New Member - Ordered SR290

Hello, All.

Just wanted to introduce myself and say hello. I've been a Sony and Panasonic guy for life. Just ordered a VAIO SR290 to go along with my VAIO desktop and my Sony PS3. I've used Sony products for a while and they have yet to fail me. I did a CTO on the SR290 and the specs can be found in my sig. I'm looking forward to getting it but the expected ship-date isn't until January 6th. Any chance Sony might be ahead of the schedule considering the holidays and all? It also comes with a Location Free unit which seems cool.

The only thing I can say about the SR right now is I hate the fact that Sony wouldn't let me choose Night Black because of the fact I upgraded the graphics card to the ATI, and Sony customer service sucks, big time (first time I've had to deal with them).

If anyone is interested in swapping their Night Black lid cover for a Titanium Gray, let me know

I'd also appreciate it if you guys could let me know if there is anything specific I should know about the SR290, such as precautions and helpful warnings regarding anything. Thanks in advance.

 

grats, hope you like it.

Right now I'm considering ordering a Vaio Sr-290 or Lenovo Thinkpad T400

 

My prior experience with Sony customer service was not so great either, but it did not stop me from ordering my second Vaio.

I just received my SR250 and I think it is amazing - the system is so light, sleek, and solid. The screen is to die for. My only surprise/concern so far is the SR battery life estimate bug. There's a seperate thread on it.

Good luck with your SR290, enjoy it!

 

First of all, congrats on your purchase and welcome to the forums. I ordered a Sony SR290 CTO as well and got mine about 3 weeks ago now. I will let you know that for the amount of tinkering I have been doing with this notebook, it has been absolutely rock solid. My specs are essentially the same as yours save a few differences here or there (my specs are in my sig as well).

About your question about shipping time, there are two things you have to consider. First, this time of year has a tendency to see more days when the supplier factories and, subsequently, the Sony factors are closed for the holidays. This is typically why the wait time goes up a bit. That being said however, when I ordered my unit, they quoted me a 10 business day build time and then 5 to 7 days to ground ship it to me. I received mine on my doorstep in exactly 10 days (including a Saturday and Sunday), so it showed up much sooner than the estimate. Hopefully, that is how it is for you and you get a slightly belate Christmas gift rather than a New Years gift lol.

As for the color, I am not sure why you couldn't get the black. I ordered the upgraded ATI graphics with HDMI port on my SR290 CTO and I got mine in black. Maybe they are having a shortage issue supply wise on that color. It does seem to be the most popular based on previous threads that discussed it.

Finally, there is really only two things that I would give you a heads up on being both a current and former Sony notebook owner (I have had 3 total including my current unit). One would be that Sony is very well known for putting a ton of bloatware on their new units regardless of if they are CTO or ready made units. That is why when I ordered mine, I went for for the Vista Business with the "Clean Slate" option. I got mine right out of the box with just the bare essential Sony software for my security elements to my VAIO and that was it. It was actually quite refreshing to not have to spend 5 hours removing and checking the system to clean it up. All I really had to do was just install my Antivirus, Microsoft Office, and some updates from Microsoft and I was done. Took me about 1 hour with the notebook hooked up to my router via the LAN. The second thing I would let you know about would be to check the "VAIO Optimized" power settings when you have a free moment. I found that there were a few additional tweaks I wanted to make there in order to get the most out of my battery life. That being said, I am averaging between 3 and 3:30 hours on my VAIO doing everything form video watching to surfing the web over the WiFi in my house.

At any rate, congrats again and if you have any questions, just give us a shout here and we will try to help ya out.

Congrats on your new unit as well hotsuma. I agree about the weird reading about the battery life, but I have some third party software that I use to monitor battery life and adjust its time scales as I use the battery life cycles. So, it is not as big of a deal to me personally.

BBGus

 

BBGus, thank you for the warm welcome.

I got it! It arrived Christmas-Eve! I got an e-mail on the 23rd saying that it has entered the production line so I was thinking that will probably take a few days and with the holiday closures, it wouldn't be shipped out until the first week of January (which is what the original estimate was). Then later that evening, I got an e-mail saying that it was shipped out!

Once it arrived I played around with it a bit and fell in love right away. Even though I couldn't get it in black like I wanted to, I don't find the Titanium Gray as bad as I thought it would be. I did a semi-clean install and added some additional software that I use. Everything went perfectly. The only thing that is missing is the software for the ATI card. the driver itself is there and the hardware works perfectly, just the configuration software itself is no where to be found.

I used the PC Wizard software to determine my monitor type and all I got was 1990.

Performance wise, it runs great. The fan is almost silent. I have noticed that the exhaust can be really hot at times. Though the laptop itself does not get much more than warm to the touch on the bottom.

Overall, I am very happy with it and look forward to more time with it.

 

I also did the semi-clean install on my SR and noticed that the ATI Control Panel was missing. Follow this guide and you will have your control panel back:
http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php
Btw, did you have to reinstall the drivers manually or were they all working after the final reboot of the semi clean install process?

 

That guide was kind of confusing. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to download.

All my drivers were present after the semi-clean install. This method works very well on the SR290 IMO.

 

You need to download 2 things:
1. The Catalyst 8.12 from here
and 2. the Mobility Modder from here
Then extract the Catalyst, and cancel the installation after the extract is complete.
Proceed to run the Mobility Modder (while running it it will ask you to browse to the folder you extracted and select it, it should be C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-12_vista64_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_72276).
Once the tool is done you can install the Catalyst (setup.exe) found at the same location as above.
Thats it!
Hope it helps....it all takes about 5 mins to complete.

 

Which software are you using?

 

30 days to return and get a refund, starts from the date they ship it to you. I would get an RMA a few days after you get it, just in case it breaks down day 30

 

Yeah!!! You're even luckier than me. Sony offered mandatory Titanium Gray w/ the ATI graphics only for a couple of days and then currently it goes to the Platinum Silver (adding $50 more)!!!

I can't stand the white keyboards so now I'm considering the Z

Anyway, welcome you and have fun w/ your SR (you can see that I joined NBR quite long ago but my posts are not much)

 

Thanks for the walk-through. I was able to complete the installation.

Only thing now is that my computer is identifying the driver as the ATI 3450 when in fact it is the ATI 3470. Is this a side effect of the installation or is this something that can be corrected? Thanks.

Edit: Another thing I've just noticed is that in my device manager, my processor is described as 8400 2.24ghz when in fact it is a 8600 2.4ghz. However, in the Control Panel ===> System, it is identified correctly.

 

Im not sure about your processor, but you dont have to worry about your system reporting your ATI being a 3450. It happened to me as well, and after a bit of research I found out that both the 3450 and 3470 cards use the same drivers and this is why it happens.