My sister arrived in town over the weekend.  She brought this nifty little notebook for me.  Thanks! I love it!

Have always liked this keyboard design (raised keys) – the only nagging point is that the Page Up/Down keys are not separate (requires holding down Fn).

In any case, here’s the scoop – Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, 250GB hard drive and the rest of the standard notebook stuff.  The main selling points is the amazing 13″ LED-backlit screen and the small, light form factor.  It remains to be seen if the battery life sucks as expected for Sony notebook products.

There’s some other features that I’m unaware of.  The front row of buttons (Mode, Setting etc) – not sure what they are for yet, will find out eventually.

The SR26 comes with Vista Business preloaded.  Obviously the first order of the day was to wipe it completely clean and start fresh.  Funnily enough, it was only then that I noticed there were no driver or recovery disks provided.  Only a Vista serial number stuck on the bottom of the unit.  Way to go, Sony Asia Pacific!  You guys are complete idiots.  What was the decision process to omit recovery or driver disks in the packaging?  Even worse, why are there no Vista drivers for the notebook on the SR26 support website?  This alone would be reason enough to never recommend this notebook. Unfortunately, I did not have a choice in picking a notebook and had to find another solution.

After searching  with much trial and error, I found compatible drivers on the Sony US model VGN-SR290 support website.

Back on track, I loaded everything I needed on the little unit.  The Sony software utilities might not have been a good call to put in.  It installs this docking bar application that can thankfully be configured to auto-disappear after a few seconds.  Also adds power profiles, presentation settings etc.

Aside from the lack of support (driver download, recovery cd), my initial impression is that this notebook is solidly built, has a lot of potential.  Default hardware configuration is decent (3GB RAM, 250GB hard drive) running Vista Business 32-bit.  This blog post is being written from it.  I really like the keyboard, pretty easy to type on.

Will check out gaming potential with Warhammer Online soon after I figure out the other features of the SR26.

Wow, I haven’t seen this much snow on the Eastside before, since I moved here in ‘99.

It’s been snowing non-stop since 4am this morning.  I can practically snowboard or ski on the roads.  About 8 inches in my driveway alone!!!

Everyone is walking, it’s pretty fun actually.  Bundle up in full snowboarding gear – jacket, scarf, gloves, boots, pants.

It’s about time to upgrade to a new computer.  The 4-5 year new PC cycle.  My antiquated Athlon-64 was on its last legs.  Tried everything to squeeze another year out of it – upgraded video card, replaced broken hard drive.  It couldn’t handle the demands of today’s software.

Read the reviews of the Core i7 and was amazed.  Even more, I was shocked at the pricing of a Core i7 system, relatively cheap.

Dell kicked off the introduction of the Studio XPS with freebie LCD deals.  Couldn’t hold back any longer, it was a far better deal to buy the Dell combo than to build my own.  Added an extra $50 to upgrade from 20in to 24in LCD.

For a top of the line CPU (by today’s standards), it was a great deal (~$1200).  An X58 motherboard with Core i7 920, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB hard drive, ATI 3450, DVD-RW, media card reader and the 24in LCD S2409W.  I couldn’t even come close to that price range putting it together without factoring in the LCD.

I never knew how fast Vista was supposed to be until now, heh.  Having 8 CPU cores listed in Task Manager is a treat as well.  So far, I’ve not been able to peg the CPU higher than 20-25% briefly.

Ran the usual decrapifier to remove the unwanted junk.  Installed the basic applications and Warhammer Online.  With the puny ATI 3450, the game runs surprisingly well (on lowest settings, of course) with 30-40 fps.

First thing I did was rip out the 360W power supply and replaced it with my existing 600W unit from the old desktop.  That gives me a great excuse to upgrade the video card to a ATI 4870HD 1GB, add another 2GB of RAM (to make the system tri-channel) and fill out the remaining drive bay with a lightscribe burner.  For good measure, there’s a WD Velociraptor 10k rpm 300GB drive as well.  These goodies are coming shortly.

Vista Experience Rating is maxed out at 5.9 for all sections with the 4870 video card.

The plan is to run Vista Ultimate (have a spare copy lying in the house) when all the components arrive.  All in, for about $1700, I will have one of the fastest desktops available.

The Studio XPS case is somewhat cramped but well designed. With all the stuff I’m adding to it, especially the large video card, I won’t have room for a 2nd hard drive.  The heatsink size of the 4870 is actually touching some of the cables in the motherboard.  Will have to keep a close eye on how that will work out in the long run.  I won’t be overclocking the card at all and hope the default settings won’t be hot enough to melt cables.