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sony FE owners. How is it going?

post #1 of 48
3/5/06 at 1:05am
Thread Starter 
I am looking for a nice and powerful machine, i am very interested in the particular model. If it is possible, can post your experience please. Thanks alot.

Look, feel, performance, graphics, speed, quality, screen...
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post #2 of 48
3/5/06 at 1:17am
Thread Starter 
Also one more question, is it worth it to get the motion eye camera? should i get windows media or keep home edition? this last question is kinda dumb but... service plan or no..?
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post #3 of 48
3/5/06 at 11:13pm
Ohh... It pains me to say.... I love my laptop, but I recently was informed my built-in mouse is faulty... I've had the thing for 13 days.... be wary.... be very wary. Media rocks, btw. If you like a cutting edge look, go with it.
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post #4 of 48
3/6/06 at 1:48am
Thread Starter 
media rocks? LOL i have always been using xp pro, and do not care much for the extra security settings. The mouse sucks you say? dammit.
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post #5 of 48
3/6/06 at 1:59am
Yeah, it was a little hard when I got it, but not it doesn't work at all... and like I said... in 13 days of use. Thank God I went back to best buy today, the last day to return it was today. The camera quality is pretty good, I must say. I've been on a few webcam chats and I get compliments on the pic quality, so it really can't hurt.
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post #6 of 48
3/6/06 at 9:04pm
My friend just picked one up, he's loving it so far. Hopefully he doesn't experience a problem with the touchpad. I'm still thinking about getting one.
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post #7 of 48
3/6/06 at 10:16pm
I've read about FE screens showing any video but commercially bought DVDs as stuttery and pixelated. Can FE owners say whether this is true or not? I've started playing video from sources other than DVD and it'd be a bit of a bind if the playback is poor... Re the touchpad problem mentioned, anyone else find this? I tend to use the touchpad on my laptop over the mouse, so a crappy one would seriously make me reconsider. In fact, it's partly because of a hypersensitive and temperamental touchpad that I'm moving away from Toshiba.

Thanks.
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post #8 of 48
3/7/06 at 3:48am
Hi, I've had my FE for about 3 weeks now, this thing is great. I have not have any problems with the touchpad, and every video/DVD has played flawlessly for me. I have only had one problem with this laptop and that is the built-in microphone. It had not worked since the day I got it. I called sony and they said it needed service, luckelly I had goten the service plan so I will not have to send it in, instead they will repair it onsite.

One other thing i have noticed is that when i am typing the mouse will click and move the cursor, so i am now typing somewhere else and it messes up my paragraph. At first I thought I was hitting the touchpad with my thumbs, but now I am unsure. Does this happen to anyone else?
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post #9 of 48
3/7/06 at 8:11pm

re: mysterious click

Brina, I noticed the same thing on my Sony FE550G. Like you I thought I had inadvertantly hit the touchpad. Very weird. It was happening to me when I was browsing all of the sudden it would just click. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
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post #10 of 48
3/7/06 at 9:45pm
Nope, doesn't happen to me so far. Happend to me alot on my old laptop. I accidentally touched the mouspad with some part of my hand, but the FE is big enough for me to avoid it.
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post #11 of 48
3/7/06 at 10:57pm
You know I too have had the roving cursor while typing.... It is quite a strange thing.... I was typing a paragraph and whoop.... there goes the cursor to some part of the sentence I was working on 3 mins ago....

Luckily, I'm getting a new unit as my touchpad is shot....
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post #12 of 48
3/8/06 at 1:24pm
The moving cursor happened with my Dell 9100. The only solution for me was to disable the touchpad. I guess it was way too sensitive, and I might have been brushing up against it.

