BestBuy VAIO CW

hmmm, this CW26 seems to catch my interest. Wonder can anyone of u, just do a quick review of this wonderful laptop, once u get it?

Battery life normal/gaming usage, 3dmark06....etc

hope to hear from u guys soon~

 

newegg is now sold out. I was going to purchase today. My only option is the ugly purple from BB now...

This sux...

 

teknikk...for what it's worth. I was in the sam boat the past few weeks. Look back a few pages. I had my heart set on the white CW26 at BB. I was just waiting for a little bit for the Asus N82. But I figured this was the better deal with a higher resolution.

It was sold out for about a week and then they had it available online again. I jumped on it knowing how popular they are. The very next day, it was sold out again. I believe the black one was the same.

I also read a few pages back that they are having manufacturing problems with the chip.

So keep looking and jump on it because they only seem to be getting limited quantities each time. Good luck!

Mine will be in either tomorrow or tuesday. God I hate UPS...

 

I am really frustrated that they keep getting OOS

 

I didn't realize how hot these things are. I'm glad I jumped on it when I did.

Don't worry, BB puts up long ETAs when they're available but honestly, they don't know what their ETAs are. Chances are, your order will get shipped much sooner than you think. So all that you gotta do is get lucky and place that order once it's available!

 

Just get it from Amazon. In stock, free shipping, and no tax.

NM

 

^^It's more expensive than the BB model.

 

I wish Sony.ca or Amazon.ca carried this.

 

I paid $828, yeah it's the purple one - the one I wanted.

 

Can you link it? I checked today and could not find the model with the exact same specs. The ones I saw had lower resolutions.

Thx

 

I got the standard res model 21 with i3. I wanted to spend as little as possible and have a laptop for web surfing, email, and playing EVE Online. I also wanted to have the longest possible battery life, so that made the i3 an even more obvious choice.

I put the EVE client on a USB drive and took it to BB and tried it on the model 21. I was surprised to find the game running at 60fps on this laptop (HDR turned off, all other settings on high).

I'm not so sure you would see the difference in resolution on a 14" screen, but I could be wrong. To me it's sort of like wanting 1080p on a 32" screen or smaller. . . .

Cheers

 

yeah the competitors all have the lower res models for the same price as the bb one

 

1080p on a 32" from how many feet away?? That's the question. I could def tell the difference from 1600 to 1280 or 1366 on a laptop because your viewing distance does not change. Now if I'm watching a movie on my laptop thats across the room would I be able to tell the difference between 1600 & 1366, probably not. It all comes down to personnel preference though.

I just ordered the VPC-CW27FX/B from here: http://www.datavis.com/Sony-VPC-CW27FX-B-Notebook-PC-Black.html
No tax and free shipping. I was told they have 5 in-stock.

Not sure how much it would have been if I ordered at BestBuy, tax is almost 10% in Los Angeles!

 

You would have gotten it cheaper at BB, especially if you used Bing Cashback.

 

Yea, except they have been out of stock in black for a while now. Oh well, my budget was $1200 and I came in $100 under. Don't have time to wait around. I'm happy.

 

You guys spent over a grand...my budget was $850.

 

Just got my CW in... time to do another clean install.

 

Wow, you scored a VPC-CW27FX/B for $850! Good for you. I wish my budget was $4000 so I could get a new Z with Quad SSD. Anyone throw a SSD in their CW? Im going to be ordering one soon, any recommendations?

My unit already shipped, should be here tomorrow morning before 10:30AM!

Thx

 

Yup, I'll be popping in an Intel 160GB G2 on Wednesday

 

Nice drive. Where did you order from? How much? Best price I can find is $415 shipped. Nearly half the price of the lappy....ouch!

 

Wow what a price...where did you find that?? I only saw prices like that around Ebay and I wasn't comfortable with that at all. I got mine from CompUSA for $450 shipped. It's sitting right here on my desk, it arrived before the laptop did

And yeah it's nearly half the cost of the laptop but I think that the price of the system isn't expensive to begin with considering what's inside it. I spent $1400 on the system + SSD...that's really not that much considering how fast and powerful this thing is gonna be. There are some people who drop $1500+ on their systems alone and it still won't be this fast

 

Am I the only one who has a real problem with the "mouse" buttons on the CW? particularly the left click, it seems to be pushed in on all the CW's I have seen.

 

Got mine this morning. It's a great laptop so far, the resolution is a nice change over the standard 1366. I just gotta swap hardrives then I will be set. Does anyone know what drive is currently inside it? It sux...

