Sony CW i3/i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Yeah Sony laptop batteries are crazy stupid expensive.

RF mouse will be better on your laptop battery because it will run through the usb ports. Bluetooth mice will require you to keep the bluetooth on your laptop on which sucks up extra power. By rule I always leave my bluetooth off unless specifically connecting to it and then as soon as I am done I turn it back off.

 

what model # is this?

 

Does yours have the 1600x900 resolution? Kinda confused about the i3 @ 2.93GHz and the i5 @ 2.93 ghz- whats the difference?

 

For the guys that ordered from Best Buy, what was the turn around time?

 

I ordered the BB 27fx i5 520 on 1/20 and received it on 1/23. I spent $35 for expedited shipping.

3DMark06: 6154

Oh, it runs quiet and cool so far. The cooling vent on the left side is nice and big. The 1600 x 900 screen is crisp and easy to read. Star Trek Blu-ray looked solid. I don't see any reason (yet) not to buy this notebook.

It doesn't have the build quality of the macs or envys, but it is easy to service the RAM and hard drive. It is a great value at the BB price.

 

i posted the fix earlier but for the life of me can't find it. Its easy to activate. Right click on thegreen wi-fi link utility and just make sure bluetooth button is on (virtual setting in the wifi utility) and then the icon will pop up in the taskbar and just find a device- pretty easy! (;course i went nuts b4 i got yahoo help

 

how did u get a cw26 in the store? isn't that an online purchase only? i hope its everything the specs said becuz i ordered the c26 online for $899.00. I had picked up the CW21 a few days ago but returned it today because the CW26 version says its got double the dedicated graphics, i5 instead of i3 so i can wirelessly connect to TV, 1600x900 res vs 1366x768, 330m video card vs 310m and 3MB cache on level 3 versus 2 on the model i had. Thinking all that for just 100 bucks more than what i paid is worth it. Didn't go for the Blu-Ray version because i like to keep separate components whenever possible, and have read mixed reviews about the Blu-Rays in Sony Vaio, and dint wanna get mad at my WHOLE laptop (which i woulda if that ONE feature malfunctioned.

One thing i am worried about is that the 1600x900 might make the print too tiny, even if the images will be GREAT. But i tried the Mega Model in the store and adjusted the DPI to 125% and it seemed fine, but that was on a CF124 model w/ 16.4 inch screen, so i'm just hoping the viewing of regular print will be ok.

 

This one looks good. Does anyone know of the dimensions of the Best Buy VPCCW27FX/B model?

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Also, battery life test would be nice. I'm currently narrowing down my options, and one close alternative to this for me is the Lenovo Y550P ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146613&Tpk=y550p)

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Opinions?

 

Do you have any games you can run and tell us what settings and fps you are getting? eg: supreme commander, left4dead, css, crysis, borderlands, dragon age etc...

 

I ordered mine Sunday the 17th with standard shipping and it was at my door Thursday the 21st.

 

Dont worry about the resolution and print size. My cw looks stunning and everything is just the right size at 1600x900. Also the 1600x900 screen is much brighter and more vibrant than the low res panel on the ones in store at best buy.

 

Umm. How can you be running a Wii game on a windows machine?

Is there a Wii emulator I don't know about.

 

Well the model number you gave is at newegg and they post the dimensions as: 13.44" x 9.18" x 1.09" - 1.52"

I have the white version of the same sony laptop. Battery life on mine was around 3.5 hours (included playing some wheel of fortune, solitare, web surfing, and a large file transfer 6 gb from my desktop).

The lenovo looks like a nice alternative. But its $50 more with no blue ray and if you get the bb model with regular dvd then the lenovo is $100 more. The lenovo has a lower resolution screen and is a bigger laptop overall. The sony is a 14 incher 5.3 lb and the lenovo 15.6 6.1lb laptop.

The lenovo does have a comparable graphics card but gets a full gb of dedicated ram where the sony only gets 512 mb. Also the lenovo gets a quad core so it will have better threaded performance. In single and dual threaded apps the gain will be negligable if at all but in any app that uses more than 2 cores the lenovo will be superior.

Pretty close choices if you ask me with each having a distinct set of advantages. Lenovo and Sony both build excellent laptops so you know either one will be good quality.

I would go with the sony only because I need something more portable that will fit in my backpack easily.

My 2 cents.

