There's a FW with Hi-Color on newegg

I priced out the exact newegg config on sonystyle and even with the new savings from sonystyle its $1309 PLUS tax which puts it over $1400 compared to the $1199 @ newegg

 

plus, 2 things you didnt configure on sonystyle...the newegg has the better processor AND 7200RPM drive compared to what you configured

 

The Newegg configuration would be 1309.99 at Sonystyle after you upgrade to P8600 and 7200 RPM HD.

And then there is the tax.....

 

I forgot to mention that I don't care much about the P8600 (I don't think it offers a significant increase in performance to justify the increase in cost), and I don't care about the 7200rpm hard drive either. To me, the ability to return the product if I am not happy with it makes a big difference. As far as tax goes, I have to pay tax either way because I am in California and Newegg charges tax here...

 

In that case, might as well take advantage of Sony's deal.

 

I think it will be good enough. Vista can only use 3,12 or 3,2.

Dual channel can be nice but the difference in real world performance is small.

 

Sony is mixing Samsung & Qimoda sticks in their FW CTOs so I wouldn't worry about it (see over in the FW Owners thread). With my old HP laptop I had a Samsung stick and a Crucial stick and it worked fine. But I figured I'd be bright and buy another Crucial stick to match just because I thought it was the wise thing to do. Well, the pair of Crucial sticks caused Windows to freeze hard...I didn't even get the courtesy of a BSOD. I went back to the mixed config and never had a single problem. Go figure (of course, it was likely a bad Crucial component but I never bothered to diagnose further). Bottom line: don't worry about it.

 

Me too, never a problem with mixing RAM brands. It's just that Dual channel does not work.

 

Great. Thanks!

If it only came with 1 or 2 GB of ram, I'd upgrade it to 4. But since it's coming with 3, I think I'm good.

 

I ordered mine Wednesday and it should arrive Monday this is my first laptop. I'm wondering if the 7200 rpm HD is worth sacrificing 50GB.

Just curious how much bloatware does Sony put on there products?

 

depends how much capacity you need...imo its definitely worth it

they are notorious for it

 

Not to blow anyone's thunder but I wasn't too impressed with the Hi-Color. I went to a local Sony Style store and amazingly the staff had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned two LCD models (Xbrite-ECO and Xbrite-Hi-Color). Suffice it to say that I found an AR model with Hi-Color in the store (it was listed) and an FW model with Xbrite-ECO. The ECO model looked a lot better than the Hi-Color as far as brightness and viewing angles. With a dead-on look the Hi-Color was brighter but not by much. The fact that the ECO screen is ubiquitous seems to indicate that it is not that bad of a screen after all.

 

did you get a chance to do a side by side comparison using the same screen, preferably one of the preloaded pictures? When I was in the store, I thought most of the vaio displays on the shelf looked really nice. Then I realized the only one that was Hi-C was the AR as well, and I too noticed that there wasn't a large difference. However, when I brought up side by side comarisons of the same image, the differences were very noticeable and for my needs (photography), I felt the graphics card and hi-c option were worth it for me.

Sounds like the employees you were talking to were just your average kids. The employee I worked with was the stores "vaio expert" and knew exactly what hi-color was and how to sell it.