Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Did sony make a 1080p SVS 15 that came with a TN Panel? Ive noticed it advertised without mentioning IPS. I know some have said they made Non-IPS 15 but how about a 1080 resolution one? Would all those be IPS?

 

I use this Sony slipcase. I'ts very good quality and the 13 inch with batterysheet will fit perfectly.

VGP-CP24 | VAIO Hoesjes | Kenmerken | VGPCP24.AE | VGPCP24 | Sony

 

All IPS on 15' model.


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The touchpad seems ok for me, is really big and accurate, only the integrated click on surface is a little problem for me but i think i need only practice to handle this new "click method" whit no buttons.

My svs1513 (spring 2013 refresh model) doesn't present any orange problem fortunally, The red is ok and IPS panel is really good if compared with my previous notebook with TN panel


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No they are definitely not. As mentioned I have seen mostly TN panel SVS15 here (South Korea). I am not sure about the US, but a member has mentioned that the build he ordered WAS a TN panel, and he swapped it later (the order).
This includes FullHD ones - I have seen, in person, during February, current models FullHD with TN panels.

 

I don't even see that model number for sale on the (US) Sony website, it's looks like it's a European/Asian version? SVS151290X is latest model number available from the Sony store so idk

Edit: I'm guessing the US might receive a Spring 2013 model a bit later?

 

Sounds like exactly what I need if it's a good fit (I plan to carry it in some tight bag - which I haven't seen yet as I'm abroad currently - so the slipcase shouldn't be a loose fit). I'll check the Sony stores here if they have it; if not, it's ebay time. Thanks!! Too bad Sony makes the fancy leather one only for the Z model.

 

That thing must weigh a ton

 

I can't tell what the difference is between the US 290X (usual ending for customized models for Sony US) vs. EU SVS1513C5E? SVS1513C5E was the model for the customized EU laptops last year as well, so it does not necessarily mean it is newer than 1512.
They all still have the same "old" 3632QM as the only quad-core option, still.

 

yes there isn't new interesting feature in svs1513 series. only a refreshed chipset (HM77 vs HM76), new color for some models, possibility to select hybrid storage in configurator on sony online store and lower price (this is what i see in my Italian sony online store).

anyway i see that my SVS1513 model is weight 1.87Kg instead of 2.1Kg declared in official datasheet, not bad ^_^

 

Just looked at the docking station options. Does anyone have and use it?
It looks as if the dock would cover the exhaust and cause the heat to build up! Today I had my SVS15 on the laptop stand, and ran a batch compile to keep the CPU at 100% load.
The CPU heated to 80*C (never saw my F series go even close), it felt as if none of the heat could move out. The stand had a tiny part of the exhaust closed and the SCREEN had the rest closed... ridicolous layout!

 

S13 and S15 owners I got an important question pls.

I know the S15 screen is IPS FULLHD and S13 is 900p that is TN. I did own the S13 but the damn screen is so grainy and colors looks dead and dull. I know IPS only improves viewing angles but is the color and clarity better on the IPS display of S15 vs the S13?

 

I've been on the hunt for a orange-gate free S series 15.5" with no luck. I went down to my local Sony store yesterday and they happened to have one last windows 7 SVS15113FXS in silver. I take it home.....orange-gate. I returned it today with the intention of exchanging it for a Win 8 model despite not being a fan of Windows 8 and knowing there is no overclock for the 640 LE. However, before I perform the exchange I decide to check the 2 display models they had out on the floor just to confirm that these new Windows 8 have new panels......both display models had orange-gate. No exchange for me. Tonight I got home and found a decent Refurb SVS151190X with Windows 7 on SONY.com and ordered it. Here is to hoping it has a good panel!

 

The IPS S15s have much much much better color, clarity and especially more correct black and white than the S13/S13P. If you look at the Youtube clip where the Korean guy exchanges the S13 screen with an IPS panel, take that as an indicator what the S13/S13P panel looks compared to S15 IPS panel approximately. (I didn't see it myself, and if it is a VAIO Z screen, then in my opinion, it is better than S15 IPS panel - I have seen Zs and S13/S13Ps in shops and I have the S15)
P.S. Still no reply from Naver guy as to what screen he used

 

Hey there, guys! I recently purchased Vaio S 15 (the only ver, possible from my country's Sony webstie, 6 GB RAM, 640 HDD), but I'm having some problems already. The fan is always on (I read it in the reviews, so I guess I should have been prepared). The problems start when I do sth, like open Photoshop and play music in the background; then it speeds up almost instantly, right now when I'm doing nothing beside typing this the temperatures are est. 50 C, when I play games the fan scares me out really bad, it spins as if it could explode in a second, but the temp. are about 70C then, so nothing really abnormal (I guess, I'm not an expert). Is this normal for this model or should I be worried? I searched through the forum, and I've seen there are ppl experiencing this as well, but is it just something "it does" and it is not really dangerous. I guess I can get used to the fan itself, what creeps me out is that sth may go wrong when it's spinning all the time like that.