 

I think I heard somewhere that most notebook graphics cards (I would think particularly midrange level cards) really can't take advantage of additional memory, so having 1 GB vs. 512MB probably adds a negligible performance advantage.

However, quad core vs. dual core can be a whole different story, depending on what software you are running. Most of the time, however, dual core will suffice.

Edit: I remember where I heard about the memory issue:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=302231

 

Hold on!! I have been promoting the Vaio CW in the "what to buy" forum, and advertising the Nvidia GT 330m as a midrange card. I just checked the big A-Z graphics card review by Chaz, and the 230m (the predecessor of the GT 330m, I believe) is 2nd from the top of the performance class cards. Wow!!


Edit:

Question for you proud new owners: I have heard bad things about the CW's speakers. How are they?

 

I'm currently thinking about getting this laptop from the sonystyle site (Canadian), but I've checked the US sonystyle site as well, and it gives different customization options...

max processor from the US site is the i5-540M processor, but for the Canadian site it has the i7-620M processor as an option.
What's the major difference between those two processors? If the i7 processor is better how noticeable would the performance difference be? Would it be worth it getting the i7 processor rather than the i5?

Also, the only graphics chip option on the Canadian site is the NVIDIA® GeForce® G211M GPU (256MB VRAM). From reading some of the posts above, some of you from the US have gotten the more powerful 512mb version and I was wondering if that would be coming to the Canadian sonystyle site?

Lastly, for those of you in Canada and have bought it from the sonystyle.ca site, is your keyboard the US version (English only) or bilingual? I really dislike the bilingual keyboards so i'd like to know if there's a way to get the English only keyboards in Canada


Thanks.

 

the speakers are a bit on the quiet side. however its not so bad when you have bose speakers ^^

 

The speakers are bose? Nice.

 

THey are doing some update to the US SonyStyle website on the CTO. All of the processor above i3 are shown out of stock, all memory above 2GB are shown out of stock..hahaha

 

Hmmm, I couldn't find any of the newer chips on the Canadian site.

Notebookcheck just tested the new Arrandales (i3,i5,i7 dual-cores). Here's the link:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

It looks like there's not much difference between the 540 and the 620. Apparently, the i7 uses a lot more power under load. I'd stick with the core i-5. In any case, these new chips are really good.

We in the US are just as clueless as you are about the Nvidia cards. Sonystyle doesn't offer the 330 (I'm still waiting for it - fingers crossed - before I order, since I don't want black or indigo). We can only get it in preconfigured models. Sony's been pretty disgraceful about all this. I'm starting to consider the Lenovo Y550P.

As for the last question, I live in the US, so.... je ne sais quoi!

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Update: The Sonystyle CTO page is out of almost everything. I hope that means they're refreshing their options. I've been waiting to buy this computer for months...

 

Had this problem last week that freaked me out! It just means they're updating their pricing for the new week, maybe even updating options, which worked out well for me considering when I was going to order!

 

Thanks for the info cknobman and Biosci3c.

Now I know sometimes luck determines how long a laptop will last, but that is definitely something I consider. (heat, solid chassis/body, noise)

I hear good things about Lenovo, so that's a plus. For Sony's, I have heard some horror stories of hardware, but especially customer service. If anything, I may go with a comparable ASUS, but a recent story showed a sharp increase in problems despite an earlier report of them topping Apple and the rest in reliability.

Damn, this is tough!

PS: Reviews comparing the Y550P and the VPCCW27FX in the Windows Experience index show the Lenovo equal to the Sony in everything but RAM. Lenovo better. Is that even something to really consider?

 

Is it possible to change the assists button into a slpashtop instant web type thing?

 

won't it just let it change your "when I Close The Lid:" settings to: "DO NOTHING"?

 

Just my 2 cents, you need to be careful on what you heard about Lenovo. There is ThinkPad and there is IdeaPad, business line vs. consumer line. For Sony, there is almost no such distinction -- there are G and BZ/B series that are specifically targeted for business and have a more understated look and more business oriented features, but other than that, every other Sony series is both business line and consumer line, so there is intrinsic business quality in every Sony laptop.

Not to say Y550 is bad or the Sony stories you heard is not true, but just be careful about what good thing you heard about Lenovo -- is it about ThinkPad or about IdeaPad? Personally, I heard a lot of good thing about ThinkPad and its service, but I can't really say the same about IdeaPad -- it's not that they are bad, it just for every good thing about IdeaPad there are probably 5 more good things about ThinkPad.

