Thinking of getting a Vaio E series

It's either an E series or a 13" macbook pro. It's not really a question of operating system - I use both windows 7 and snow leopard (from time to time) and they crash as much as each other - never. I'm perfectly fine with windows. I just want a reliable laptop that will last me at least 3.5 years.

I had a look at the 13" macbook pro and found it insanely small for some reason. I think I might just be used to a 15" but it just looked tiny to me and I wasn't too excited by it. I then had a look at the sony website and configured a vaio and was blown away by the price : performance ratio compared to the apple. Turns out sony aren't as expensive as I first thought!

Thinking of getting this:
Vaio E series 15"
- 2.4ghz i5-450m
- 4gb RAM
- 320gb HDD (5400rpm - can always upgrade to an SSD when they get cheaper)
- ATI 5650 (Had a look at a couple of benchmarks.. It's a brilliant card for the price)
- High resolution screen (seems worth it for only £40 extra)
- Free blu-ray drive if I buy before 12th July

Total cost if ordered direct from sony - ~£720

I'll mainly be using it at university for work and I'll be gaming on it but nothing too heavy. Oblivion/fallout 3/Football Manager/possibly Crysis to test out the machine

Your thoughts?

 

As i have said in other threads the 5650 in the Vaio E is crippled , it has an 450mhz core instead of the 650mhz that is should be, and this will seriously affect it`s performance, also it is supposedly undervolted.

So you will need to use software to raise it`s core speed.

 

Thanks for that. Had a search around this forum and google and found it's not too difficult to OC it back to 650.

What's the battery life like when doing light word processing/web browsing? (assuming brightness is turned down to low-half and the card is underclocked back to 450).

 

My EC came with a low capacity battery and i only get around 1H30M for my spec, you might be able to order a high capacity one though you will need to check.

 

If the University work mentioned takes place in your room or a study area with power readily available, then the battery life you ask about isn't that important. However, if the work is taking notes in lecture halls, and such, away from power then battery time is something you need to consider seriously. I don't see a large capacity battery listed for the E Series...

Add in the issue of weight if you are lugging this thing around, and a smaller, lighter but less powerful lapdog will make a lot of sense.

If you have a desktop PC you could always install that in your room for gaming and have a work notebook dedicated to your studies. This opens up all sorts of sensible options...

 

Hey just made a new thread about my e-series laptop that I'm very happy with worth checking out http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/497310-user-review-my-new-ocean-blue-e-series-laptop.html

Other than that I paid about 1,000 american bucks for mine what's that translate into for euros? 720 euros sounds a lot cheaper for similar machines... only difference with mine that i can see is it came with a 500 gig hard drive and a 5470 instead of the what was it 5650 that yours had... Now that I think about it, I think you got the prices mixed up when you went to the sony website like I did. The $700-$750 dollar price range they list for the e-series is for a system that is bare bones e.g. i3 core no blue ray drive, and the list goes on... I changed my preferences to the i5... bigger hard drive etc. and the price was like 1200 dollars and kept going up... for the records. Bye guys!

Oh quickly re-read the original posting and it said you already selected the specs you wanted in that case I hope I didn't get ripped.

 

Hey Carmen Diaz super man girl... Does the 5470 also under clock itself in the e-series?? If so what program do you recommend and is it safe to max out your card??

 

Supergirl is actually "Laura Vandervoort"

Also i dont know if the 5470 is underclocked, and i think ati actualy make a overclocking util , though i cannot remember it`s name

 

I can easily overclock my 5650 to 650MHz using AMD GPU Clock Tools v0.26. And performance is pretty good (can run all games on high at 720p, less demanding or older games at 1080p on high). GPU temp never goes above 70°C when overclocked. I overclock mine to 650/950 and it there are no problems. Performance when at default clocks is still surprisingly good.

Performance of the laptop overall is also good. Very responsive, the core i5 cpu is very fast.

The only letdown are the poor speakers which get distorted at high volume levels although they work fine when the volume is turned down slightly. Everything else about this laptop is great and definately worth the money. Highly recommended.

 

Limited funds and space doesn't leave much room for a desktop pc and a work notebook/work netbook. I'm a med student as of September - spoken to a few others on a different forum who're also on my course. It seems we won't need to carry our computers to every lecture and power is widely available in the library so as long as the battery lasts 2-3 hrs while doing light work with the brightness turned down I'll be happy.

Thanks for the review! Really cemented me into getting a more powerful e series over a mac. You also said battery life is 3.5hrs which seems pretty decent! Although I do realise figures change depending on spec.

I've heard some awesome things about the ix processors so as you said, the i5 should be very good. ALOT better than my 1.73ghz pentium M/1gb ram I'm running right now

I've got some external speakers that are surprisingly good that I'll be taking with me but even so I don't think the speakers can be any worse than the ones I've got on my 5 year old laptop. Verrrrry tinny sound.

Guys, thank you all for your help. I'm definitely getting a cheaper and much more powerful vaio over a mac.

 

It'll be marginal, I think you'd find yourself short on battery life a few times. If battery life is important to you, the E-Series isn't the right laptop. But as long as you don't expect a lot more than 2hrs you should be okay.

 

Thanks for that. Hmm, well I've had a think and battery life isn't in fact a whole lot important. 2 hours sounds fine to me.

Out of curiosity, how long does yours last? The one I'm looking at is almost the same, albeit with a less powerful processor.

 

With Windows' default power saver profile and just doing light stuff like web browsing, I get about 1h45 to 2hr. If you tweaked the power settings, lowered the brightess and turned off wifi it'd be closer to 2h30

 

I there an extended battery for this model? Can u use a bigger battery from another model ? Thanks!

 

There is a higher capacity battery that's compatible but I don't know how much it increases battery life. It's also not cheap - £80 was the cheapest I could find, it's £150 direct from Sony.

 

2h-2h30 sounds fine. Thanks

It's nice to know that if a higher capacity battery was ever needed, it's available. What's the model number of the compatible battery and have you got a link to it?