Colpolite,I actually exchanged my S13 for S15, mainly because of the display. Despite what people at Sony told me (that the display is the same; what?) it's a relief S15 is so much better than S13 and S13P. There is no grain whatsoever, I mean the color gamut is not really impressive either, but I couldn't bear to look at the S13 display without my eyes going red, and now I'm kinda happy with it as it is. Well, I'd be over the moon if it wasn't for the fan, though...

 

I'd like to know what settings others are using to get 4 hours plus out of the SVS too. I have the 13" & the battery feels like it drains too fast, especially coming out of sleep. I wanted to try hibernating instead of sleep but read that it's bad for SSD's which I switched to. Is there a battery life benchmark out there good for testing?

 

Well, sleep mode uses battery, unlike hibernation. How big is your SSD? You could install Intel Rapid Start which will reserve the part of your SSD space equal to the RAM amount for the hibernation - but then you get no battery loss and almost instant wake (a few seconds).

 

IMHO, the screen used in S13 is particularly bad and almost any decent screen will run circles around it, IPS or not.

 

What do you mean it drains too fast, coming out of sleep? Sleep drains it, or sleeping often seems to drain a lot?
Hibernation is for when you know you will not use the laptop for more than just a few minutes, or even an hour.

For achieving 4 hours - SVS13 has a dual core CPU, which in idle might use more. Check what the minimum and maximum CPU speed percentage for your power plan is.
And try running CPU-z when your machine is Idle for a minute or two to see that the CPU does indeed keep the clock down.

 

Hello

I just purchased Vaio S15 together with docking station VGPPRS35. Unfortunately I discovered that the dock would not drive two external displays at the same time even though it has HDMI and VGA port.
I am now considering replacing this dock with an USB 3.0 docking station but if I could get dual monitor setup working I would prefer to use this dock (easier docking, probably less processor overhead). The option I think could work is to connect one monitor to dock VGA port and another directly to notebook HDMI port. The problem is that when notebook is docked the plastic covers the HDMI and VGA ports so I am unable to try it without damaging the dock. I would not mind cutting off the plastic if I was sure that this would work.

Has anyone tried something like this already? Or do you have any idea if this would work. Also any other dual external screen connection suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks,

Miso

 

I have a s13p and managed to lose the two screws that hold the bottom panel over the battery. Where can i order some replacements?

 

That's whay I want to try hibernation. I just read is was detrimental to SSD life, but probably not something I'll notice in real world use so I'll look into your method.

Yea though I haven't quantified it it seems like a nice chunk of the battery drains from sleeping. Using the win8 taskbar it says the CPU stays at 1.17Ghz at idle.


Just curious what kind of battery life I should expect from a Win8 i5 SVS13.

 

Hibernation detrimental? Weird, as it's just one big file on the disk. I mean, people usually switch it off on desktop SSDs as it takes a lot of space (equal to RAM size) and booting Windows from SSD is pretty fast (or they just use sleep) - but on laptops, I think it's pretty handy when done with the Intel Rapid Start as you have an almost instant sleep wake with no battery loss.

 

Hello All,

I recently purchased Sony Vaio " SVS151290X Performance"

Configuration :

3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3632QM (2.20GHz/3.20GHz) quad core
Windows 8 64-bit
15.5" 1920 x 1080
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M LE (2GB) dedicated
750GB (7200rpm) HDD
8GB
CD/DVD player / burner
HD Webcam

Laptop looks great It's very lightweight , nice and rich feel , performance is good . However I have noticed couple of things which I need to ask you guys.

#1 Heating problem :

first couple of day I have noticed it's getting very hot @ bottom right side , only after browsing for 1 hour . It was unbearable on laps. I havn't installed any thing new on this machine using it as is.

3rd day it was normal for same duration, not sure what happened ?

