Having hard time choosing s360vs s460?

To tell you truth, I first owned the latest Vaio fs series. I purchased with the price tag 1899 cdn. Hell 2000 dollar seemed hella expensive considering there were lot cheaper ones. I didnt have any trouble with FS series other than the fact that the games dont support 1280x800 didnt work in full screen (could be fixed with tweaking with display mode) and kept losing connection with wirelesss linksys router and my intel centrino. I was able to fix those above problems later with my S460 (with tweaking with computer a little ) I probably couldve fixed those problems eventually as s460 had same problem. Soon or later, my fs series price just kept dropping 1799-> 1699-> den even 1399 (model without the dvd burner). I couldnt believe my eyes. The laptop itself was really good however, the 2 % was well bit 'non-satisfying' I returned my fs series to futureshop and took another look at vaio laptop; this time more elegant, more powerful, more mobile, yet most of all, the laptop I would love. S series came into my eye. Pricetag was overwhelming. 2499 cdn. 2800+ after 14% tax. I was quite surprised. This small device cost more than a plasma tv. I was actually looking for s360 but the manager said they were all out and gave me a deal for the display model; 100 dollar discount. I took a another look at the s360 display model; I DONT THINK so. s360 was just merely more than a display model there more like badly used laptop. HA!? 100 dollar discount only? Well, little bit off track here.

I knew s460 was sonoma based, while s360 was dothan, which meant s460 had 10% boost in performance compared to s360. Yet on the other hand, it does lose its superb battery life, and graphic card, and not to mention it gains more heat and fan noise. I really had no option. Everywhere s360 seemed to be out of stock, guess I' m stuck with s460.

This is totally upto you: would you want 10 % boost performance for weaker graphic card, shorter battery life, and more heat/fan noise?

My guide: I dont think so. The price are identical [from what i see] Go for s360 if possible :noisyfan: verheat: :budget:

 

"...not to mention it gains more heat and fan noise."

how do you know that's for sure? even if the s460 is hotter, how hot are we talking about? 2 degree? 3 degrees hotter? the s-series is quite hot to begin with

10% faster in terms of Centrino is a respectable amount.

i do agree with you that the s360's graphics card is better than the s460, but ultimately, lets say game XYZ doesn't play smoothly on the s460, then it is in all likelihood that game XYZ will also not play smoothly on the s360.

my point is, critics of the Sony S-series are too critical on the s460s and giving the s360 too much credit. the way i see it, the slightly stronger graphics card of the s360 doesn't warrant it as a better notebook than the s460. s460 has the newer technologies: ddr2, sonoma, pci express.

s360's hd is slower (4200rpm)

that's just my opinion. good luck to those who are still deciding between the s460 and the s360 (might want to look at the comparable asus also). anyways, if you choose any of those, then you've made the right decision. hopefully, you won't go insane and run off to buy a dell...

 

Your absolutely right

s460 do offer better performance and latest technonologies as u mentioned above, and I did forget to mention s460 comes with dvd burner.

Its really tough choice:
s460: better performance, latest sonoma technonology, dvd burner, faster harddrive (5400rpm)
s360: better graphic card, less heat/fan noise and longer battery life.

It really depends on that person. However, less heat/fan noise and longer battery life is real catch for me. I dont know if i am ever going to experience 10% boost in performance.

'How do i know it creats more heat/fan noise?' Well, its bound to isnt it? Sonoma creats more heat for all i know, which leads to fan whirlling? There is more heat actually.

 

But don't forget that Sony tends to unclock their video cards, so you should be able to get better performance by overclocking yourself. Featurewise, the 6200 has hardware decoding features that aren't available on the ATI 9700.

 

just out of curiosity, how to you 'overclock?'

 

There's a hidden setting in all nvidia cards that allows you to modify the clock and memory speeds. You can either tweak the registry to allow this or use this program below:

http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_coolbits/

After the setting is enabled, raise the clock speed proportionally with the memory speed until the screen blacks out during testing. If you have any questions, just keep posting here and I'll be glad to help.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

Here's another site just in case the first one doesn't work.