 

hello i would like to ask where can i buy the cw online with i5 which they can ship worldwide (canada , uk , uea , or yemen) and which is better with 330m i3 or i5

 

Hi computerwiz908, if you do have the time i would like to see a benchmark for this card. I haven't seen any yet for the 310M.

 

Bump, I was kinda wondering about this too.

 

it also depends what day you order it. i ordered mine with ground shipping on a tuesday and ill get it tomorrow (monday) since UPS doesn't delivery on SAT or SUN. so i would say a sunday or a monday would be a good day to order it

 

any details ?

 

Nice and Bose don't really belong in the same sentence. They're all about better sound through marketing. Typically they use drivers equivalent to those used in products 1/4 their cost.

 

Are the CW's that are matte, do they have a matte screen as well or is it just the casing?

 

could anyone tell me whats the package Dimensions so i can see the rate how much it would be by fedex or dhl

 

now this is interesting, i expected the usual upgraded cpu and gpu but surprisingly sony also upgraded the battery, can someone confirm this improved battery life on new CW's.

 

Just ordered mine a few days ago... I almost overlooked it when I was shopping because sony puts the Hot Pink one on their website and I assumed it was a limited edition pink notebook for girls or something..

I got it with

Jet Black
Core i5 (the cheaper one)
7200RPM hard drive (this was big for me, most companies don't offer a faster laptop drive, offering only larger drives at 5400 RPM as options. I HATE slow hard drives!)
4 gigs ram
3 year warranty (I have bad luck with laptops!)

Wont ship till feb 9th so i wont have it prob for another 3 weeks which im sad about!) but im really excited!

My last notebook benchmarks at less than 1/4 the speed so this will be a really nice boost.

 

I'd bet its just the new 32nm CPU
was the old display LED? because LED displays use a LOT less power
This new generation of graphics card (GeForce 310M) would be more efficient too...

Not that much headway has been made in batteries lately, biggest improvements have been in the power draining components. The bundled batteries have the same Product number.

 

Does anyone have any idea how much battery life the high-capacity battery would add?

 

Double. I think high capacity is 12 cell vs. 6 cell standard.

 

I'm pretty sure it's only 9 cell

 

So roughly 50% more battery life? I guess that's pretty decent if you have the money to spare.

Just to be 100% sure, is this the battery I should be getting?

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...productId=8198552921666055187&tab=featuresTab

It looks quite a bit bulkier than the standard battery, I'm guessing to accommodate the extra cells?

 

Here are some pics from electrobuzz's CW190 with the extended capacity battery. The battery for the new CW should be the same

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=427692&page=19

 

Boon 4376 just fyi,

I ordered a CTO from SonyStyle on 1/18 (early in the am), it gave me an estimated ship date of 1/26 but to my amazement it shipped 1/20 and arrived via FedEx on 1/21 (ships from San Diego, CA and I am in CA also.)

 

nice good to know, I'll cross my fingers haha
I ordered mine on 1/20 to be exact, estimated ship of 2/9 and an estimated ship time of 5-10 business days (live in Maine, far from CA lol)

It was a little depressing to say the least... I'm hoping its updated with a time much closer to the present. I would like to have it for school asap as my old laptop is completely dead.

 

I agree with svork. I ordered mine on the 17th, estimated ship on the 25th. Got an email saying it actually shipped on the 20th with estimated arrival the 26th (live in Florida). So it shocked me with delight!

 

Has anyone here performed a clean install for their Vaio CW?

If so, were you able to install all the drivers, etc without any problems?

 

danf 250 bucks for a battery. That is crazy expensive.

 

Its worthwhile to note, the touchpad drivers that come with the machine have very little multi-touch support. I installed the drivers off the Synaptics site and all the functionality seems to be working great. Two finger scroll, three finger forward/back, Pinch zoom, rotate, etc.

 

What bluetooth mouse is recommended for the cw i5?

 

That's why you shop for it on ebay. Sony's batteries are apparently solid gold.

 

I am about to order my sexy CW (i5, 330GT....) and was wondering if I wanted to get an idea of how fast the 330GT is compared to a desktop graphics card, what would it compare to?

I run a Nvidia 8600GT at home, and my guess is the 330 would be a lot faster (3 gens older). I am wondering though, what would it compare to in the desktop world?