Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Did you buy a pre-configured CW2 or a customized one? Are you in the UK? I notice the pre-configured ones have the 330M but it's not an option for the customized ones. Very frustrating!

 

Mine is preconfigured, bought here in Sweden.

 

Anyone who knows if the processor is soldered on the mobo, of is it possible to upgrade the processor on the CW2?

 

Select the 1600 x 900 option, it changes the GPU to the 330M.

 

Thanks, I noticed that but the 1600x900 isn't available at the moment.

I don't understand why some people can get the 1366x768 and 330M combination and some can't. I've people from the UK earlier in this thread saying they got this combo. Sony are being very unhelpful on the matter

 

Under 70c preferably. Definitely under 80c.

 

Hey Ps2co is BC2 still running good with those settings? Asking because I was getting artifacts when I set it to those settings. What do you have your gpu set at while playing BC2? Thanks.

 

Im playing BC2 with these settings, 660/1452/1090 and I dont have any kind of artifacts. It runs great.

 

What resolution do you have it at? Thanks

 

1600x900 on my external Samsung P2050

 

The cpu can be upgraded. Look just above the memory compartment (to the side) under the Sony documentation. You can see a standard zif cpu socket. Anybody game for popping the back cover? he he

 

I ordered a i5 2.54ghz today, hope to have it by tomorrow, and see how the upgrade will go

 

Just received the Vaio VPCCW27FX Black from Best Buy.

When the tray is extended all the way, the edge farthest from the laptop wiggles up and down anywhere from 1.3 to 1.4 cm (.52 to .56 in).

If I look into the laptop with the tray open, I see that the metal cage (on the side closest to the front of the laptop) isn't securely attached and wiggles inside -- probably the cause of the tray wiggle.

Does anyone have this excessive wiggle in their optical drive tray? I know some wiggle is normal, but this seems excessive. Could it be a potential problem?

 

There are only two mounting screws, both on the farthest side away from you as you face the screen. Mine flexes too, but not as much as yours. How about a thin piece of dense foam tape to make it more secure? I know, it shouldn't be necessary. Actually, I would like to replace my drive with a Bluray RE. Thought I had the drive (uj232as) but ours is actually a 12.7mm, not 9.5mm. Anybody upgrade theirs? There are some nice slot loading drives that would eliminate the flexing problem altogether...

 

Curious to know too, how much a upgraded drive would cost?

 

Do you guys think it's worth to upgrade 2 more GB of RAM? I have 4GB 1 dimm and I run a lot of matlab.... so I wonder if memory upgrade will make compt much betteR?
thanks

 

My cw27fx just had a major hiccup today. When it came back from hibernating it said no os found. I did not make recovery disks, so I tried several options including recovering with the recovery partition. However, it could not find the recovery partition. I called Sony and they recommended I order the recovery disks. I talked to the parts people and they have to call second level support (?) to see if they have them tomorrow. Does anyone have the recovery disks or another method?

 

Been using an Envy 15 for about a week now and while I like it a lot, I'll be returning it since I decided it's not worth the high price I paid. One thing I love though is the vibrant screen. Its not the full hd screen but its really sharp and the colors pop.

My girlfriend recently got the CW and I was thinking about ordering one for myself, but her screen seems really dull and the colors seem washed out (almost as if its a matte screen, but im pretty sure its glossy). How do you guys feel about the screen on your CW's? Do I maybe just need to calibrate hers?

 

the screen in CW is washed out. I calibrated the color but didn't improve much. You need to change the view angle. Other than that, I find the CW is pretty good so far

 

hey has anyone had a problem with watching movie in full screen mode? Mine has a constantly flashing line appear on my screen almost every time the scene in the movie change. (it's like a super minor screen flickering but super annoying)

I use K-lite codec pack 3.30 for window 64-bit and have tried core avc and a few other codecs but none work.

any suggestion?

 

Hey, i run matlab and other simulations too but as far as the RAM goes, it suffices for my work.

Just check what amount of RAM is being used in the task manager when you do your simulations, if its around 3.75 GB levels then you may need an upgrade otherwise it wont make much of a difference in performance.

Cheers.

 

Try getting a bootable win7 disk from any1 of you friends. Run DISKPART using the repair then MS-DOS options. Then "Select disk 0" i.e is the default disk, further do "list partition" or "list volume" and Select the system partition, that would be the 1 with jst 100MB on it. Make it active. I guess that should solve your problem.

 

You don't consider the Envy 15's 1920x1080 resolution Full HD?

Then what will you say about the CW's 1400x900 screen?

If you don't like the Envy's screen, which is usually described as "gorgeous", then you will NOT like the CW's screen (which has nothing on the Envy's )....

 

chk if ders prob with the print only.....

 

don't use k-lite codec pack.

i've been using CCCP (combined community codec pack) for years without issues.

 

I would if my Envy's screen was 1920x1080. It's 1366x768 which isnt full HD. And I'm not sure why you're bringing up me not liking the Envy's screen when I specifically said I thought it was great. I've simply read a lot of reviews on the CW that describe the screen on it as amazing and wanted to know why my girlfriends 1366x768 CW screen looked worse than my 5 year old HP laptop's screen.

 

Hello.
Im looking for a new laptop and stopped at the sony vaio cw on amazon, Sony VAIO VPC-CW21FX, to be specific. I like everything about it, but I have one question. Does it suffer from battery leakage (ie when you completely turn it off, next time you turn it back on, a big % of your battery charge is gone). It was a huge problem on my SR that I bought last year, to the point where I sold it because it was pretty bad.
Thank you.
Edit: Darn, I just noticed the thread about that very same problem. This is quite disheartening since I really liked the machine for the price. Seems like a lot of sony laptops are faced with this problem.

