SR First Impressions

I've been waiting to make a notebook purchase. I sold my last notebook a Lenovo X300 a few weeks ago, and I finally made my choice yesterday. I ordered an SR from Newegg with next day shipping. I've only had a little time to check out the machine since it arrived this morning. Here are my initial impressions.


* The machine is very well built. Feels very sturdy and doesn't have a cheap feeling. The palm rest plastic is a little thin, but not too bad. The top of the right palm rest flexes a little under pressure, but not any more than my T60. The top of the left palm rest is nice and firm. The display cover is rigid and not as flexible as the carbon fiber lids on the TZ and SZ that I owned in the past. The display cover is also very thin for magnesium. I remember on the older magnesium SZ's that the magnesium lid was quite a bit thicker than the carbon fiber models. Not so on the SR. The base is solid as well. All in all the machine feels nice to hold and well built.

* The keyboard is light years ahead of the old SZ models. The keys have nice depth, and have just the right amount of resistance before the key mechanism breaks over. As someone who owned an X505 it's about time Sony went back to this style of keyboard for all their models. All of the keys seem to work equally well. Space bar is nice and flat and works anywhere you depress it.

* The display is beautiful. The whites are white and the blacks are almost black. OK, so the colors just pop and the whites are blindingly pristine and white, but the blacks could be a bit better. Believe me this display is better than 99% of the notebook displays out there, but there is a little backlight bleed thru. It isn't so much concentrated at the bottom as you normally see, but with the display cranked to max brightness the display isn't a true black. No dead or stuck pixels to be seen. Right now I'm in a bright room and I have the brightness set to 7/9. At full brightness it's too bright! No graininess to be seen. BTW, I went into the ATI control panel and turned up the color intensity a bit. Now the colors are just sick they are so rich. As mentioned in another post the display is a touch on the warm side. It isn't yellow, but it definitely isn't blue. I like it. Reminds me of the difference between my old iPhone and my iPhone 3G.

* I'm very picky with my notebooks almost to a fault. I always seem to find something wrong and that fault usually bugs me to death. Well with the SR I figured I was going to be bummed with the touchpad. Yes, I am a touchpad snob. IMHO, Synaptics has THE best touchpads in the PC world. Apple probably has the best touchpads period, but the last time I checked my wife won't let me transplant her Macbook trackpad into my notebooks. Anyways, Sony has been using Alps touchpads for the past several years in just about all their notebooks. The last Sony that I remember having a Synaptics touchpad was an older SR model. That had to be a good seven or eight years ago. Well suffice to say I just about fell out of my chair this morning when I went to the Mouse control panel and saw the Synaptics tab. I almost shed a little tear. Yes, it's sad. I know I'm not the only person out there that hates Alps touchpads so all of you Synaptics fans you can rejoice! Moving on, the touchpad itself is nice and large and has a great texture. It isn't super smooth and grippy (AKA HP) and it isn't too coarse either. Just about perfect. The touchpad buttons are firm and give a bit of a noisy click when depressed. I've felt better, but conversely I felt a lot worse. Sandwiched in-between the buttons is the fingerprint reader. Not much to say there except it does have a scroll option. So you have your pick between the touchpad or fingerprint reader when you need some scroll action. Choice is good.

* Machine seems to run quite cool. I am very particular about fan noise and the SR passes all my requirements. The fan seems to run just about all the time, but it is very quiet. The fan speed seems to maintain a consistent speed. None of the traditional Sony ramp up/down/on/off every 10 second crap of old. I don't feel any warm spots on the palmrests or keyboard. Exhaust air gets warm at times, but no more than any other machine I've owned.

* Yes the battery does wobble, but just a touch. Not nearly as bad as other Sony's I've owned. The dock connector cover stays put as well.

* The speakers suck. OK, they pass as speakers, but just barely. It's understandable though for such a small package. I would like a little more volume and bass, but hey I'm still giddy over the touchpad. Sony earned some brownie points with me.

* The machine shipped with 2 GBs of RAM. I opened up the RAM cover expecting to remove one 1 GB DIMM and installing my 2 GB DIMM. Low and behold Sony left one slot open by shipping the machine with one 2 GB DIMM. Good job Sony.

* Machine is full of bloat. Since the machine does not ship with recovery disks I had to create my own. After creating some disks I swapped out the Toshiba 250 GB 5400 RPM drive for my Hitachi 7K200. I restored the OS and weeded out some of the junk. The machine is very snappy now and I'm quite satisfied with the performance.

All in all I have to say that this machine is a definite keeper. This is the happiest I've been with a machine in a very long time. I'll post some benchmarks for the junkies shortly.

