Looking to buy a Vaio SR290...

can anyone who owns or has owned a Vaio SR290 give me some pro/cons?

I will be paying $705 after tax and thought I would jump on it while I can assuming I can get some feedback from someone.

Thanks,

 

holy crap? $700??

 

Yeah, 10% student discount, $200 off, free shipping, and then a $100 sony credit card credit....

I thought it was a sweet deal....

 

yeah... i paid $2000 for mine..

Well to answer your questions, this laptop is all pros to me
It's very quiet and cool running, very fast, and very good looking
It's very portable and gets great battery life too!

 

The only upgrade I made was getting windows vista the the xp downgrade disc. Is this a difficult process to downgrade to XP? Should I save the $50 and keep vista? I have never used vista.

Are there any upgrades that I should make before I purchase the laptop?

 

I don't recommend downgrading to XP.. Vista has worked great and flawlessly for me.. I would never want to go back to XP. Save your $50

What's you gonna use your laptop for??
Make sure you get a decent CPU, and at least 2GB of ram

 

I have an iMac that I use for my video/photo editing.

I would use the Vaio for school work, heavy internet use (online classes), and other basic everyday tasks. I currently have a Dell Inspiron 1200 that is just crap and can't handle the heavy load of having multiple programs open at once.

I was going to select the T3200 2.0ghz processor and it comes with 2GB of ram. Should I bump it up to 3GB and a better processor?

 

seconded, keep vista, much better and more stable, and ease of use when compared to xp.

 

that processor is crap.. if you can afford it.. get at least a P8400
you can easily upgrade the ram later yourself if you want to, it's cheaper that way too

 

Is it easy to remove the "bloatware" once I get it?

 

Yes, it's better to spend your money now on the things TonytheTiger said. The ram, OS, and hard drive, those can all be upgraded by yourself with ease later on down the road. Processor is a different story. Id go with what TonytheTiger said and at least get the P8400 so that you don't regret it later on.

 

Most all brands come with bloatware. Depending on your knowledge of computers, it should not be difficult to remove it.

 

Here are the details of the computer after adding the P8400. Total will be $802.07. Good deal?


Customization Details
No Engraving
MOTION EYE® Camera
QuickBooks Simple Start
Trusted Platform Module / Biometric Fingerprint Sensor
Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD with Intel® Clear Video Technology
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26GHz)
Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology
13.3" WXGA (XBRITE-ECO™ technology)
Windows® Live OneCare 90-Day Trial
Titanium Gray
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
2 GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 1GBx2)
Microsoft® Works
DVD±R DL / DVD±RW / DVD-RAM Drive
No Fresh Start™
160 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
Standard Battery
Video Standard
Temporarily out of stock. Estimated ship date: 11/25/2008.

 

It should be pretty easy, just go into Control Panel, and uninstall what you don't want.

Follow this Vista Tweak Guide
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532
and this website
http://www.blackviper.com/
to tweak Vista
it makes Vista runs faster and more efficiently

 

Sounds good to me!

 

In the past 6 months i have been searching for the best deal on a laptop. This is by far the best deal i have come across.

 

Thanks for everyone's help. I will post an update once I receive it and have a few days to break it in...

 

I wonder how do you get the $802.07 deal for CTO model with P8400 processor. Before applying $200 off coupon, the total that I got is $1144.99 on 11/17.

 

Anyone knows for CTO model, how many dedicated VRAM is on the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3470?

In SR290 Product Specs (PDF), it says 250 MB VRAM. However it gives 128 MB in the "More Info" link in the order webpage.

 

I believe it's 128 MB for the SR1-series. Is it possible the SR2 series got 256 MB VRAM? Just be careful to look at whether it says "dedicated" VRAM, because a lot of manufacturers try to pump up the VRAM numbers by utilizing "shared VRAM" which is not quite the same thing at all.

 

He showed on the first page. He has student discount and Sony card credit rolled in. Your price just has $200 Sony price drop...

 

I'm looking at getting a SR also.... What OS recovery media does the SR ship with? Do they include a recovery cd, or is the recovery stuff on a hidden partition on the hard drive which is accessed during boot?

 

The recovery is on a hidden partition and you can burn recovery DVDs from it or just run recovery from the partition during boot.

 

There are other recovery options out there. We provide them for example, and there may be more help for you on this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=293880

or this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30

 

all pros on the sr, will own a sr290 soon. the battery life could be better than 2:30. otherwise this machine is beautiful.

 

The battery is only 2:30 for you??
you're not reading the Vista estimate are you??
cause it always has an estimate of 2:30 but my battery always last at least 3:30
and i have the ati card

 

well it says 2:30, but i only usually get 2:45 to 3 at most. no where near 3:30 though. are you using any special settings? i am in balanced mode with brightness at 60%.

 

i replied you on the other thread..