Sony E-series review

Going by benchmark scores alone (5650 being 46th and 5470 being 105th), I'd say that it's definitely worth it for £40.

Looking at the specific review for the 5650, I'm sure that he'll be extremely pleased with that card's performance if that's what he chooses you choose for him! :)

What are the other components included in the £599 price?
 
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Haha, nice one. I think I'll just get the 5650. Think I'd regret it if I didnt.

i3-330M
15.5" 720p screen
320GB HDD
5650

Think it come to 640...well last time I checked it did, hopefully its still the same (or lower), little bit gutted by missing the blu-ray offer tho!
 
Snapshot said:
Late addition: if you want two HDDs you must buy it with two fitted at Sony's extortionate price. If you don't you'll only get cabling for one and Sony won't sell you the dual-port cable. A bad case of "Sony knows best". :(
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That's a bit of a rat stain to say the least. Typical Sony though. If you'd benefitted from this hindsight it would probably still have been worth the cost for the ease of adding an SSD later and/or upsizing the HDD storage.

Glad you're pleased with the device. Thanks for the mini review.
 
Virt said:
I had to do away with all the Sony pre-installed software! I backed up the activation certificate and license key of the pre-installed Win 7 Home Premium and installed a clean copy of Win 7 Home Premium, which you can download from Digital River...
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You can do a completely clean install of the Windows that comes with the laptop (using the recovery disks or the recovery partition) and it will be auto-activated. As you noted with your method (which is the same result, just more effort) the laptop doesn't work properly and you have to install a bunch of drivers and tools from the Sony support page.

Even better using the recovery disks / recovery partition, it is possible to do a "semi-clean" install which will be the clean Windows plus all the necessary drivers and tools but none of the crapware (or only those bits you might want).

Details on this are in this thread over at notebookreview forums:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/146033-how-optimize-any-sony-vaio-semi-clean-install.html
Note that the thread was started some time ago and you have to adapt the method in the first post to keep it up do date, so you'll need to read the last couple of pages or so. The good news is that the guy who updated the method, Mythdat, is a Vaio E owner so his info is directly applicable.

Mythdat is also active in this owners thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...538-official-vaio-e-series-owners-thread.html
Which contains loads of useful info.

I'd strongly recommend any Vaio owner to make the recovery disks, even if they are going to use a completely different OS altogether. Being able to go back to the default Sony installation is useful for troubleshooting.


I've always wanted to put an SSD into a laptop.
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I recommend it wholeheartedly. I stole the 256Gb Crucial C300 out of my desktop (which already has an 80Gb G2 Intel for the OS) and stuck it in my Vaio S - which is now a little stormer.

It was a blue 14" Vaio E that led me to the S. I really liked that laptop, even the colour (not a million miles from that of this forum), but decided on something even smaller and more suitable for an old fart.
 
Virt said:
I had to do away with all the Sony pre-installed software! I backed up the activation certificate and license key of the pre-installed Win 7 Home Premium and installed a clean copy of Win 7 Home Premium, which you can download from Digital River. Before anyone jumps on me here, they are a digital distributor for Microsoft. You must have a valid key to be able to do this. I can point anyone interested in the right direction :) Without backing up the activation, all you would need to do is call Microsoft with the key on the underside of the unit. So I effectively skipped the need to do that.
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Do you know if you can do the same for Office 2010? I paid for an upgrade so have the upgrade key.
 
Snapshot said:
Do you know if you can do the same for Office 2010? I paid for an upgrade so have the upgrade key.
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Do you mean download Office 2007 and use the upgrade key on that? I honestly have no idea! You can download a trial version from their site as far as I can see, but I'm not sure if that would allow you to upgrade using your key.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Haha, nice one. I think I'll just get the 5650. Think I'd regret it if I didnt.

i3-330M
15.5" 720p screen
320GB HDD
5650

Think it come to 640...well last time I checked it did, hopefully its still the same (or lower), little bit gutted by missing the blu-ray offer tho!
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That's a nice spec and you'd definitely regret not choosing the 5650! When are you going to order it? :D

I think the blu-ray offer was a very nice deal from Sony. Realistically though, would you use it as often as you think you might? :p If you would then it certainly sucks that you missed it! If not, then it would just be one of those 'nice to have' features that you can brag about, but never actually use! :D
 
Ok finally ordered...been putting of for waaay too long and brothers be harassing me!!

