And Sony won. I picked up this up for just $744 (after 12.3% bing cashback off of the original $850 (Google it if you don't know what bing cashback is)) but tigerdirect has been altering the price a bit so it might be a little more for you.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5619517&CatId=4938
My Mini Review
It's gorgeous, pictures don't do it justice. It looks more metallic in person than it does in pictures. I honestly think it's better looking than the MBP.
It's been whisper quiet, it doesn't feel heavy at all and the only time i noticed it getting even a little warm is when I was a burning a blu ray backup of my whole computer using norton ghost 15.
The paint and finish on the laptop is incredible. (Don't buy the newer F series laptops, they look like crap compared to the FW models). But I do hear the paint tends to peel off or scratch over time so I am going to apply this shield http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/sony-vaio-vgn-fw140e-cases-covers-skins-shields.php on the laptop to keep it looking like new (it gives me a chance to use the 40-50% off zagg coupon deal posted on slickdeals).
It's insanely fast. Don't let the C2D in there fool you. It uses one of the newest C2D's built on 32nm's same as the i5s, and its incredibly fast thanks to the awesome GPU taking over for tasks like video streaming.
How fast? Well burning a blu ray backup of my whole computer only took me 24 minutes, and later I had my usb HD TV tuner w/ antenna plugged into it, watching and recording Jimmy Fallon in HD off the air on my laptop, and just to test it out, I simultanously started Microsoft Office 2010 installation and started copying over all of my photos from my external hdd.
All three tasks executed simultanously in the background while I proceeded to browse Macrumors on Firefox with no noticable slow down.
The screen is fantastic (though I would have preferred the 1920x1080 RGB Screen Option, but it makes the text look too small and costs too much more than this model). Blu Ray movies look incredible on it.
Getting the Most Out of It
The one thing you should do, is do a clean install of Windows 7 to get rid of all the crap and bloatware software it comes with by default. Download a clean unmodified copy of Home Premium from torrents or something, and install it, type in the cd key in the bottom of the laptop to activate.
Then google and install Microsoft Security Essentials (it's a completely free antivirus and firewall program from Microsoft that is lightyears ahead of Norton and even Avast and AVG in terms of performance, you don't even realize that it's running).
Prevent programs from starting up with windows. The ONLY program that should startup with windows or run in the background is Microsoft Security Essentials. Use ccleaner (it's a free program) to disable EVERYTHING else. Do that, and the laptop will run as good as new always. Get PowerDVD for all your blu ray playback needs, and PowerISO for your burning needs, because none of the sony software it comes bundled with is very good.
If you ever experience any type of slow down at all using Windows 7. Just download "ccleaner", and run that (it's free). Use ccleaner to disable all startup programs other than antivirus (ccleaner also lets you clean out your registry and delete junk to free up space). And defrag your computer once. It should run as good as new.
Hackintoshing
I hackintoshed it without too much difficulty to dual boot both Windows 7 and OSX (neither the blu ray burner nor the wifi work in OSX, but everything else works perfectly and it can burn dvds fine in OSX. If you really need to hackintosh, I would buy the Dell wifi card for $13 on ebay and swap it out, the Dell wifi works perfectly in OSX according to other hackintoshers). Check InsanelyMac if you run into trobule with anything.
Overall
I'm SO happy with the purchase and the design of the laptop. This is only the second laptop I've seen that looks everybit as attractive as the Unibody Macbook Pros. (On the same note, I hate the newer F series laptops that have the number pad and off center mouse pad. Those two things completely screwed up the design that the older FW got right on so many levels).
The graphics card it packs blows the 9600 and most other laptop GPUs out of the water. According to notebookcheck.net's benchmarks, it compares well to or significantly outperforms every GPU released in 2009 or before and only loses the fight to ATI's brand new 5830 and 5850 series.
I ran Need for Speed Shift with all of the graphics options cranked up to max and it ran rock solid.
And best of all, it has a Blu Ray Burner (hoping Apple starts including those soon too)!! and all sorts of other goodies (7200rpm hdd, HDMI, Firewire, Bluetooth, WiFi A/B/G/N etc)
Yes I know that it has DDR2 800 ram but I researched extensively on the ram and it turns out that DDR2 800 actually slightly outperforms DDR3 1033 and is identical in performance to DDR3 1333 (which no laptop even uses) because DDR2 currently has a much lower latency.
Don't take my word for it, look through these links...
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/ddr2-800-vs-ddr3-1333-does-speed-matter/ - A worthwhile read if you're considering this laptop.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245145-30-ddr2-ddr3 - It's a forum discussing this topic that has links to benchmarks comparing ddr2 and ddr3 from anandtech, xbitlabs and extremetech.
So the only thing missing is that it doesn't have Arrandale (which is asking for a lot in a $750 laptop that already has both a kickass GPU and a Blu Ray burner).