Also, Im surprised at how cool this laptop stays. My last one doubled as a room heater. Very happy thus far, only wish it had a backlit keyboard then it would be perfect.

 

Have had my white CW26 for a few days now. Am still undecided on whether to do a clean install or not. But so far I am glad I made this purchase. It runs cool and quiet compared to my Dell E1505. As someone else said, I could use that as a room heater.

Haven't really tested things out with games or photoshop. I'm not a big gamer, just flight simulator. I installed the intel Turbo Boost Technology Monitor Gadget. And it is fun to watch it throttle up when loading programs and such. Right now running two firefox windows, one with a streaming radio station. It is at the bottom 2.4 GHz. CPU is at 4% and ram is at 37%. I believe the ram usage is from processes from random bloatware. Which is why I may still do a clean install.

The 1600x900 screen is amazing! I had a hard time reading things in Firefox 3.6 so I installed the No Squint addon. Much better! I will never go back to a 1366x768 resolution again.

Haven't tested the battery much. I did charge it up fully after unboxing and booting it up. Then unplugged it and ran it on battery. It lasted about 3 hours give or take just browsing the web. Right now I have the battery removed and am just on A/C power. I do this to prolong the battery even though there is a setting in the Vaio Control panel to charge up to 80% or 50% when plugged in.

2/25/10 @ 9:00am, the i5 CW White, blue, and black models are back in stock at BB online.

 

Been checking back every day, just scored the white one! Finally!

Yesterday I was SO close to ordering the black w/ Blu Ray, but it quickly went OOS as I was too slow.

 

Just did a fresh install of windows 7 ultimate. Decided against the SSD for now. I will wait till the 256GB are in the $400 range to pull the trigger. I put in a 7200RPM 320GB Scorpio Black. Everything is much snappier.

I ran into one problem, hopefully someone can help. I reinstalled almost all the driver from SONY. I am unable to use the Fn key now. Where can I find a driver for this? Also is there another video driver besides the one from SONY? A more current one?

Also, the sound is very low...? Other Driver??

Thx!

 

All the models are in stock at BB right now.

Does anyone have XP on them? I like Win7 n all, but XP is just irreplaceable. I prefer the green/blue theme to this BS transparent stuff.

 

You can have that disabled under Control Panel. You can even use a Windows Classic them.

I really don't see how this one thing will keep you from updating or changing.

 

Lol, I have win7, (I didn't downgrade because I'm planning on selling it). I'll get my CW in a few days, and I will downgrade it for sure. (unless there are no drivers for it). And yes, this one thing is enough to go back to XP for me.

 

id love to hear how this thing runs with benchmarks on windows xp. I prefer windows 7 but if xp provides a huge boost ill take it. I will be ordering my CW in 4 days. looking at the white to save on fingerprints. im so jealous of you all with your machines already.

 

Wait what? I got the black one?! Finger print magnet? Is it like those notebooks that once you touch them the "oily" bit stays on them forever? Or is it more like a temp fingerprint? (i.e wipe it and its out?!)

 

The fingerprints get on there easily on the black, to be honest, but they are easy to wipe off. Get a microfiber cloth to make it easier to clean.

The palm rest is the toughest to keep clean for obvious reasons.

Either way, you shouldn't worry much. You'll get compliments and a few headturns/glances. I have.

Just don't go massaging and poking your lid all the time. (lol, did that sound wrong?). I'm trying to get in the habit of opening mine in a way that gets the least/no fingerprints on my lid.

 

yea the fingerprint is temporary from everywhere ive read. trouble is the actual palmrest is like that also. so its not just lid thats getting prints.

 

Code:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SGP-Laptop-Wrist-Rest-for-SONY-VAIO-CW-Series_W0QQitemZ370331013170QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item563972d032

That should fix the palm-rest thing, but I'm not sure how good it'll look on it.

 

So I got my CW thru BB and love it so far. I had to call Sony tech support yesterday for a simple question but some how never got an answer to it. I am hoping that some some one here could help me out.

As per in the info listed on Sony's CW website in detailed specs it says that the computer comes pre loaded with Sony's click to disc, movie story and Vaio media streaming.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...98552921644659494&N=4294954315#specifications

some how I was not able to find it on my computer in programs, so I called tech support and their response was that this computer does not have the above mentioned software installed (even though their website says other wise). I did not buy this explanation and started looking around in c and found the programs installed on c in the folder sony>creations but some how they dont show up in programs. I dont know whats the deal with this but I used click to disc on my old Vaio and transferred videos from my mini dv camcorder and was looking forward to do the same on my cw.

any ideas on why I can not access these programs even though they are installed and do you guys have the same issue?

