Sony FW Setup Advice

Hey everyone, i'm new to the forum but i've been snooping around here a bit since i've been searching for a laptop for college and i've uncovered some really useful info. I've decided on and ordered for an FW490-CTO as specified below:
• 16.4" widescreen with XBRITE-FullHD™ LCD technology (1920x1080)
• 320GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm]
• No Fresh Start
• Standard Capacity Battery
• ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD4650 w/ 1GB vRAM
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)(Reg. price $100.00)
• Blu-ray Disc™ playback
• Black
• Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
• 4GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 2GBx2)

I think it'll suffice for college work, turning heads, serving as a DVR while harboring movies and music, mostly muse for you fans out there. It will hopefully be shipped by tuesday so i've got a couple days to figure some things out.

Now i'm really nit picky for smooth and convenient computing so i've got a plan for getting my computer ready. I just want to make sure that a) things work out in theory and hopefully in practice and b) i get a chance to hear any insights or tips from you guys.

1) Partition Strategy
Obviously, I'll be doing this in combination with the the semi-clean install ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=146033). At least, i'm assuming reinstalling from the recovery partition will allow me to partition as if i was booting from a cd.

My plan is as follows:

Code:

C:\             30 Gigs       Operating System Files and Normal Programs
D:\             20 Gigs       Page Files/Virtual Memory
E:\             210+ Gigs     Games, Excess Programs, Multimedia
F:\             10 Gigs       Academic Files, Programs
G:\             ------------  External HDD
H:\-J:\         ------------  Optical Drives, Flash Drives, iPod, Etc.
K:\             30 Gigs       Backup Image
L:\             10 Gigs       Backup Academic Files

Now i am aware that Sony has that recovery partition. Since i plan to install windows 7, i figure it will be superfluous. Is that partition untouchable, or will i be able to get rid of that once i do the semi-clean install? Also, how does this set up look? I know partitioning can be an opinionated practice but my reasoning is i'm installing windows 7 RC and when windows 7 final comes around, I don't want to have to worry about backing up everything and then retransferring everything especially while i'm still at school. I also want to keep at least a singular backup for my academic files and programs aside from the complete hdd backup on the external. Also a little optimizing doesn't hurt no matter how small the difference may be.

2) Semi-Clean Install
So i plan to follow this procedure because many people have had success with it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=14603. I then plan to take my win7RC disk and then just upgrade it. I was also just thinking about using this clean install but it seems more complicated with a larger room for error: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=355715&highlight=clean+install. Will either work, is either more effective than the other, or am i missing something?

3) TV Tuner
Anybody have any experience using a tv tuner on the FW or in general? I plan to use a Hauppauge TV HD USB Stick because it seems like it's going to give me the most bang for my buck.

4) Tablet
As a student i'm gonna be taking a lot of notes so i plan on getting a Wacom Bamboo tablet and integrating it with One Note. I'm a strong proponent of the whole muscle-memory theory so i'd rather write up my notes than type them but still keep everything digital for convenience. Also the motion shortcuts that windows 7 promises could be pretty useful. Anybody have experience with tablets, especially on windows 7? Shouldn't be difficult to employ but any words of wisdom would help.

Thanks in advance for any help guys. Feel free to enlighten me on anything else as well, it would be much appreciated. I'm sure i forgot a question or something but i'll be sure to ask.

 

TV Tuner: you might mosey around the official Sony sites in other parts of the world, especially Japan. Unlike in the States and Canada, I believe several FW models there actually did come with the option of a TV tuner so you'd be able to check their support pages for some feedback on what they used and how it worked out.

Addendum: see post #3 by Cristyle at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=351783

You may wish to email this member since s/he has a Japanese FW model with TV tuner pre-installed.

Good luck!

 

The partitioning scheme is a bit of overkill to me.

First, there is no real benefit from have a separate partition for the pagefile, EXCEPT to make the C: image a bit smaller. If you had a separate hard drive it makes sense, for speed, to have the pagefile on a different drive. But a separate partition is not the same thing.

Second having programs installed anywhere except C: makes no sense because the registry MUST be on C: and the program files and registry are so intertwined. In your scheme, f you restore the programs partition you will also have to restore the C: partition, because of the registry. So why have them separated? If you have portable apps it MIGHT make sense to have them some place other than C:

Dedicating a separate partition for the documents backup also makes little sense to me. Especially if you are going to have an external HDD. I can see a case being made to have second copies of critical documents in another folder. But don't see what having a complete partition for them gets you.

My personal partition scheme is:

C: OS and all programs.
D: all data including My Documents, Outlook files, Internet Favorites etc.
G: Ghost image of C:

Gary