Going to purchase a FZ190. Specs and advice please. shipping q too.

T7300 2.0 ghz
160 GB harddrive
2 gb ram
8400 GT


ok so, a couple questions please

1. Is the HDD 5400 rpm?

2. black or white keyboard? personal experiences with either that you want to share?

3. what issues are there with the fz190 as of now?

4. if the site said est. shipp 8/15, will that be accurate? it does not say its on back order i don't believe...

5. will i at least get 2-3 hours on a std. battery on lowish brightness settings? (for college purposes)

6. any suggestions for my laptop?

 

1) Yes.
2) I have the white keyboard and I like it. I've seen the black and it looks good too. You would think the white would pick up dirt, but so far mine is still clean.
3) Lack of support for installing XP. Instant-on does not work with the 8400m GT. I find the fan to be a bit annoying. It isn't loud, but it's whiny and slightly confused-sounding. Make sure you put a cloth in between the keyboard and the screen to avoid scratches, because the notebook is very thing (good and bad thing). Also, you'll want to upgrade the drivers...I'm using 162.18, I think (check the FZ owners thread, there are a few that work), because the ones that Sony provides aren't any good.

4) Most likely that is correct. They actually shipped a few days before estimated date for me.

5) Maybe. I get about 2.5 hours with the extended battery on power saver mode. Maybe a bit less.

 

I have the black keyboard and I think it makes a great color scheme, instead of the whole thing being in one color.

@ATP, does OpenGL work with the newer drivers installed? I tried installing an nVidia release of the 163.xx driver with the modified inf from laptopvideo2go and it somehow didn't put opengl on it. I reverted to Sony's original and OpenGL worked fine.

 

suggestion when u get the notebook:

- Turn on the notebook
- Create sony's recovery DVD's with "Vaio recovery center"
- Get rid of bloatware

ps: make shoure first thing you do is create sony's recovery dvd's because i first got rid of bloatware and when i tryed to make my recovery dvd's an error apear... then o got to restore my notebook with the f10 key on the bios screen and then i could create the recovery dvd's

 

And the REAL moral of that story is be sure you KNOW what is bloatware and what isn't! Or if you have access to a real Vista install disk do a clean install instead. It sure beats trying to figure out what is really bloatware.

Gary

 

I'd be willing to test if OpenGL works, but I'm not sure how; all the games I'm using are Direct X.

 

T7300 2.0 ghz
160 GB harddrive
2 gb ram
8400 GT


i suggest the 1 gig ram instead of the 2 gb ram because the 2 gb costs 90 dollars more than 1 gb and i just spent 130 on a 2 gb ram and added to 1 gb ram and made it 3 gb ram.. it is the cheaper way.

 

Just be SURE you get the option with 1 gig on a single stick not 2 sticks of 512 each. Otherwise it will be more expensive to throw those two out and add in 2 or 3 gig. From the discussion a couple of days ago apparently there are two different 1 gig configs available. Only one of those two configs being the single stick version.

Gary