#2 Poor webcam

As per the configuration It's a HD webcam however I don't feel quality is even near to it. Picture quality is very poor in any light condition and @ low light it shows completely dark screen which is horrible.

anybody facing similar issue ? what would be resolution ?

Thanks.

 

@camera. I just ran a Skype video call to test the camera after your post, and frankly, the camera seems quite awesome to me. I can only compare it to my VAIO F. In low-light it does provide better image (illuminates? quite good), the pixel density seems immensily better and it seems to even have better fps! (not even sure how to explain that one, but several people noticed it - we have both to compare, VAIO F1 and SVS15). Overall, I like the camera.

@heating, I only noticed the part that connects the screen with the keyboard part to be getting hot - the middle point. Which I attribute to RIDICOLOUS vent position! The screen covers a very good part of the vent, thus the heat flows partially into the lower part of the screen. The sheet battery covers another part, and when the sheet battery is used and the screen opened at least to 90* degrees (well doh.. it can't be any less for use ), virtually all of the vent is covered. I did manage to play Starcraft 2, at max. settings with dGPU, Balanced power/heat discharge in VAIO CC with however with the CPU not overheating - it rarely got over 70*C. The fan was not noticable then (because of the game, but if I tried it was definitely hearable )

@battery life!!! Here's something interesting for everyone I think:
- Starcraft 2 (HotS), 40 mins of actual gameplay, dGPU, High Performance power profile, 100% brightness, NO WIFI, Balanced heat discharge (i.e. no speed limitation from Vaio CC), took ~30% of total battery juice (note that I have the extra sheet battery as well!). So... I guess around 2 hours of good gameplay with the sheet battery.
- I did a 50 minute Skype call after that, with Wireless, full brightness, also high perf. power profile (should not matter for Skype though), it only took around 8-10% of the combined battery.

The extra sheet battery has the same capacity as the primary one, so you can extrapolate what a regular-battery-only build can hold. I.e. almost 5 hours of full brightness Skype video call over wifi.
It seems Skype is the least battery-intesnive task LOL.


RapidWake sleep mode, ~12 hours, 6% of total battery used (so 1% per hour of main battery).

The CD seems to be raping the battery quite a lot when used

 

It was noted as "bad for SSDs" because of the amount of data written. If you do it often, the hibernation would probably amount to more write than the actual work/booting/shutdown.

 

Bad as in you'll use up all of its write capacity? How long do you plan to use it for? Maybe if you have the TLC NAND in combination with a lot of written data per day (like, 20 GBs) can give you smth to worry about if you expect to last more than 5 years..

AnandTech | Samsung SSD 840: Testing the Endurance of TLC NAND

 

3 hibernations a day with 8GB and you're quite close to 20GB/day.
I'm not worried about it, just saying why it was noted as "bad for SSDs".

 

It doesn't matter if the NAND cells can physically take it. Even with TRIM, that amount of sequential writes will significantly lower the ssd's performance

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Would I be able to use the BIOS mod for the GT 640M LE if I bought a Vaio S 13" today and installed windows 7 on it? Does the bios mod improve performance that much?

 

No. Buy a refurbished.

 

I purchased my Sony S15 SVS151290S, and it shipped two days back. Configuration is

Core i7 3632QM
4 GB Ram (will upgrade to 12 GB)
500 GB HDD
Geforce GT640 LE 2 GB

My few cents about the laptop

PRO
1. Excellent Screen (no orange gate)
2. Fast Responsive
3. Extremely light weight

Cons
1. Heat near the vent. (poor vent design)
2. Keyboard little soft
3. Lot of sony bloatware

I am unable to view the bios, I tried to press F2 key, but in vain. any help in this regard

 

to see bios shutdown the notebook, then press the assist button.

 

Has anyone else noticed a considerable color difference between using HD4000 and GT640LE?
It is especially noticable in games, the HD4000 colors are a lot more saturated. I quite like it for games.

I am not as happy about how coding environment looks (Far manager and Notepad ++ with black/white coloring ^^). It hurts my eyes considerably more than a VAIO F1 screen. Any ides what I can do to make colors/brightness more like that F1 screen? IIRC, the F1 has a TN panel even and it looks way better for me

 

Or just tap on escape during power up.

 

Vaio Assist, F2 doesn't work. I will try Escape next time I reboot.

 

The laptop needs to be completely powered down for the Vaio Assist button to work. So, completely power down and instead of hitting the power button, hit the Assist button.

