Sony VAIO FW139E / H User Review

Sony Vaio VAIO Sony-BPS8 FW139E / H is a 16.4 "semi-desktop replacement notebook configured with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, which runs at 2.26 GHz with a speed Front Side Bus 1066 MHz, 3GB of DDR2-800 RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 dedicated graphics card, and a 250GB hard drive. This model is one of the first VAIO FW models to come out and intended to be sold in retail stores.

Reasons to buy

This notebook was purchased primarily as a PC to take college. Now, when you think college, you're probably thinking of portability. Be a great engineer, portability comes second to power. This notebook is designed to provide up to four years of casual and heavy computing. The GPU was responsible for important decisions, and I needed something specific and the market was flooded with possibly defective nVidia GPUs. I narrowed my choices down to the VAIO FW and HP dv5t. I ended up going with the VAIO FW because of the larger screen and faster in my price range.

Where and How Purchased

The VAIO FW139E / H was purchased at NewEgg.com for about $ 995. This was the best thing I could find, because the model is sold with 3GB of RAM and the Radeon GPU already included in the price and what was available before. I think it was a business just because a similar Centrino 2 model would have been almost $ 200 more at this time.

Build and Design

I am impressed with the construction Global VAIOFW. It is cased in a magnesium alloy, which makes it look semi-metal and semi-plastic, at the same time. It is very sturdy looking laptop, the screen hinge is perfect and stands strong, rubber feet under the laptop keep it moving, and I have not been able to make a dent in it. Design wise, is the sound fashion. It carries the traditional VAIO look; analyzed the model is the model Titanium Gray with black colored keys. It has very professional look.

Button supply is located on the right side of the hinge, and it glows green when on and orange when in hibernation. The media buttons are located on the right side, just above the keyboard. The speakers are on top of the keyboard, too. The keys make the laptop stand out, too. The black spaced-out keys to the VGP-bps8a laptop look very strong for the eyes. The "Motion Eye Camera" is located just above the screen.

Screen

The screen on this model of VAIO FW is an XBRITE-ECO LCD with a native resolution of 1600 x 900. No only is this an original screen size of 16.4 inches, but has an original aspect ratio of 16:9. This proportion is the true widescreen ratio HDTVs that feature. This true widescreen size is perfect for managing windows while multitasking. You can have about four or five medium-sized applications the screen comfortably in the native resolution. The screen is a bit on the bright side, but no reflections when the laptop is connected. When off, it works as a mirror color.

Speakers

The built in speakers above the keyboard are of average quality. You can send tell the difference between the VAIO FW's speakers and the average external speakers.

Headphones are a must if you want to enjoy a movie or listening to music. I would not recommend portable speakers as a replacement, the sound quality will be equal to the VAIOFW. I was not expecting much from the speakers, however. Speakers not are the highlights of laptops, anyway.

Processor and Performance

Now comes the fun part! The P8400 Core 2 Duo is remarkable fast in Vista, I have yet to experience a slowdown caused by the CPU. The bottlenecking component of this notebook is the hard drive, running the average laptop HDD speed of 5400 RPM. Transferring a large file via a 100Mbps network was fairly slow, which was not all the fault of laptop hard drive, though. The laptop is capable of 1000Mbps transfers, and the file contained a large amount of subdirectories and files and slow transfer Windows. Startup is fast, even when multiple startup applications are present.

Gaming wise, this laptop will be good for the games of last generation. It plays Halo: Combat Evolved at native resolution and everything connected perfectly. He also plays
Half-Life 2 with almost all high settings (AA disabled) on the native resolution.

Benchmarks

Super Pi @ 2M: 1m 11s (20 iterations, no AC adapter connected)
Super Pi @ 2M: 0m 53s (20 iterations, AC adapter charging battery)

3DMark06: 2569 3DMarks (869 SM 2.0 / 1023 SM 3.0 / 2021 CPU Score), AC adapter charging battery. In 3DMark06 benchmarks performed on battery.

