Purchased Sony Vaio SR 210

Okay, i just purchased a Sony Vaio Sr 210 from retail store, got a $100 dollar discount. The spec is 2.0ghz T5800, 3GB ram and 250gb of storage for $1350 CND. Right now I am having buyer's remorse because I think I should of purchased a custom VAIO for $1500 with P8600, 2gb ram, and 160gb of storage ($150 more, more powerful CPU but less ram and less storage). I am a student, I am probably not needing any SUPER fast laptop but I need a laptop that can survive 4 years and that can run most programs at excellent speeds. But my MOST important need is to have a long battery life.

My question is basically, do you guys think it was worth purchasing vaio sr with +1GB more ram and +100gb more storage but less powerful CPU (at $150 lower cost)?
2nd) How much MORE battery life can you obtain from a P8600?
3rd) I need to uninstall a lot of useless applications included with the laptop, which applications are deemed useless (like software that is insignificant for everyday use or programs that suck like M$ works). I really need to clean up my hard drive.

Thanks.

 

I think you made a good choice. 2.0Ghz C2D is plenty of CPU power. A more powerful CPU will only pay off if you are using CPU dependent applications, like encoding/decoding or maths.

Vista runs better with 3GB, so again good choice.
Hard drive space is always handy.

2) very little difference.

3) or even better do a clean install. try searching this forum, there are many clean install/semi clean install/ bloatware removal guides.

 

Thanks so much for replying, greatly appreciated. Yeah, for the clean install thing, I don't really have the tools to do so (or at least I don't think) because I only have the restore disk from Sony so I think if I pop that in, it will install vista + all the applications I don't need again.

 

You should be able to do a semi-clean install with the recovery discs. It will still help some.

 

Right now I am considering returning my T5800 sr in return to pay $180 more for 160GB of storage instead of 250gb, and for a INTEL P8600.

 

my observation is that t series processor use 35w/34w of energy while p series use 25w of energy. so i would assume the p series to use less battery. it is true of the p8400-8600 versus the t9400+. this is the centrino 2 (penryn processors). im not sure about t5800 tho.

 

is there any benchmarks comparing P8400, P8600 and T5800. If the performance difference is only 10-15% better on the P models, than I will stick with the T5800. But if it is more, I'll probably gonna return it to get the better CPU. Can some PLEASE help me... i am dying here lol. So do you guys think the P8600 performs 15+% faster than the T5800?

 

Depends on what you do. The P-series should do better in terms of battery life, but unless you really run lots of CPU-intensive tasks, you probably wouldn't see that much of an improvement. Why don't you try gaming/doing whatever is the most intensive thing you'll do on your laptop, and if it's good enough... well, who cares if the number is not as high as the others? For the most part, the GPU will be the bottleneck in gaming, not the CPU, so ... it's really up to you.

 

Gaming doesn't really mean that much to me, since I have my desktop to do that. But, do you guys think the T5800, 250gb, 3gb ram SonyVaio Sr was a good deal for $1350 CND?
I could purchase a 3gb, 160gb and 2.4ghz P8600 for $1540CND. ~$200 CND more. I keep hearing from people that the T5800 is a cheap mobile CPU/ bad cpu and a lot of different companies are offering the T5800 laptops for only 900-1000 range.

 

What applications do you use?

A high end CPU will only benefit you if you're using CPU intensive applications.

 

If you're not maxing around your CPU, essentially you won't even notice the improvement and what you end up doing is spending more $$$ to get a reduced hard drive space. Personally, if I had to choose, I'd go with more HDD space than CPU power, especially since something like the P8400 is only 260MHz faster than the T5800.

 

The applications I use are typical student applications: Excel, word, powerpoint, web browsers, photo editing, access, PDF, etc,etc.
Also, most of the time I have 3 to 5 programs opened simutanously. Like, powerpoint lecture, PDF tutorial, word homework, excel for graphing, and winamp to listen to music. <--Typical set up when I study.

 

i got my laptop... for 1500 us dollar tax included. i think u can get a better deal. should wait for deals to come out on deals2buy.com.

i bought mine when they had 50% off all upgrades and 200 dollar off all sr model.

i would also say get the p series cus u get better battery life AND performance.

 

if i was in your shoes id just buy a p9500 and install that instead, $180 can make quite a difference.

 

you mean buy the P9500 and install it myself?
\\wait, can you even upgrade the CPU yourself on the sr?
--> Anyways, I am a student, I don't think dropping 2000 k on a laptop is worth the money since technology advances so fast that it's not worth the 2000 dollars, since in a month or two the newest technology becomes the standard. Thus, I rather go for the bang for the buck performance.

And to be honest with you, all I need to know is if the P8600 is more than 15% faster than the t5800 in terms of overall benchmark performance to make my decision.

 

Also, as I mentioned before, I only use the m$ office 2007 programs, winamp, some dvds, etc, but i almost always multitask, thus, i need a good multitasking cpu.

 

Lately, I have been reading upgrading laptop CPUs manually, as in waiting 2 years than upgrade the CPU on the laptop, is this possible on a Sony Vaio SR? I had tweaked and made my own desktop computer before, but never had I even opened a laptop (except installing ram). So do you guys think it is an option to upgrade CPU later by purchasing the CPU seperately and installing it myself?

Also, what about upgrading the hd to 7200rpm? or even faster RPM down the line?

 

They're all options. Upgrading the HDD & RAM in the SR seems especially easy (not a lot of stuff to take apart). That said, upgrading the HDD & CPU yourself will likely void the warranty (though you might get away with upgrading the HDD if they don't see any signs of it). Upgrading the RAM yourself is fine.

 

Do the Sony Vaio SR have the same motherboard or socket, regardless of CPUs? Because, I can't find any information on T5800 (i just know speed, fsb, cache) except on some german websites. Because, if they have the same motherboard(socket) i wnt to upgrade the CPU to T9000+ (if it permits) in 2 years when it becomes cheaper, plus more 4 gb of ram + 7200rpm 250gb hd.