Brian
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post #13 of 48
3/8/06 at 9:58pm
I don't know how to do this... but i read about it on another page... Apparently there is a way to disable the clicking while you are typing... it might solve your problems....
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post #14 of 48
3/9/06 at 9:29pm
Thread Starter 
The FE seems to have many problems, if i do get one... it is probably best to get a long service plan.. Will there be a second batch coming in... or something like that?
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post #15 of 48
3/14/06 at 11:48pm
Drat. My FE is on it's way... I was hoping to avoid the mouse problems since that very issue has been something of a curse with my toshiba m30x. The really annoying thing was that my old satellite had an option to disable the touchpad whilst typing- you tapped it firmly twice to revive it- which was fantastic, but this machine doesn't have it. Although i seem to remember a trick with f9 that allows you to disable/ enable the touchpad, but i can't remember the combination. Maybe if someone knows it it'll work on sony too?
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post #16 of 48
3/15/06 at 3:27pm

Luv'n my new VGN-FE550G

Be aware that this touchpad has a back page/forward page control at the top. It has a horizontal scroll bar control at the bottom. And, it has a vertical scroll bar control on the right side of the touch pad area. These are very powerful controls that work beautifully after an initial learning curve. Accidentally touching those controls can be disconcerting. I wonder if some of the confusion about touchpads and the FE Series relate to not being aware of these very cool controls. I can't live without them now.

I am not saying that the defective touchpad mentioned in this thread was not malfunctioning.

I was amazed at the quality of this notebook. I am extremely satisfied. But I wish the battery life was longer. I barely get 2 hours on the standard battery even with reduced brightness. I blame the stunning XBRITE LCD screen since Intel reportedly has reduced power consumption on the Centrino Duo T2300 processor. I will put up with reduced battery life for the absolutely amazing display.

BTW, my duped DVDs play beautifully in amazing color. That Hi-Brite technology is supreme. But, if there is a pan camera move in the movie, the LCD screen cannot refresh fast enough to make it a perfectly smooth look.
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post #17 of 48
3/15/06 at 4:44pm
I just got my VGN-FE590PB the other day, and I am impressed with the battery life so far. I have not experienced any problems with the touchpad yet. I did however ignore the rebuild instructions and did not make a copy of the recovery cd. Sony is supposed to be sending me a new one. Does anyone know which software will give me back control over the buttons like the brightness of the screen, and on display volume? Any chance someone could send me that application?

Thanks!
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post #18 of 48
3/16/06 at 9:23pm
Have you tried all the battery options? And it looks like you can turn the screen brightness way down. I got my FE yesterday and very happy with it- why is this laptop getting some poor reviews from the computer press?!! It's excellent!

..my only quibble- the little slidey bit at the bottom of the machine- I assume that's to allow easy access to the memory slot? Nice idea, but the slider is so flimsy is makes me feel rather nervous.
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post #19 of 48
3/19/06 at 11:50pm
All, picked up the FE550G after owning an IBM T30 and subsequently an emachines m5414 (don't laugh...huge mistake). Anyway, I love this laptop. It is powerful, lightweight as far as widescreen notebooks go, and very comfortable to use. The screen is beautiful (as previously mentioned). As for the mouse problem:

My model has a touchpad icon in the taskbar. Double click and get a touchpad properties dialogue. Choose the tapping tab, then look for the "tap off when typing" option. This is off by default- enable it. This turns the tap function off while the user is typing which, for me, eliminated the relocating cursor problem. Not 100%, but MUCH better.
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post #20 of 48
3/20/06 at 2:43pm
I have left my Tapping set to the default since I have no issues with it, but every FE owner needs to check out that "Mouse Properties" icon in the notification area of your taskbar.

I want to hook up my VGN-FE550G to my Samsung widescreen 26" LCD-TV but the TV is not recognizing VGA-to-VGA and is very buggy and inconsistent hooked up via S-Video, though I got the S-Video to work once. The picture was a bit fuzzy.

I know about using the Fn-F7 key to get the display to connect with the LCD-TV, though my success using that two-key command has been weak.

Anyone got ideas or a better way to do this?
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