Sony VAIO VGN-FW285J/H 16.4-Inch Laptop (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Blu-ray Drive, XBRITE Full HD (1920 X 1080), Vista Premium) Gray

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 5.3 x 12.8 inches ; 8.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001F50K2M
• Item model number: VGN-FW285J/H
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,383 in Computers & PC Hardware (See Bestsellers in Computers & PC Hardware)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 24, 2008

Product Description

Product Description
Broaden your entertainment horizons with the VAIO FW notebook featuring an extra-wide 16.4-InchXBRITE-Full HD LCD display. Great for watching widescreen Blu-ray Disc movies or viewing two websites side-by-side, this entertainment-rich notebook minimizes those annoying black bars you see when playing widescreen movies. Watch and record CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Disc movies and get the most out of your games with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. An HD entertainment powerhouse, the VAIO FW notebook is inspired by theater screens, born from Sony HD expertise and powered by the energy-efficient and super-powerful Centrino 2 processor technology ¿ the latest and greatest from Intel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Media laptop with all good things loaded, December 31, 2008

By	Roben "Roben" (St. Louis, USA) - See all my reviews

This laptop sizzles. Eventhough it is 16.4 inches it is not heavy at all. While closed it appears smaller than when it is opened. Windows 64 bit loads up very fast. It took a while to get used to the 16:9 wide screen. The 1080P resolution is great, the fonts are lot smaller though. The laptop comes with a bunch of Sony media software. Blu ray movies, DVD movies looks very nice on the screen and the laptop can be easily hooked up to a HDTV for 1080P output.
The battery life is not great though, maybe I need to tweak. The sound has a lot of treble but you have options to choose different equalizer. Bluetooth connections to some of nokia devices did not go through very well and is mainly due to 64 bit compatibility. VAIO media plus software overrides windows media center and it works very well as a media server.
The Internet explorer 64 bit does not support flash player. The 64 bit is a risk for the time being. More and more hardware and software will soon be compatibile hopefully.
The laptop came with Windows Live One care trail version. I uninstalled it and installed Avast and it works great. The keypad was soft and was not noisy. I did not like the 3 USB ports on the right hand side of the laptop as the external USB connections interfered with my mouse.

Overall this powerful laptop rocks if you are media savvy...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great bargain, January 28, 2009

By	Joseph L. Defrancisci "Ziocat" (New York City, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There's more here than meets the eye. It may not be perfectly clear in the description but, besides having a beautiful display and being able to watch Blu Ray movies

1) This laptop lets you burn your own blu-ray discs (write once or full read/write). It includes video authoring software. I was able to take some Windows Media files and render them into a Blu-Ray disc playable on my Panasonic home player. Worked like a charm and I did NOT have to shell out for Nero or any other third party software

2) The webcam software has some nice tricks. It can zoom in on faces, do video effects, avatars, etc. You can set it up to record when something moves in front of it.

3) Nice integration with other Sony products - comes with media sharing software for the PS3, and will convert video files for the PSP.

4) I expected a 5400 RPM hard drive, a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive was included instead. Drive is noiseless and fast.

5) Stereo bluetooth works great. Thanks to the A2DP profile you can jump chapters, pause and mute using the controls on the headset

6) Very nice build - design, fit and finish. The case is light yet very rigid.

7) When you shop around you can find pre-built FW's like the 285 significantly cheaper than alternatives from Dell or HP, the Sonys are a better product at a better price.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Value, March 22, 2009

By	Patrick G. (Sunnyvale, CA) - See all my reviews

Great computer at a great price. Overall, no major complaints.

Pros- With its wide screen, this system is great for movies. I've also hooked it up to a television through its HDMI port and it plays blue rays flawlessly. Great graphics, and comes with a 7200 rpm hard drive (both gray and black model).

Cons- Battery life is pretty poor, text can be difficult to read (even when tweaking the display settings), and Vista is well... Vista