If you do end up getting the same laptop, be sure to use the Bing Cashback to knock another $105 off the current $850 listed price tag (update: TD raised the price to $880
still a great deal though).
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5619517&CatId=4938
.
My Mini Review
It's gorgeous, pictures don't do it justice. It looks more metallic in person than it does in pictures. I honestly think it's better looking than the MBP.
It's been whisper quiet, it doesn't feel heavy at all and the only time i noticed it getting even a little warm is when I was a burning a blu ray backup of my whole computer using norton ghost 15.
The paint and finish on the laptop is incredible. (Don't buy the newer F series laptops, they look like crap compared to the FW models). But I do hear the paint tends to peel off or scratch over time so I am going to apply this shield http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/sony-vaio-vgn-fw140e-cases-covers-skins-shields.php on the laptop to keep it looking like new (it gives me a chance to use the 40-50% off zagg coupon deal posted on slickdeals).
It's insanely fast. Don't let the C2D in there fool you. It uses one of the newest C2D's built on 32nm's same as the i5s, and its incredibly fast thanks to the awesome GPU taking over for tasks like video streaming.
How fast? Well burning a blu ray backup of my whole computer only took me 24 minutes, and later I had my usb HD TV tuner w/ antenna plugged into it, watching and recording Jimmy Fallon in HD off the air on my laptop, and just to test it out, I simultanously started Microsoft Office 2010 installation and started copying over all of my photos from my external hdd.
All three tasks executed simultanously in the background while I proceeded to browse Macrumors on Firefox with no noticable slow down.
The screen is fantastic (though I would have preferred the 1920x1080 RGB Screen Option, but it makes the text look too small and costs too much more than this model). Blu Ray movies look incredible on it.
Getting the Most Out of It
The one thing you should do, is do a clean install of Windows 7 to get rid of all the crap and bloatware software it comes with by default. Download a clean unmodified copy of Home Premium from torrents or something, and install it, type in the cd key in the bottom of the laptop to activate.
Then google and install Microsoft Security Essentials (it's a completely free antivirus and firewall program from Microsoft that is lightyears ahead of Norton and even Avast and AVG in terms of performance, you don't even realize that it's running).
Prevent programs from starting up with windows. The ONLY program that should startup with windows or run in the background is Microsoft Security Essentials. Use ccleaner (it's a free program) to disable EVERYTHING else. Do that, and the laptop will run as good as new always. Get PowerDVD for all your blu ray playback needs, and PowerISO for your burning needs, because none of the sony software it comes bundled with is very good.
If you ever experience any type of slow down at all using Windows 7. Just download "ccleaner", and run that (it's free). Use ccleaner to disable all startup programs other than antivirus (ccleaner also lets you clean out your registry and delete junk to free up space). And defrag your computer once. It should run as good as new.
Hackintoshing
I hackintoshed it without too much difficulty to dual boot both Windows 7 and OSX (neither the blu ray burner nor the wifi work in OSX, but everything else works perfectly and it can burn dvds fine in OSX. If you really need to hackintosh, I would buy the Dell wifi card for $13 on ebay and swap it out, the Dell wifi works perfectly in OSX according to other hackintoshers). Check InsanelyMac if you run into trobule with anything.
Overall
I'm SO happy with the purchase and the design of the laptop. This is only the second laptop I've seen that looks everybit as attractive as the Unibody Macbook Pros. (On the same note, I hate the newer F series laptops that have the number pad and off center mouse pad. Those two things completely screwed up the design that the older FW got right on so many levels).
The graphics card it packs blows the 9600 and most other laptop GPUs out of the water. According to notebookcheck.net's benchmarks, it compares well to or significantly outperforms every GPU released in 2009 or before and only loses the fight to ATI's brand new 5830 and 5850 series.
I ran Need for Speed Shift with all of the graphics options cranked up to max and it ran rock solid.
And best of all, it has a Blu Ray Burner (hoping Apple starts including those soon too)!! and all sorts of other goodies (7200rpm hdd, HDMI, Firewire, Bluetooth, WiFi A/B/G/N etc)
Yes I know that it has DDR2 800 ram but I researched extensively on the ram and it turns out that DDR2 800 actually slightly outperforms DDR3 1033 and is identical in performance to DDR3 1333 (which no laptop even uses) because DDR2 currently has a much lower latency.
Don't take my word for it, look through these links...
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/ddr2-800-vs-ddr3-1333-does-speed-matter/ - A worthwhile read if you're considering this laptop.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245145-30-ddr2-ddr3 - It's a forum discussing this topic that has links to benchmarks comparing ddr2 and ddr3 from anandtech, xbitlabs and extremetech.
So the only thing missing is that it doesn't have Arrandale (which is asking for a lot in a $750 laptop that already has both a kickass GPU and a Blu Ray burner).
If you do end up getting the same laptop, be sure to use the Bing Cashback to knock another $105 off the current $850 listed price tag (update: TD raised the price to $880
still a great deal though).