 

I did a search and found something you may be able to try using built in recovery. below is the post i found from tech support.

"Hi zx8346, this is John E52T from Sony, not sure exactly what model you have but if you have click to disc you should be able to load it back from the built in recovery partition.

To do this click on the VAIO Help and Support icon that should be on your desktop.
Click on Backup and Recovery
Click on Launch VAIO Recovery Center
On the new window click on Reinstall Programs or Drivers and click start.
On the next screen click Next (with skip selected).
If you can reinstall a program or driver you will see it on the list."


at least if you cant find it maybe you can reinstall it from the list and put it somewhere where you can find it.

hope this somehow helped. best regards

 

thanks a lot for looking it up, I actually tried to reinstall the software thru the Vaio care recovery program and even lists click to disc and movie story etc, and it even lets me install them but than again it still does not show up in programs,,,,this is so wierd.

just to add to the confusion, I tried to update the click to disc software by installing the latest version from Sony's website and during the installation it gives me the message that the "latest version is already installed". I have no idea what this is all about.

Any input from other CW27FX owners, wondering if they have the same issue.

 

this might be a stupid question but did it install it into the accessory's folder in the start menu. I dont know sometimes I see weird stuff in there

 

hello can anyone advise me on what programs to uninstall. i have the VPC CW27FX from best buy and im not sure on which programs people usually keep and which ones they delete.

Thanks

 

Keep whatever you would actually use.

Easy

 

Can any of BB CW27FX owners confirm the same thing, I called Sony tech support today and they had no idea what I was talking about, they are going to escalate the case to the higher level and also wanted me to do a factory reset. I would really like to confirm it with other best buy CW27FX owners before doing that!!!!!any body????

 

I uninstalled several things including "Click to Disc", so it was definitely there to begin with.

If you go to uninstall a program through Control Panel, it shows up as or under a "PMB VAIO Edition plug in."

If you use it so much, just add a shortcut to your desktop after you find the EXE file.

Hope that helps.

 

If anyone is still wondering how well games are running, I have some answer for you. It runs Arma2 really well!!! But the resolution must be 720p to see some guys from a long distance.

My in-game option is:
No AA.
16 AF
Texture: normal
Shadow: High
Postprocessing: High
Distance: 1200 or less
Resolution: 720P and 1:1 matching
Object detail: normal
Ground detail: normal

With this option I can play Arma2 with about 240 units in a forest or city map.

But Borderlands is much lagging even if I got over 40 ~ 50 frames per second. It doesn't maintain a constant frame rate on the newest DLC addon.

Mass Effect 2 is a huge bump. I played this with an external monitor at 1080p resolution with the highest option. No lagging.

MW1 and MW2 must be used with an external monitor @ 1080p to see players from a distance. Otherwise you must downscale it to 720p or something to see it better with 14 inch LCD. BTW, it runs like a charm.

I didn't tested the Crysis well but I saw someone was testing Crysis with i3 core + 330m; you can find it in Youtube. It runs good. I guess i5 can handle it better than that.

 

Also, you can reset your laptop as factory version. There was Sony recovery partition in my HDD, which consumed about 8 GB. When Windows entered the recovery mod, it will read the recovery partition. BTW, I deleted it for a clean W7 ultimate version installation.

 

Will the version of this notebook that has the 1600x900 screen, be available at the Best Buys in Canada anytime soon? Anyone know?

 

any one have any info as to when they might be getting some?

 

keep checking everyday. It seems they get new stock around Thursdays, but they sell out fast.

 

any idea what time (and time zone) they usually update the website?

 

thanks for the reply, it does show up in the list of installed programs in add / remove programs exactly like you had mentioned, i.e. "PMB Vaio edition plug in (click do disc), PMB Vaio Edition plug in (Vaio Movie story).

I think I know whats going on over here, these programs are now embeded with in PMB and do show up separate. So Vaio click to disc software is now embedded with in PMB and as far as I am concerned, PMB will do the same for me as in importing a video from my Sony DV camcorder and burning it to a disc. I tried your advice and clicked on the EXE file from "click to disc folder" from C>program files>Sony>Vaio creation>click to disc and it opened the same PMB application. That sort of confirms it. I am glad I did not follow Sony's tech advice to do a factory reset right away.

BTW, what software do you use for your video editing / importing,,,,, Roxio or intervideo or Nero

 

Man, mine is "scheduled" for delivery Thursday, the wait is killing me!