SPECS:

SR129
Vista Home Premium
Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 Ghz
4 GB RAM (upgraded from 2 GB) DDR2 800
200 GB 7K200 (upgraded from 250 GB 5400 RPM)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 128 MB RAM



Windows Experience Index




wPrime

 

congrats on your purchase, can you post the specs of the machine?

 

Congrats man!

So, newegg pulled through Good to see! Oh god I can feel the flames coming closer to my face "OmG dUkE u WaS RoNg, HaHaHA! NeW EgG wrOcKs!"

Anyhow, im excited now, it seems great! could you check the headphone port for me? any static noises when no sounds are playing through headphones?

battery life check please!!!

 

Looking great so far!

Looks like Newegg didn't ship out my package today, as it's still in TN and was recently scanned into the system (Origin scan), but the delivery is rescheduled for tomorrow. You had me beat duffyanneal

 

Damn, i cant believe you got yours already. im jealous. Still waiting on Sony to ship mine.

 

Sorry to ask, but could you give some simple instructions on making the recovery disks and swapping the hard drive?

 

Definitely, please do an extensive battery life test - I'm curious to see how long it lasts, especially with the HD 3470. Standard battery I assume?

And more detail on the speaker? If I were to watch an episode of House in a room with a few other people, would we all be able to hear it?

 

Sorry I don't have much time to do any battery testing. I do have some good news. I don't hear any buzzing, popping, or assorted naughtiness listening thru my earphones. That is quite strange...I can't remember the last machine I used that didn't make some sort of noise thru the headphone jack. Especially, while running on the battery. And yes I do have the volume turned up.

 

I'm very happy to hear it uses Synaptics for the touchpad, I hope its safe to say the rest of the Centrino 2 Vaio models will be the same???

 

Click on the Start button and type VAIO Recovery Center into the search bar. Once you launch the app you'll see Create Recovery Discs in the left column.

After creating the discs I shut down the machine and swapped out the HDD. It is located under a convenient panel that butts up against the battery on the bottom of the machine. You have to remove the panel then two screws which release the drive from the machine. You have to tilt the drive out a little to expose the drive cable and ZIF style connector. Flip up the ZIF locking tab and remove the cable and drive. Once the HDD is free remove the four screws that attach the HDD to the rails. You'll need to move the plastic insulating sheet and drive cable to the new drive. Reverse everything to get the drive back in. If any of this sounds confusing let someone else do it.

 

Actually, the FW uses Alps. I played with one at Best Buy, and had assumed the SR would follow ranks as so many other Sony models have over the past several years. The Alps touchpad on the X300 was one of the reasons I bailed on the Lenovo. You know how many years Thinkpads have used Synaptics? You can imagine my surprise when I discovered the change. It was sacrilegious.

Yeah, as long as the room was quiet.

 

My speaker question above?^^

 

Grats Man!!
And thank you very much for your review.
If you have a chance, can you run some games and see if there's any obvious heating issue?

 

seconded,
Could you try running:

Original Ghost Recon
Half Life 2
Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield

and tell us what kind of fps you get?

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Now playing: StarCraft 2 Main Theme
via FoxyTunes

 

Ha, I couldn't wait to point this out to you specifically...! J/K

Anyhow, nice write up, please give an update once you've had it for a little while...

 

God, my heart was thumping as I clicked on this thread but it paid off! I, too, jumped on the Newegg sale+coupon code deal (who could pass up $1269.99 shipped?), and I'm so glad to think I won't be disappointed! This is my first laptop ever, and it looks like it should fit my college-bound needs perfectly, as long as the battery life is decent. Here's hoping!

Anyways, I noticed the "1x2GB" on the Newegg memory specs before I bought, and that had me wondering: Can I just stick another 2GB stick of DDR2 800 in the empty slot, or do the brands need to match (in which case I'll have to spring for a full 4GB set)? From your write-up, it seems like you can just add a single stick, but could anyone clarify?

P.S. And yes, Duke2007, you were WRONG! Newegg has shipped mine already.

 

Bummer....

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Can you download 3DMark06 Basic (free download) and run it through the tests? Probably easier than testing individual games and it allows us to compare the results with other similarly spec'd models.

Oh and would you please upload the new Vaio 2008 wallpapers (see this thread)? Thank you!

 

Done. Go have fun!

 

I was super close to buying it (Brother wants to piggyback on with a new motherboard). I am excited.

 

Pics would be nice though!

Pix or it didnt happen, lol.

 

The wprime benchmarks lists the P8400 as the processor. Its gotta be the SR or where else did he get a penryn processor?