 

I posted this problem outside but want to post here to see if people having the same problem.
My aero is disabled sometimes (and the error reports Windows desktop manager has encountered a fatal error (0x8007000e) ) I use the troubleshoot to fix the problem and it works fine after that. But this has happened everyday and it gets annoying. I called Sony support but they don't know what the problem is.
I think it happens when I resize the windows or open a bunch on the desktop
So I am wondering if anyone is having the same problem as me?
Mine is a CW 290 CTO from sony style, i5 520, 4GB 1 dimm RAM, 320GB HDD
thanks

 

battery drainage......and we are using sony genuine battery on its own house product. i do hope it will be fixed by the next bios update.

p/s 5400 rpm is too slow for me, isit possible to change it into 7200 or sdd? hope there is idiot proof guide around.

 

I need a instruction to make a Win7 Home Premium clean install for my CW26FG. Anyone knows please help me.

 

you can find the instructions you want for the clean install on a separate thread dedicated to it....jst search the forum for that thread....cheeers

 

I found a page on Sony Asia website that allows us to re-install drivers and applications based on the download order.

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/376251/product/vpccw26fg/sectionfirst?subpage=detail

 

Not sure if this is old news, I apologize if it is, but us sony's site finally has an update for the gt 330m. Anyone download it off the Sony site yet? Here's the link:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCCW27FXL&upd_id=5577&os_id=45.

 

Can anyone tell me if the 1600x900 display is of better quality than the 1366x768? By better quality I mean superior contrast ratio, luminance & colour gamut.

I am think of buying an E series laptop 14" when it is available and I'm presuming they will use the same LCD panels as the CW series.

I would also be interested to know if there are any videos of the 1600x900 in action (searched Youtube). Without seeing one in person it's very difficult to determine if it's the right resolution for me or not.

 

Just picked up a CW from Best Buy yesterday. Liking it so far, but there's a couple issues I'm wondering about.

1). I'm often encountering a "lag" when typing or scrolling in Google Chrome -- I'll type something and nothing will appear for a few seconds, or will click on something and it will seem to take a few seconds to register that I've done anything. This is a little disconcerting, as a machine with this kind of horsepower shouldn't be running into these little hiccups while just doing basic tasks, right?

2). The fan seems to be running all the time at low speed, making the computer vibrate a bit. Not really a huge deal, but not something I've encountered before.

Are these things normal? I can't think of any intensive background processes that might be causing these things (only thing I've installed has been AVG anti-virus), and I didn't encounter them with my 4-year old POS Dell that I junked. Any suggestions for fixes?

 

never used the one of lesser resolution, but i subjectively think it's a pretty nice screen. only problem, but this is a problem with most if not all laptops out nowadays is the glossy screen. would have much preferred a matte screen, but it doesn't bother me so much. I haven't used enough to give you concrete info on contrast ratio and color representation, but from my few days of use, it's above average compared to other laptops i've used.

 

Hi aan310, after reading this whole thread (for 2 days ) I'm getting interested on getting this laptop but noticed 2 units were reported died. Can you give some info how it died?

Thanks in advance!

 

Can you get one off BestBuy?

Interested on getting the Sony - VAIO Laptop with Intel® Core™ i5 Processor - Jet Black

 

They are currently sold out. Keep watching the BB site for availability. They seem to be available for about a week and then not for 10 days or so until they get a re-supply from Sony. You can find them elsewhere for more $ but who wants to cough up more moola? Hang on, it won't take long!

 

Thanks for the heads up, mate. It was still in-stock when I checked 3 hours back.

Anyway, I'm more concern if aan310 can get one off BB for me since BB do not ship Internationally. J&R.com has it over $1K

 

I have the exact same problem with the VPC-CW17FX. I have tried everything! I tried a clean install and my conclusion is that the driver has the problem. If you uninstall the driver, and install an older driver the problem goes away but you have to endure the other bugs that were in the previous driver. I too contacted sony support but those idiots don't know that they have a serious bug in their driver.

 

Thanks for replying to me! I don't have an older driver. THere is only 1 listed on the web for my CW290CTO model.... It's annoying. I just reinstalled the compt. It came fresh start so it's basically clean. I'll see how this works.
Yesterday I spent 2 hours on the phoen with the customer suppor, from the lowest guy to the "higher level " of support. They asked me to replicate it. And I was like, HOW? It came randomly!
So I just think if anyone hahs the same problem should report to Sony so that they fix the bugs.

 

If you want a matte screen on it, you would love the anti glare filter from sgpstore.com. I bought it for mine and my screen looks perfectly matte. Just be careful putting on the filter, it bends easily and causes air bubbles. It comes off pretty clean too and its very possible to get rid of all of the air bubbles.

 

btw for VAIO CW owner, Sony just realeased a NVidia driver update!

 

Thanks for the info!

 

i have no problem whatsoever with google chrome...
As with the fan, yes it is mostly on but no vibrations are registered. Its absolutely calm and still.

There might be some process thats causing the lag as well as heavy fan use i guess, jst check for yourself....

 

sweet. anyone try it yet??

 

They were released on the 12th here in Europe, been using them for 2 weeks, and they seem so far good.

 

I downloaded it yesterday. So far so good. Played BC2 and it looked good, but it looked good with the older driver too. Anyone using a driver from laptopvideo2go on their 27fx?

 

Thinking about getting a CW but have one question...Can i upgrade the HDD without too much hassle? I have an intel X25M SSD that I want to use instead.