting? I'm very surprised to hear the sound is that bad with headphones. Would better headphones make a difference? If not this seems to almost defeat the purpose of a blu ray player to some extent, wouldn't it? Please keep your observations coming.

 

Just to clarify on the sound issues:

cdango and Znutar = speakers suck

cdango = headphones suck

Znutar = headphones great (with iPhone earbuds)

Znutar = Kyocera bluetooth headphones over A2DP = atrocious

Znutar will test Samsung bluetooth earbuds when he gets them

 

I am reading on "Bing"

According to my bestbuy status it is still processing....Maybe that is why?
I hope it shows "shipped" by the end of the night! I would like to have it in my hands Wednesday at the latest as I did pay for expedited.

 

I just made a TV purchase via Bing from Sears and it took 3-4 days for the email to come in and for it to show up in my Bing account

 

For those complaining of the screen you must have either something wrong with yours or some very high standards. I think the screen is beautiful and not grainy at all. Sure the vertical angle isnt great but like some others asked: Who the hell uses their laptop above or below them????? I sit in front of mine like a normal person would and the viewing angle is fine. The horizontal is more than adequate.

Anyways to each his own. Im a software developer and I sit in front of a screen all day and the screen on this Sony is better than my dual panels at work.

 

cknobman - I'm looking for a laptop to do some .NET and database development; run SQL Server and Oracle. Do you think the CW would being able to handle it? Thanks.

 

Oh gosh! Coding for hours on a 1600x900 14' inch screen and you are still finding it beautiful!
I think we should be really impressed with the screen, atleast people like me who are still waiting to receive their laptops. (I dont want to challenge those who have problems with the screen, they must have their own legitimate reasons)

EDIT: I'm sorry, I just realized you no where said you do all your work on this laptop, you were only comparing it with the dual LCDs on which you work all day.

 

That battery life kind of bad. Actually, I wonder if something may be wrong because with the smaller, lower processor I would gather that maybe 3+ hours could be reached on battery.

Have you tried any of the power saving settings to see if you can raise the time?

And as far as the headphone volume, what are headphones did you test with?

Too bad about the arrival in the bag. That's just ridiculous. I'm still on the fence between this CW27 and a Lenovo Y550P.

PS - Can someone who has the CW27 kindly post the dimensions of the machine? I believe it may be in the documentation or on the box somewhere. Thanks!

 

I remember reading one of the post in this thread where someone posted the dimensions. Maybe you can skim through the thread and try to find that post.

 

There you go: Its on post #480.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lilsanwan View Post
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.

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

 

those were the box dimensions I posted earlier...good job digging them up again

 

Thanks, but I believe that is the dimensions of the box the notebook arrived in (not the actual notebook). I may be wrong, but a 4 inch thickness for a laptop does seem unheard of.

 

the dimensions of the laptop are right on BB's website:

13.4" x 9.2" x 1.5" (at its thickest in the back, more like 1.1" in the front)

 

By the time I could talk to my DH he had already ordered me a laptop off Sonystyle I am very excited and hope it is a good laptop I think it will do everything I need it to do.

Here is what he ordered

Model Number: US-VPCCW290X-LBOM
Norton Internet Security™ 2010
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
CD/DVD burner
Brilliant Pink {VAIO Signature Collection}
Standard Capacity Battery (VGP-BPS13)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
500GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
Intel® Core™ i5-540M processor (2.53GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
Microsoft® Works
3 Year Express Ship Service Plan with ADH for Notebooks


I did not need the blue ray as I don't watch DVD's on my laptop and If I do it will be just the reg DVD's. as long as the Screen is nice I am happy with that did not need a fancy screen. I use my laptop for Sweeps I enter and photo editing ( I have a Cancon 50D camera ) but I do have a drive I upload the photos to after I upload them online. This should be pretty fast for that right?
Evently i'll get the better battery. I am excited that it's pink LOL. I think he ordered the good processor right?

What programs usually come on a Sony Laptop? I did not see any place to look at that. Also we are glad we got the warranty and would of got that no matter where we ordered from. Does the 3 years start right away or after the first year is up?( IE will I have a 4 year warranty or 3 year)

Does anyone know the turn around time if you have to ship the laptop for service? I am coming from a HP TX1000 This laptop should be a lot better then that laptop correct?

 

You should be happy though the 3 year warranty must have been spendy.

One recommendation I have, thought it is personal, is to dump Norton Security as fast as possible and replace it with a good antivirus solution. Norton, though functional, is a serious resource hog and historically causes lots of issues. I have been using either Avast, AVG, or Windows Security Essentials (all are free or have free versions) and they are light, lean, and will protect you without all the hassles of Norton (which seems to act like a virus itself IMO)

 

My work forces me to do all my development on a lowly Core 2 Duo running at a measly 1.86Ghz with 3gb ram and somehow it actually cuts the mustard as long as I keep my VS2008 instances down to 2 and 1 instance of management studio up.

I can safely say this laptop is more than enough (at least for the development Im doing). Cant really comment on the Oracle though since I havent done any development in that since I was in college.

 

I believe that model is the Nvidia 210M 256MB GPU.

 

you lost me what model? My old Hp one? or this one? and is that bad? sorry dont know much about these things lol.