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    Vaio FW or CW? - advice please

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by interbear, Oct 22, 2009.

  1. interbear

    interbear Notebook Guru

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    Hi all - I'm pretty much sold on a Vaio laptop as opposed to Dell or HP. With my budget of £1k or thereabouts I've specced up the following models with the same processor and would appreciate any guidance or thoughts on which is the best way to go:-

    Vaio CW (VPC CW1X5E)
    Intel Core Duo 2.53GHz
    320 GB hard drive (5400rpm)
    4 GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM
    Blu-ray disc drive (read/write)
    14 inch LCD 1366 x 768
    NVIDIA GeForce GT230M 512MB graphics
    Windows 7 Home Premium
    Sonystyle price is £859.00

    Vaio FW (VGN FW55X)
    Intel Core Duo 2.53GHz
    320 GB hard drive (5400rpm)
    4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 RAM
    Blu-ray disc drive (read/write)
    16.4 inch LCD 1600 x 900
    ATI Radeon HD4570 512MB graphics
    Windows 7 Home Premium
    Sonystyle price is £909.01

    I kind of like the CW as it's new, has the quick splashtop browser, and is more portable. DDR3 RAM on the CW should also be quicker and consume less power than DDR2 on the FW. I have no idea which of the graphics options is better - NVIDIA on the CW or ATI on the FW.

    The FW seems to have better screen and sound for movie watching. I could also consider stretching the budget up and get a full HD version of the FW but is this really worth it in your opinion - I'm not sure how big a difference the 1920x1080 screen will make vs the 1600x900?

    Any input appreciated.
     
  2. albertom

    albertom Notebook Enthusiast

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    have you a external LCD,need portability -- CW

    not external lcd, no need of good portability -- FW

    CW have new hardware but low resolution screen
     
  3. bogeyman

    bogeyman Notebook Geek

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    im prob gonna get the CW as well :D
     
  4. interbear

    interbear Notebook Guru

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    Yes I have a 19 inch LCD monitor as well as a HD plasma for viewing Blue-Ray via HDMI. So CW possibly wins on portability factor.
     
  5. bogeyman

    bogeyman Notebook Geek

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    hmm we need to find out why the 2.8ghz aint available for us tho...
     
  6. interbear

    interbear Notebook Guru

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    Perhaps it will be a bit later ....not sure, although I could live with the 2.5GHz version.

    The FW on the other hand is available with a better processor, more RAM (altho DDR2) and the full HD screen so a bit more power overall.