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    Thinking of buying a FW490, had couple questions

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by bladefd, Aug 17, 2009.

  1. bladefd

    bladefd Newbie

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    Hello, I was close to buying a FW490 but I had a few questions that FW laptop owners may be able to answer.

    Here are the final specs (have not ordered yet):

    16.4" widescreen with XBRITE-FullHD™ LCD technology (1920x1080)
    ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD4650 graphics card with 1GB vRAM
    Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
    4GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 2GBx2)
    320GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [7200 rpm]
    Large Capacity Battery
    WLAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology

    Total cost: $1,260 with tax/shipping both included ($85 tax which is kind of lame but whatever) --- Budget is $1300

    1) The Large capacity battery supposedly does not stick out of the bottom of the laptop according to Sony's chat support. I do not know if I should believe the support person though. I mean the Vaio is something like 1.4" thick. A Large capacity battery being THAT thin and not sticking out at all? C'mon, I don't trust it. Does anyone in here own a FW490 with a large capacity battery or even just the standard battery? Does it stick out of the bottom of the laptop at all?

    2) The other thing is that the laptop weights 6.4 pounds with the stock things. I upgraded the processor a bit, upgraded from 512mb version of 4650 to the 1gb version, upgraded the harddrive from 160gb 5400rpm to 320gb 7200rpm and finally upgraded the battery to large capacity battery. That should all raise it past 7 pounds easily (possibly near 8 pounds). That is going to be kind of on the heavy side. Unfortunate. Anyone think these upgrades could put it near 10 pounds? If it is 10 pounds then I will have to bring down the changes to stock with just the processor changed. 10 pounds is just too heavy and way past the 7 pound limit that I put it at.

    I had a couple other questions, but I forget what else I was going to ask. I will probably post the other questions sometime tomorrow if I can remember them. For now, these questions should be enough. If you need any more info, let me know. Thanks fellows.
     
    bladefd, Aug 17, 2009
    #1
  2. micromarty

    micromarty Notebook Enthusiast

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    1.The large capacity battery sticks out a little bit. But it makes the laptop sit at a good angle when on a desk. It's not bad at all.
    2. The weight will be about the same, just add the weight of the battery which isn't that much more. I have similar specs to you except a faster cpu and there is no way it's more than 7 pounds. I find the laptop very portable for its power and size.
     
    micromarty, Aug 17, 2009
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  3. MidtownHD

    MidtownHD Notebook Consultant

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    the large capacity battery doesn't stick out "horizontally" but "vertically", it raises up the laptop a bit and it adds around 1lb to it.
     
    MidtownHD, Aug 17, 2009
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  4. Derrida

    Derrida Notebook Deity

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    I couldn't have said that better myself! :GEEK:
     
    Derrida, Aug 18, 2009
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