I am a SR user myself and the battery life has been so far satisfying. I would prefer the SR's screen than the FW since the LED-based display gives extremely good contrast and natural whites. Unless the FW that you're buying is using a double-lamp lighting, the SR would be my choice. But if your main purpose if for video playback, then FW will be a better product. If this is your daily workhouse, then SR will be the choice considering its excellent form factor and footprint.

Both the SR25 and CS16 seem to have the exact same specifications except for the GPU. I will not consider which offers more RAM since this is something we can easily upgrade throughout the course of ownership. The SR25 only has integrated Intel 4500MHD graphics adaptor while the CS16 will have the Nvidia 9300 dedicated graphics. Well these aren't really great gaming GPUs but the 9300 can do a better job when it comes to simple to previous generation game titles. The CS16 is a better buy since it retails for only RM3988 while the SR25 is RM4488.

Unless portability and business class software suites are your requirements, I don't see why CS can't meet your expectations. The finger print module is very useful for convenient logging in and out of Windows. You can program all your web passwords to your finger print. That means going into webmails, blogs, forums and etc only require a single swipe of your finger rather than typing different passwords for each of those sites. You can also use the finger print module as your vertical slider.

Most Core 2 Duo CPUs already have 64-bit extensions for operating in a a x64 operating system. Both the SR and CS is ready for it. But Windows Vista x64 editions are not offered because of cost concerns. Good news is, you can purchase a retail version of it and install on your own. Sony VAIO software suites have x64 support. You just need to download from the right sources. Drivers are a no problem too since Intel hardware drivers are widely available. Try searching other regions' Sony VAIO site. They may offer x64 OS for those. You can then download from their product page. A little effort is required here.

But I wouldn't bother running x64 OS since my x86 applications are doing just fine. Also I may not be able to find my favorite programs or comparable ones in x64.

Yeah! I actually fall in love with the new white color! Previously with the CR-series, the red was really attention-grabbing. This new CS white color reveal the other side of VAIO.

Try checking which process is maxing your CPU utilization. An antivirus doing a background scan may utilize some CPU resources and auto windows update may also trigger that.

Yeah, the SR's design is very beautiful. The overall design is slimmer and sleeker. I love the touchpad a lot since it is large enough while the screen is beautiful. No matter which SR you're getting, you'll be getting the same LED-backlit screen. If you like the SZ, I suggest you visit Best Denki, The House of Notebook and call up any of your friends who're working in Sony.

If I am not mistaken, I remember seeing Best Denki Midvalley bringing up some old FZ and SZ series laptop for clearance sale. Also few months ago, Sony Malaysia was running a employee benefit internal sale where the SZ was featured at reduced price. If you have contact who works inside Sony Malaysia, you might be in luck.

I heard very good reviews about E6400. I think it deserve some consideration. It may provide a better bang for the price you pay.

Yeah, some antivirus programs uses a lot of resources and slows down start-up because it needs to do a quick scan everytime you restart you PC. So that could explain why you're seeing a spike in CPU utilization. Anyway, the very first few times of using your SR will be a little slow as indicated by Sony via the various stickers on the packaging. After a few times, it'll improve start up times since Vista needs to build a prefetch database to improve OS performance.

I don't think there's any difference in durability. The SR's display is pretty thin and very light weight. So it doesn't need any much sturdier design to support its weight. Although my SR's lid is smooth, it doesn't get loose and I don't think it will in the near future. The CS's lid is very stiff though when I testing in Sony Center. One thing for sure, the CS's display lid is pretty thick even when compared with CR.

It still need to dissipate heat mah, so the fan must spin. But maybe you're running some background tasks utilizing CPU resources. But seriously, the P-series Core 2 Duo is very power efficient.

Seriously, Windows Vista's performance is slower than XP due to the prefetching and readyboot. Everytime it boots up, the HDD will non-stop trash and keep buffering programs. But after some time, it'll improve and become much faster.

Sure it isn't cheap and its definitely not qualified to be a netbook. For one, it is not limited to the netbook standard resolution of 1024x600. I read the processor is somewhere around 1.33GHz on a regular dual-core Intel processor. Lets hope it won't breach RM3K for such a device.

The screen flickering during startup and shutdown especially entering/exiting the welcome and shut down screen could be due to graphics driver problem. I have this problem on my Vaio SR. My desktop PC using ATI 4850 however did not have this problem after I updated the driver. So I think this could be the issue. I've seen pretty a lot of laptops with this flickering issue but this is nothing serious to be honest.

Looks like the software/utility responsible to display the status is disabled or failed to start. Can you try restarting Windows to see if the problem persist? If the problem is still there, you can try re-installing the Vaio utility software. I'll try look out for you the name of the software. No downloading is required as you can always accessed your Vaio Recovery Software Suite.

Anyway just want to share some ATI Color Settings for new and current Vaio SR owners. I tweaked my color settings and now the colors are so much deeper and saturated. Try the following:

1. Go to Vaio Control Center > Display > Video&Photo Color Settings > Uncheck 'Enable the Photo Color Setting'
2. Restart PC
3. Make sure brightness is set to maximum
4. Go to Catalyst Control Center > Graphics Setting > Color > Set the following configuration

Red Channel: Gamma 0.95, Brightness -20
Green Channel: Gamma 0.95, Brightness -20 (You may try until -35 if you feel your screen has greenish tint)
Blue Channel: Gamma 0.95, Brightness -20

Enjoy deeper and more contrasty colors.

Source: Adapted from www.notebookreview.com Vaio FW series HiColor Color Settings

I have not tried on other VAIO series, just SR-series. You can try it if you are using ATI GPU. Best is to use a hardware color calibrator. The settings are adapted from the VAIO FW forum and based on my eye observation. So far the settings are pretty good.