Customer Reviews

Sony VAIO VGN-FS630/W 15.4" Laptop (Intel Pentium M Processor 740, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive)

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One of the cons of this machine is that, though it has 512 megs of RAM, it dedicates 128 megs to the Intel Express Graphics interface, meaning you're effectively running with 384 megs of RAM. When you're running Windows XP, 512 is really the bare minimum for decent performance, so dropping down to 384 will put you into using virtual memory pretty quickly. Add to that a slower 4200 RPM hard drive where the virtual memory is stored, and you can bog down pretty quickly.

BUT, take heart, because this machine uses a fairly inexpensive form of DDR 2700 RAM (200 pin, 2.5 latency, unbuffered, unregistered). Grabbing a couple of 512 meg RAM SIMMs and swapping them for the installed 256 meg ones will double your RAM, and you'll be much speedier. With the deals and rebates many stores are offering on these machines you can possibly get both the machine and the RAM upgrades combined, with shipping and tax, for less than list price.

But that's not the only RAM issue. Watch out for the pre-installed software.

Upgrading from 512 megs to 1 gig of RAM, with the machine otherwise in its out-of-the-box configuration only bumped me up to 660 megs of free RAM. Windows alone does not eat up 236 megabytes of memory.

Sony's pre-installed software loads a lot of helper applications at start-up. So you're not only waiting while they're loaded, they sit there, using up valuable memory, whether you use them or not.

When I was done killing off all the pre-installed stuff and a few unnecessary services, I rebooted. Boot time was cut in half, if not more, and my free RAM had jumped up over 100 megs.

Even if you don't upgrade the RAM, you'll speed up this machine both at start-up (because fewer things get loaded) and in general operation (because you have more free RAM) just by uninstalling a bunch of the pre-installed software.

Once the RAM issues are solved, if you're not doing disk-intensive functions, you'll find the machine quite apt for most tasks, though the battery life could possibly use some improvement.

Overall, though, it's a gorgeous machine (love the display - nice and bright, good for DVDs) and once that RAM is installed, it performs pretty well for the price.

this is my first laptop, i was a sound believer in desktops but as im entering the Air Force now i wanted mobility. my price range was about 1500bucks. wanted pretty much these exact specs except a faster processor and a standalone gfx card. but i settled with this laptop because of the looks first off, Sony has a great design team. and second was this beautiful screen. it's dual-lite. so its xtra-brite as they call it. great for dvd, the glare is more than others but with the brighness up all the way you can see just fine. thats another thing, you can adjust the brightness of the screen using two Fn keys. you also have to use the Fn key to adjust the volume but that isnt much of a problem since i have a Griffin Technologies PowerMate.

the 80gb hdd is great, its a 4500rpm so its alittle slow, which is noticeable but it wouldnt be too far behind a 5400rpm hdd. it has a dvd/cd-rw drive. writing speed its decent, could be alittle faster but its pretty good. the screen is 15.4" which is awesome. the Centrino wifi is alright, if you want better range i'd buy a PCMCIA card which im thinking of doing, the antenna seems to be on the bottom just to the right of the mousepad. it comes with 2 "S" buttons just left of the power button, these are programmable buttons that you can have open app's or whatever. i've got them opening FireFox and iTunes.

all in all this is a great laptop in my opinion. its pretty lightweight, very easy to carry, doesnt heat up all that much with the centrino technology, a small fan kicks in everyonce in awhile, not loud at all. mousepad is easy to work, doesnt have a hard time dragging and its easy on the fingers, keyboard is quiet which is a must, keys are fullsize, and a good layout for the "home, pageup, pagedown, end" and those keys. 3 usb ports on the right side with a Sony memory card holder aswell. VGA out port on the right with the PCMCIA card slot too. headphone port with microphone port is in the front right...not exactly where i would have put it because it kinda gets in the way of typing, but i see the use for movie watching.

great laptop, hope you enjoy if you buy it, make sure to max out the RAM, definetly can tell the difference at 1gb! also see if you can get a warranty on the screen cuz its sooo nice you dont want anything to happen to it!

I was very disappointed when I got my VAIO home and found out how "S-L-O-W" it was!! sometimes the seasons changed before it would shut down, I even turned it off and removed the batteries just to get it to shut down. After some investigation and just luck I deleted only the Norton Anti-Virus which came installed on the VAIO. I deleted anything that said Norton or that Norton was associated with. And "BAM" it now comes up fast and shuts down fast..."what a difference" it now works and acts like a PC of this system and software should.

So I traded my friend my xbox original and two games for this system, his suggestion not mine....SCORE!!!! I installed XP and put on Ubuntu 10.04 and she does a lot better (don't install 11.04 is sucks hard core, linux why did you ruin ubuntu?), still have the 512mb or ram and will up to 1gig and throw in a 5400rpm drive to really kick it up a notch. For a computer thats almost 7 years of I think it does quite well through I have a netbook and desktop I'm on this more now. The screen is bright, vivid and colors are still good, no dead pixels.....crazy. The cd/dvd drive works still as does everything else. The wifi works better then my netbook but go figure right? The system heats up a bit but to scary hot. The battery works for about 50-65 mins and its still the original one too. It'll play 720p video but not 1080p but I'm surprised that it even does the 720p. Overall this computer is a surviver and can't complain for the steal of a deal I got.