Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Double check the resolution on the E series, the only two resolutions I've found for them are 1366x768 or 1920x1080. If you've found one with 1600x900 though, please let me know where!

I've emailed Best Buy about the CW with a GT 330M, they said that "Right now, we are just waiting for our vendor to supply more and then they will be available again." So I guess they're still being made, just not very quickly.

They're out of stock at Newegg too, but they're also $150 more there.

 

Does anyone notice and irritation on their thigh especially the right thigh when the laptop is on their lap?

Ive noticed a warning sticker on the base of the laptop saying do not let the laptop come into contact with your skin. The irritation which can best be described as mild shocks/scratchiness down to the bone are unlike anything ive ever felt.

Also I do not recall seeing any laptop with a sticker warning people not to let it come into contact with their skin. Ive been used to putting laptops in my lap for years without problems except heat. This isnt heat so im a bit puzzled.

 

Just got my cw-i3, I applied artic silver and a new intel 6300 with a third antenna. I also installed the 3rd antenna behind the lcd, right next to the camera.


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just got home. i just bought zagg,s invisible shield for the cw and had it installed right their and they did a fine job no air bubbles and it made my cw look like new no more fingerprint magnet and no more scratches. the only down side is that they even put a shield in the touch pad adding more grip now. guess i'll just have to get used to the new feel and learn to control the pad again o well at least its scratch resistant

 

to lunnie the sony vaio e series being sold here in the Philippines has a 1600x900 resolution (sony vaio 14 inch ea16fg series has an ati gpu with 1gig of ram its commercial resolution is 1366x768 but i have tested it it can go 1600x900)

 

Agh it looks like they've discontinued the 330 GT CWs, Best Buy has removed them from their listing. That's a shame, it looked like a really nice laptop.

 

hey guys do you have any screen calibration settings. i tried doing my and do not know how to get orginal i screwed up please help

 

Have you tried windows calibration?
Display Color Calibration - Windows 7 Forums

 

Knowing Best Buy this may mean that a newer better version will be on its site soon. Or this may be proof that the CW series will be refreshed.

 

I need advice on a tv to purchase that will work with the video/sound output from this laptop. My current tv "works" but there is severe overscan which I can't seem to correct. I currently use an HDMI cable to go from my nvidia GT 330M straight to the 42" Panasonic Plasma HDMI in port for playing Blu-Ray Discs. The screen is most definitely cut off. I also use a Mac Mini to play dvd's and streaming video using a mini-DVI to DVI cable followed by a DVI to HDMI cable, as well as an audio cable since DVI won't convey sound to an HDMI port. The screen on this CPU is smaller (black borders on all 4 sides). It must be a difference in operating systems between the two. So I'm basically looking for a way to simplify this, get rid of overscan/underscan so that my videos fit to the actual screen. If I'm buying a new tv I would want a 46" model, maybe a 50" or something in that range. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

um.... I am in china... lol, so... u might wanna check somewhere else
anyway... here in china I just asked them SONY today, they said CW series stopped production already... so looks like I'm gonna buy a E series, bummer

 

Actually Newegg lists an ETA for the GT 330M CWs, so maybe they're not out of production.

 

Your instruction is very helpful. I followed exactly the same thing, drew a map of myself.. which is similar to yours and switched the wifi card.. now my network transfer speed boosts from 17mbps to 80mbps...it is still far from 400mbps .. btw, i'm using WRT610N Ver2.. Thanks!

 

I'm considering getting a Sony CW. I wanted icy white with a large battery. I checked the store; they couldn't upgrade the battery. So I tried online. But they don't have the color. Today I called costumer service and learned that they replace CW with EA models. Now I cannot decide whether to get icy white 4 GB 500 RAM with standard battery, or should I wait for the new model. On the phone as a pre-order they give me the price 1,076.47 for i5 4GB 320 RAM. What do you advice me to do? Should I buy CW or should I wait for EA?

 

The local Office Max has a white CW on clearance sale (new in box) for $604. At that price I'm tempted.

 

Well the 14" EA has popped up on the Sony site, so I'd guess that they're discontinuing the CW range in favor of the EA.

 

the ea is already out.....so i'd reccomend to go with d EA.....its got a better Motherboard.actually dats d deal maker for me der.........n u also get a better GFX card wid it.although d model i saw doesnt have an upgraded screen......so net net.....EA is d way to go for now.....unless u get a very big bargain.....

Cheers

 

Think I will agree with anku here because we all know Nvidia is notorious for overheating issues.