 

Thanks its working.

 

Hi, I just notice a weird problem of my S15. I had a USB wireless mouse plugged in USB 3.0 port. Every time I plug in a Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive to the other USB 3.0 port, the mouse would work intermittently or even completely freeze. I tried to plug in a USB 2.0 external hard drive and the mouse is totally fine. And if the mouse is plugged in the USB 2.0 port, it would not be effected as well. Has anyone experience similar problem?

Thanks a lot!

 

Yes i have the same issue. And so does every one else on just about every system.
A lot of the wireless mouses are not suited for usb3 and you will get some problems if you use that port.
So just use the usb2 port instead.
There is suport documents about this on the manufacturers suport sites. Like logitech, microsoft and so on, about this issue.

 

I am probably buying an S13 with 4GB RAM, want to upgrade to 12GB on my own. Do I have to break any warranty seals to do so? I haven't bought any laptop memory for a while, is there a particular brand(s) I should get or avoid? TYIA.

 

Hey guys! Please help! My fan noise is getting ridiculous I am doing nothing and the fan is still quite loud, it's always on. Without any music etc. to mute it I can't even focus on my work. O_O Is this really normal for S15? Stamina mode with settings in Vaio Control Center optimized for "silence" don't seem to help, there's no noticeable difference.
The funny thing is the noise is not from the center under the screen, so where the fan is supposed to be (?) I guess, but in the right corner, near the trackpad. Is this my HDD then? Should I return it to Sony and ask for another HDD? It had some "beeping" problem, but it was just two, three times and now it doesn't seem to be an issue anymore...(?) So far, at least.
I guess if this will prove to be HDD issue I will replace it with SSD on my own. I'm sorry if this is a very stupid question, probably it is, but if I replace it what about my recovery partition? I'm sorry for being such a noob, but I can't find the answer anywhere?

 

Hello Mize, you made my day!!! Thank you very much - problem solved.

 

@olee22 (or anyone else for that matter),

Thanks for your write-up (post #5934) regarding a clean install of W8 (Pro) using the ISO from MSDN. You mention that you must use the *exact* version of W8 which matches the version originally shipped by the OEM. You seem to make the distinction between using the W8 Pro and non-Pro versions. However, these two versions are identical in that they are found on the same ISO (at least the en-us version is). Both Pro and non-Pro are found on the generic Windows 8 MSDN ISO. You even mention specifically that the W8 version would not be accepted on a notebook originally installed with W8 Pro. For the life of me, I can only find one ISO version for *both* Pro and non-Pro.

 

Has anyone taken their S15 apart and checked if the CPU is soldered or removable? If it's removable I plan to upgrade mine.

 

If you bought an upgrade download iso it would be either non or pro.

 

Thanks for the reply, but not sure what you mean by the above. There's no upgrade download for W8, as far as I'm aware - only for W8 Pro.

Here's the link I'm referring to: ----> http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...y-s-series-owners-thread-594.html#post9078469

The distinction was made between the MSDN W8 non-Pro and Pro versions. However, they're one and the same ISO. So, I'm not sure what he was driving at, especially when he stressed it like three times. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that that MSDN ISO would work by installing the proper version for which the BIOS key is intended. As fas as I understand it, a W8 Pro Upgrade key would NOT work (to perform a clean install), as the underlying OEM OS is considered "non-core". You would only be able up grade to Pro using the W8 Pro Pack (followed by clean install), or with a new W8 Pro MSDN/Technet obtained key. I think you *could* upgrade to Pro with a consumer Pro Upgrade key, but then you wouldn't be able to clean install Pro with it.

 

I've tried to use the pro iso to clean install a non pro efi bios machine and it only works if you hack the iso or enter a new pro key. It won't let you install non pro.

 

Ah, OK. Thanks. I think that if you wanted to upgrade (clean install) using the Pro Upgrade, you would need to use the PID method by using the accompanying Pro key by adding a text file to the sources folder on the USB drive, to avoid having the install use the existing OEM key. Still not sure if deleting the EFI partitions is required for this to work.

Otherwise, if you have a copy of the MSDN W8 (non-pro AND pro versions included), then it would pick the OEM non-Pro key, and you would be able to clean install the non-Pro version.

 

Hello!

I have minor problem with brightness.

This video (not mine ) experiences similar issue: Sony vaio brightness control problem - YouTube

Whenever i increase brightness it automatically decreases it.

Thanks in advance!