I had a bad experience with a VAIO CS 11 (Vista Home Premium) that I purchased on 31 December 2008. From new, the fan noise was loud and the (presumably a BIOS fault) fan control was bizarre. The fan began to fail, was replaced under warranty but remained very noisy and then began to make odd noises indicating it was on its way to failure again. More frustrating was the way it was managed, with it spooling up to maximum speed/noise levels for two or three second bursts every nine or ten seconds. This problem with the CS series fans is widely reported on the Internet and this Club VAIO forum. It occurred under the lightest of loads, even while just browsing the Web (obviously with some background processes going on too). Feedback from Sony at the time was that engineers there felt the noise levels and odd fan behaviour were within normal parameters.
I got rid of my CS 11 last summer, having had the chance to sort out the innards of my desktop PC, but I'm now considering getting a laptop again and would love to know how owners of CW series laptops feel about their computers in day to day use, particularly the thermal managemnent. How intrusive (or not) is the noise of the fan in regular use, particularly in quiet rooms with little other background noise? And what are noise levels like (the PC's fan and the optical drive's fan) while watching DVDs or BDs?
Looking around the Internet yesterday, I note that CW owner reviews on Amazon.com are much more positive than those for the CS 11 and Trusted Reviews gave the CW 1 a score of 8/10 when the CS 11 only got 5/10. My local store has a black CW 2 (with BD-ROM drive) on display in the window, but I don't want to make the same mistake twice. Admittedly, the CS 11 was an impulse buy, something I hardly ever do when it comes to tech but which was necessitated by circumstances beyond my control at the time, and I chose it over other laptops in the shop based on its keyboard and Sony's name. (Wish I'd seen the Trusted Reviews score first!) Maybe Sony have learned from the mistake that was the CS and the CW 2 could restore my faith in the brand.