Now ive had my CW for a little over two weeks and to be honest im not that impressed.

1. The rubber circular stopper which hides a screw beneath fell out, luckily I was able to find it and super glue it back in.

2. Booted up the machine two days ago and got the message "Operating system not found."

3. Sony's customer service is less than stellar

4. Choppy audio and video at times

5. Issues with multitouch trackpad.

My last computer was a M1330 which I had for nearly 2 years which gave me no issues whatsoever apart from it now getting a bit too hot and a battery needing to be replaced.

Therefore, for a brand new laptop which costs over $1000 I am annoyed with the CW.

 

Might be a problem with your HDD. Should ask them for a replacement of refund early.

On a side note, I had 0 issue on my CW27 besides the battery drain issue (batt meter glitch).

 

FTR My wife and I have been using our CW since late January and have absolutely zero problems with it.

No overheating, no hdd problems, no anything other than a perfectly working unit. To give some reference for our usage my wife used this for school until her classes ended in May and the unit would get about 12 hours of use per week. Now that she is out of school Id say we are actually using it the same or more because the laptop is at home more for me to use and I love couch surfing.

I will say the battery drain issue was an issue (not a problem though) until I determined the "drain" was not really happening and it was an error in the software reporting the battery charge level.

 

hey, i fully agree with all the guys here.........have had 0 (zero, nill, nada) problems with my cw 26....theres just one small nag which being dat i cannot create more than 3 primary partitions to my HDD for installing other OS and i dont want to delete the recovery partition.......

i wish the battery lasted more....the new set of Macs have a battery life of 7-9 hours..........i wish evn this would go dat long....but apart from dat i love my buy n dnt regret it.........obv with time u have better configs rolling in for the same price like the EA series now bt m happy

Cheers

 

I bought mine a couple days ago. I charged it and created recovery disc on the first time I used it. Next time I used with the battery to see how it is. I downloaded another virus program, messenger, winamp and a couple more things. Today I started to transfer my documents, music etc. from my old laptop while battery is charging at the same time. After 20 minutes while I was listening radio through winamp and organizing my documents, I felt overheating. The palm rest area was uncomfortably hot. The heat that came from my CW even led my old laptop (which was next to it) to overheat. How normal is this? Currently I'm writing my thesis, so I will be typing a lot. The heating on the palm area really bothered me. Anyone has any idea?

 

@ epona
The right palm rest on my CW gets warm but not HOT.

What's your specs?

 

Mine is Intel i3-330M Nvidia GeForce 310M 14" 1366x768 4GB 500 GB HDD Win 7Home 64bit

thanks.

 

Do laptops start to heat up more if they are used over time? I have felt that with my sony and netbook that they are becoming hot more if I use them for 1-2 hours compared to before. They are within like a 2 year timeframe (netbook was bought last year).

 

@shriek: the heat issue on old notebooks maybe because of the air outlets being blocked or d blowers inside being partially clogged due to dust......try giving the system for a through cleanup and service.

@epona: the palmrest does not get hot like u mentioned. i have d laptop since jan and no problems of heating or for dat matter no probs in general till now, touchwood!! get it checked while in warranty

 

just got mine. can anyone tell me which programs are not essential for the performance of the laptop? So much preinstalled junk programs that are slowing down the laptop.

 

Mine gets warm in that area too when the GPU's doing a fair bit of work, but nothing that doesn't seem unusual at all.

 

This is what happened regarding my heating problem:
I took my CW to BestBuy thinking that they can exchange it since it's only a week since I purchased it. The guy from GeekSquad started by laptop, connected it to web, and opened chrome. After a couple minutes he claimed that I don't have any heating problem. I have tried to explain it and underlined that I had the problem on Saturday night when I'm charging and it was ok on Monday when I used it on battery. He said that I can exchange it, but they will charge me restocking fee since according to his diagnostic(?) I don't have any heating problem. So I gave up and took my CW to a SonyStore. I'm really lucky that there is one really near by otherwise I had to wait days for them to come home to check it. The tech guy at Sony run a quick test and told me that there is a problem with the fan. I left my dear laptop with the tech guy for them to run some further test and repair it. He told me that it should be ready 7-10 days if they have the parts they need. Since I have warranty I won't need to pay anything extra. I will post the result once I receive my dear CW back.
By the way, they have the new EA series at the store. Based on appearance I believe I made the right decision with CW.
By

 

Would a 4 core i7 work in our notebook?
I believe sony only offered the i7 620m with 2 cores.

