Is a Sony Vaio EA a good choice?

I was considering the option of buying a dell xps 16 but the size kinda threw me off, i was wondering if you guys could give me a review on the sony Vaio EA series and if is is any good?

 

What specific specifcations would the model you get have and what do you intend on using it for?

 

I'm gona have to go with EA since it replaced the CW but I'm anoyed that you can only choose ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 which is pretty weak, but still better than without it.

 

Intel® Core™ i5-540M processor (2.53GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
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Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
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Gunmetal Black
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Blue keyboard skin
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500GB hard disk drive (5400rpm)
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4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
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ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 GPU (512MB VRAM)
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CD/DVD drive
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Standard capacity battery
2 Year Express Ship Service Plan for Notebooks
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I intend to use it for college, so stuff like word processing, web browsing, microsoft office, schoolwork, and ocassional gaming during my free time (nothing to extreme). Seems kinda like a rip at $ 1,147.54 even with the 5% student discount.

 

The GPUs available in the XPS16 are generally stronger. I saw on the Dell NZ website the other day that the upper end models are now coming with 5730s.

Do understand though that you will always been that bit limited with a 5470. It will run most games just don't expect the settings to be particulary high.

For schoolwork the EA will be great. I have considered getting one myself for that purpose to replace a FZ. For school I would not want to be carrying around anything bigger than a 15inch. The other notebook I would consider is something from the Asus UL series. Most have low power CULV processors that won't help with games but they do have far better battery life than either the Sony EA or the Dell XPS16.

 

so would you say that the vaio EA was worth the price tag? or should i try to haggle a sales rep to get it lower?

 

I always try that, hardly ever works though but I take some satisfaction in trying. What is the price of the configuration you are conisdering. I probably can't help you with comparing US pricing but someone else can.

 

# Cart Subtotal $ 1,169 .97
# Promotional Discount - $117 .00
# Tax $ 94 .57
# Shipping $ 0 .00
# Remaining Balance $ 1,147 .54 (i added a 2 yr warranty)

This series doesn't come with the student discount though, but i chatted with a sales rep and she said she could offer a 5% discount equivalent to the student one, so somewhere around $1090.16

 

I just started looking at the EA, and it looks like (at least in New Zealand) it's available with an ATI mobility 5650?

VPCEA16FG : E Series : VAIO Notebooks & Computers : Sony New Zealand

Not sure if this helps at all, but is possibly interesting...