Heat and Noise

This laptop and built to handle the heat. After the game for about 30 minutes, the laptop was still cool. It does not get very hot at all, and is probably one of the very good things about Sony's engineering. When not reading a disc, this laptop is silent, as if not. When reading a disc, however, it is too high for a brief 3 to 5 seconds. The fans are fairly silent when gaming, too. Heat and noise wise, it is very well designed machine.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The spaced keys on the Sony VAIO FW are fairly comfortable with the type. The keys are well constructed and they have no faults or stick to them. For the serious player, I would not recommend the use of the keyboard, however. After playing first-person shooter on a keyboard desktop real, playing the keyboard of the VAIO FW (or possibly any laptop keyboards in general) are difficult to get used to. But any serious gamer would not be playing on a laptop, anyway.

The touchpad is average, it feels much smoother than other touchpads, but that's about it. I can not say much about it as almost all laptops now feature similar touchpad technology. User is able to change basic properties of the touchpad button selection to double the speed of the click.

Ports of entry and exit

I / O wise, this laptop has an ExpressCard slot I, three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire (dubbed-Link by Sony), a VGA output, one HDMI output, a headphone and a microphone. It also features a Pro MagicGate reader cards. The back I / O are pretty standard among all the new notebooks, one thing to note is that an HDMI output is also technically a DVI output, too. A simple HDMI to DVI cable can allow output to a DVI monitor if you do not like using VGA.

Wireless

The VAIO FW comes with an Atheros wireless card that can access b, g, and n type wireless networks. It also comes with Bluetooth for wireless connectivity to peripherals. Without wire can be switched on and off by simply using a switch located on the lower left corner of the laptop.

Battery

The battery is fair, I keep the laptop at full brightness while not charging, and usually lasts about 2 hours. The laptop downclocks the processor when there is no external power to save energy. The P8400 processor should be saving about 10 Watts thanks to Intel Core 2 Duo P **** models, which will use 25W instead of 35W.

Operating System and Software laptop battery

The VAIO FW came with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit (Sony OEM). It came with quite a number of bloatware, but I managed to uninstall what I did not need. Among some of the bloatware, there were applications I found useful: Sony recovery software backup, Windows Live OneCare, a 60-day trial of Office, and VAIO Content Exporter. The backup software that allowed me to make recovery disks easily, and VAIO Content Exporter converts formats of video files.

When I had initially come VAIO, I planned to do a fresh install of Vista. However I could not do so with what was provided, and then I had to find a different route than recovery disks. Using a Vista Anytime Upgrade disk that is sold separately, I tried a new installation. Everything worked until it came time for drivers, one of the pilots have told me that you can only install on Windows Vista. I was confused as I was running Vista, and decided to call Sony …

Customer Support

Can not install drivers properly, I contacted the support of Sony. They informed me that the User is not able to properly use the VAIO without OEM Vista, because the driver only recognizes the version OEM Vista. Slightly disappointed, I had to reinstall again using the recovery disks and once again manually uninstall the bloatware.

Besides the disappointment OS, Customer Support Sony was more experienced than me telling you, they knew exactly what I was talking about, was not outsourced, and were quick to point Prerequisites driver.

Conclusion

The Sony VAIO FW139E / H was a good buy for me. Resources, build and price were right, and I'm happy with the purchase. It's more than enough for any engineering CAD applications I will be using for graduate study, and is great for multitasking games smooth.

The VAIO FW's CPU and FSB speed, 3GB of RAM and Radeon GPU are a wonderful combination of mobile power. The aspect ratio of the screen is perfect for entertaining. The build quality is fantastic, Sony does not deliver anything but their best in hardware.

The downside is insignificant. For those looking for the best battery life, being able to play the last game in high settings, or good sound reproduction, this is not the laptop should look for they.

This notebook is good for the User soft power who still wants portability. Of course, my vision of portability probably differs from someone who thinks 6.4 pounds heavier. Is nothing like the large VAIO AR, however. The VAIO FW is an FZ in size, halfway between an FZ and AR in power.

About the Author

Sony VAIO VGN-AR650U Notebook

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