 

anyone else feel that the laptop is sometimes slowed down by all the junk programs added in? let me know what u guys did or what programs u guys removed.

 

@college4tommy

Doing a fresh install is the best solution.

 

Is anyone planning on replacing their HD with the new seagate momentus XT? I can't afford an SSD and this looked like a relatively cheap alternative, plus it is 7200 instead of the 5400 that came with the laptop. Opinions?

 

^^^ I have been really thinking about it, but I'm going to wait till the other Hard drive companies come out with their options and also with a little bigger amount of flash memory added on. Also on some reviews I read, it takes a decent hit on your battery life. Saw one that went from about 6.5 hours down to around 5-5.5 hours.

 

I understand the battery life, but I'm not terribly worried about it, I just want performance gains, because it does seem a little sluggish at times. I mostly use my laptop while plugged in anyway, and not more than a couple of hours unplugged at a time. At least right now anyway, that could always change with class...usually try to sit next to a socket, lol

 

Also, I'm really tired of struggling with installing linux on this laptop. Every distro I try doesn't have video, so I can't install. Anyone have a workaround? Preferably Ubuntu or Linux Mint

 

Just installed the Momentus XT three days ago. Got it from NewEgg.com. Awesome increase in speed over the stock 5400rpm drive. After you use it a while programs just pop up almost instantly. Boot time cut to a third and most dramatic increase I've found was in restoring from hibernation. Did not notice any decrease in battery life but haven't really measured it.

Much cheaper than an SSD and 500gb to boot!

 

I'm considering buy the new Momentus XT, unfortunately it isn't available in my country yet.

 

the momentus xt is great but i for one is still an ssd fan i rather have an intel x25-m gen 2 160gig because we already have the stock hdd so its more ifficent to have an ssd rather than a hybrid and hybrids suffers from the weakness of hdd they still require the same amount of power and is not shock proof like an ssd besides a 4gig ssd is realy not that big and would worn out fast and i think hybrids dont support trim, sure its cheeper than an ssd but for me a minor speed boost is not enough for the cost, ot each is own i guess

 

The issue for me is that I use the blu-ray player so I can't just replace that...and an SSD with a large enough capacity is out of my price range. Going from a 5400 to a 7200 would be improvement in itself (and affordable) so going to a hybrid seems even better to me for a little bit more of a price, not too much though. Also, most of the time my laptop is plugged in, and I'm very careful so the shock resistance isn't a huge deal for me.

 

I agree. The Momentus XT is an excellent HD replacement and not necessarily a performance alternative for an SSD. For me the price was the clincher... no way I was going to pay almost as much for a decent sized SSD as I did for my laptop in the first place.

 

My sentiments exactly...although you can keep the drive and replace in the next laptop you get, but all the same...still hard to justify!

edit: I'd just like to say thank you to everyone that frequents this forum...it really is very helpful to have somewhere to go to get opinions and tips on how to make things work better!

 

Hello, I recently purchased a Sony Vaio CW (with an i5 2.53GHz processor, 8gb ram, blu-ray burner, and 320gb 7200rpm harddrive). I just got a great deal on an OCZ Agility 2 120gb ssd, and am looking to put it into this new computer. I am becoming concerned, however, that this task might be more difficult than I had originally thought. Does anyone know of a good step-by-step guide to replacing the hdd with an ssd in this computer? I'm assuming that I'll also have to replace Win7 on the new ssd, and am also wondering if there is a way to do this as the computer did not come with a DVD copy of Win7. Any help would be VERY appreciated.

Thanks!
Mark

 

As easy as when replacing a HDD with another HDD.

Doing a fresh install is the best way to get the best performance.
Just make sure to turn off the following:
System Restore
Disk Defragmenter (services)
SuperFetch (services)

*After turning off the SuperFetch go to Prefetch folder, delete all files in there then reboot.

Now enjoy your lightning fast SSD

 

just wondering i always play games with my cw because my cw has a bteer gpu than my desk top(gt9500) does having an ssd help with gaming or would it help if i would install the game in the hhd? wich is better ot install it in?

 

SSD boost your loading times but not gonna improve your graphic card capability.

SSD will improve
* Boot time
* Shut down time
* Loading times
* Battery time (not much)
* No more HDD noise
* Greater vibration/shock tolerance

Hope I answered your question

 

how did you replace your procesos to i7? and where did you get it?

 

Just the usual procedure (no extra steps needed)

Bought it from a friend (new)