Product ID : VPCEB2X5E
Processor: Intel Core i3 350M 2.26Ghz
Optical Drive : DVD disc drive
Hard drive : 500 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm) - FREE UPGRADE FROM 320 GB
Display : 39.4 cm LCD, 1366x768 + webcam
Graphics : ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
Finishes : Black Not Glossy
Bluetooth : Bluetooth x1
Keyboard : English QWERTY keyboard
Ports : Ports: 3 USB + 1 e-SATA/USB
HDMI(TM) output : HDMI(TM) output
Operating system. : Windows 7 Home Premius English operating system
Microsoft 2010 & Adobe Acrobat : Office 2010 Starter

Total Price; £646.04 (inc £7.05 delivery).

Thanks for the great reviews and advice...may come back to find out about doing a clean reinstall of win 7 without sony bloatware!

Cheers

PS agree with you about the blu ray...not likely to be used in all honesty!
 
shadow_boxer said:
*Specs*
Thanks for the great reviews and advice...may come back to find out about doing a clean reinstall of win 7 without sony bloatware!

Cheers

PS agree with you about the blu ray...not likely to be used in all honesty!
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Nice :) Let us know how you and your brother find it! :D
 
My work colleague received his last week and I find the textured trackpad is very annoying when using it. It is so annoying I am going to return mine if they can't stop it from being dispatched as it has left the factory.

I would strongly recommend anyone buying one to try the trackpad out first. I also expect over time the trackpad will wear due to the textured nature of it.
 
Mine finally arrived on 24-8-10 after placing the order on 26-07-10.

I got:


Processor: Intel Core i5 450M 2.4Ghz
Optical Drive : Bluray Writer
Hard drive : 320GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
Display : 39.4 cm LCD, 1920x1080,webcam
Graphics : ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
Finishes : Black Glossy
Bluetooth : Bluetooth x1
Keyboard : English QWERTY keyboard
Ports : Ports: 3 USB + 1 e-SATA/USB
HDMI(TM) output : HDMI(TM) output
Operating system. : Windows 7 Home Premium 64 English operating system
Microsoft 2010 & Adobe Acrobat : Office 2010 Starter

Overall am happy with it although there are several little niggles now.

I left the memory at 3Gb as I have a 4Gb stick ready to go in anyway, this meant that they shipped it with one 2Gb and one 1Gb. The 2Gb they shipped was a Kingston PC3-10666 and a Hynix PC3-8500. A small niggle but it annoyed me.

The touchpad on mine had the textured finish but it has already worn so it just feels sticky, I can live with it though.

The bloatware on this thing is incredible, I spent about 4 hours going through it all and trialing the software - all carp so follwed the advise for a clean install and now all good and much more responsive.

The charger gets extremely hot under gaming, laptop isn't too bad as long as the vent on the left stays clear.

The sound quality is abysmal, and is only just audible in some situations. The screen however is excellent and Blurays look better on that than on my tv.

Games seem to play well, have tried Starcraft 2, BFBC2 and sims3 which are all very playable, just annoying at how hot the charger gets, and it has a very short lead.
 
BlastRadius said:
The bloatware on this thing is incredible, I spent about 4 hours going through it all and trialing the software - all carp so follwed the advise for a clean install and now all good and much more responsive.
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Did you do the install from a recovery disc or a standalone copy of Win7?

If from a recovery, were the drivers for the mainboard/touchpad/wireless card, etc created/burned for you during the recovery process?
 
Hmmm. Thanks for the link. Could I not just delete a load of the pre-installed crap via the add/remove function and use a good registry cleaner if I didn't fancy the clean install process?

Myself and laptops have a bad history of reformatting to be honest.
 
md99 said:
Hmmm. Thanks for the link. Could I not just delete a load of the pre-installed crap via the add/remove function and use a good registry cleaner if I didn't fancy the clean install process?

Myself and laptops have a bad history of reformatting to be honest.
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Yep, you can remove most of it that way. It will just take a bit more time. Combine with msconfig and you should be good to roll. You may need the norton uninstall too.
 
Product ID : VPCEB2X5E
Processor: Intel Core i3 350M 2.26Ghz
Optical Drive : DVD disc drive
Hard drive : 500 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm) - FREE UPGRADE FROM 320 GB
Display : 39.4 cm LCD, 1366x768 + webcam
Graphics : ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
Finishes : Black Not Glossy
Bluetooth : Bluetooth x1
Keyboard : English QWERTY keyboard
Ports : Ports: 3 USB + 1 e-SATA/USB
HDMI(TM) output : HDMI(TM) output
Operating system. : Windows 7 Home Premius English operating system
Microsoft 2010 & Adobe Acrobat : Office 2010 Starter

Total Price; £646.04 (inc £7.05 delivery).
Click to expand...

Pics if any one is interested, just with a compact digi cam.

324s.jpg


327z.jpg
 
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