Anyways thank you so much for your first impressions. I was debating between this and the sz. But seeing as how the SR is now cheaper on newegg than the SZ (how does that make any sense?) I'm leaning strongly towards the SR. I anxiously await your results for battery life and graphics performance. If they turn out good, I'm sold.

 

Heck, I'm even considering it myself... and I was all set to get an FW!

 

Quick Q, how do you "turn up the color intensity" in the ATI control panel? I can find the slider to turn up the color saturation but I dunno if that's what your talking about.

 

did you also receive your laptop??

 

Yeah, read my "FW vs. SR" thread to see some super quick impressions of mine.

 

Granted, but your 6's are too wide.

Anyways in case anyone was curious, a chinese site reviewed the SR.
http://nb.zol.com.cn/99/993907.html
3DMark06:2048

http://nb.zol.com.cn/99/993910.html
Battery Mark: 3 hr 29 min (btw this model had the dedicated Ati graphics card)

 

I wish I could read chinese

 

Hasn't anyone heard of Google Translator???

 

Someone needs to test out an SR with a HD 3470 and the 5400RPM drive (not 347/7200RPM).

Because so far, the claims are 3.5 (which seems to be right on the money with that review) for 3470/7200, and 5 for IGP/5400. I want 3470/5400!

I need a definite answer about the batt life difference between 3470 and IGP, with everything else the same.



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Now playing: Coldplay - Clocks
via FoxyTunes

 

... Someone is? Check the other SR thread, the person's just using the stock stuff that came with the laptop, if I am not mistaken.

(I was almost going to be like, GOOGLE TRANSLATION?! to the one post.)

Chinese literal to English isn't as bad as you think. It's somewhat more understandable than Japanese literal to English.

 

Wow, I felt like an idiot. I have never heard about it

 

I'm guessing your talking about the vista performance rating thingy, well, i'm running it now, so far all the stuff is posted in the FW vs. SR thread.

 

Wait f***, that Chinese review has 3470 and 5400RPM for 3:30 battery life....
F***. I want to see IGP battery life and the battery life discrepancy between the two.

How representative of real life battery life is the MobileMark test? I've never used it before or had a laptop before. What does it keep enabled, etc?

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Now playing: Coldplay - Clocks
via FoxyTunes

 

Hmm, I think it'll be more accurate besides the online "professional" reviews. It will most likely get that much, Sony seems to be good at coding the battery part of the bios for efficiency. Also, remember that Sony seems to have some kind of software system where it'll switch between making your card dedicated and integrated, if I am not mistaken.

 

The SR doesn't have that.


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Now playing: Coldplay - Clocks
via FoxyTunes

 

Oh, it doesn't? Eh. I still think that because the graphics card is just a "Mid-range" one, it doesn't eat battery life simply because it's just not "powerful" like the Performance-type ones.

I'd say it's still probably the bios coding for the battery. (Asus has poor coding, and it results in like, 2 hour battery lives for their laptops. >>.)

 

Sorry I dont have the link where I read this but i believe with the ATi card, you'll get around 3.5 and with IGP its around 5 hours. This is all according to battery mark. Im hardly an expert but I've been looking into this laptop for some time and I believe I remember reading that ATi video cards can downclock when theyre not needed. Can anyone verify this?

 

Well, I definitely do think that they downclock. That other person with an SR did the 3dMark06 test on the battery, but not on high performance and it resulted in like, a difference of 1000 "marks". (Normally under 2100, he got around 1053.) My suspicion is that it probably does downclock itself depending on what you are doing and what "mode" you are on.

 

All video cards, even those on desktops, downclock when not under heavy load.

Was that test run under Vista, and will XP make a difference on battery life?

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Now playing: Coldplay - Viva La Vida
via FoxyTunes

 

... Yeah, but he was on battery and in vista, making a heavy load on his laptop. So I think that it kinda helps to prove that it does downclock it if you are on battery/power saving options. "Vaio Optimized" isn't quite "High Performance", so I think that made a difference.

Yeah, the person ran it right out of the box.... And I don't know. There hasn't been too many whom have gotten the SR yet, so I don't know. It kind of depends, I know that some of those Netbook PCs sometimes have better battery life with Vista instead of XP. (Again, I think that depends on how the battery part of the bios was coded by the manufacturer.)

 

Duffy, or anyone else with a SR, care to test for the dreaded VAIO battery power drain issue:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=146956

All you need is 18-24 hours with it shutdown (real shutdown, not sleep) and unplugged from the AC adapter.

 

That would be very interesting.