Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

I'm impressed with this laptop's gaming capabilities!

After doing the .inf hack to update to the latest Nvidia drivers and using MSI Afterburner to overclock the 640m LE to 540MHz/1140MHz, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 both run @1920x1080 + all High settings with a constant 40-50fps.

 

Q: I'm thinking of removing the DVD and put the original HDD in its place. Then to put a new SSD where the HDD originally went. Is it possible, has anyone tried or seen a description of how to?

 

hi Josnah, yes it has been done. Just read roughly 15 pages before this post to find out how it was done by a user. he posted some blurry mobile phone pictures of it. You will have to disasamble most of the laptop to reach the odd though.

 

That's interesting. I've just reverted back from the Nvidia Verde beta drivers (304.48) to the latest Nvidia release drivers (301.42) because I found the Verde drivers to be "choppy" in real gameplay. What's your experience of the beta drivers?

Petrov.

 

Hey mate,

someone said they would try and make a guide on how to do it. That would be really cool

 

you used to work for avid??

when I was at film school, some guys came from avid explaining why it was the number one editing program. it's a really cool program. I've been told avid (contra Sony Vegas which is bundled with Vaio S, Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro(OSX) ) is really good for news stations as you can edit in the cloud so to speak. so its great for broadcasting with tight deadlines.

 

ahh I see. thanks for clarifying

 

Based on the feedback from this thread I've ordered the following for my wife:

Product: CA-SVS13A190S-LBOM
Component: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M LE (2GB) hybrid graphics with Intel® Wireless Display technology
Component: 13.3" LED backlit display (1600 x 900)
Component: 4GB (4GB fixed onboard + 1 open slot) DDR3-1333Mhz
Component: Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter
Component: Microsoft Windows® 7 Home Premium
Component: Kaspersky® Internet Security (30-day trial)
Component: Internal lithium polymer battery (4400mAh)
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ player
Component: Gold
Component: No Fresh Start
Component: No Engraving
Component: 3rd gen Intel® Core™ i5-3210M processor (2.50GHz / 3.10GHz with Turbo Boost)
Component: Bilingual (English/French) with Backlight
Component: 500GB (5400rpm) hard drive
Per Unit Price: $1,049.99
Quantity: 1
Total Price: $1,049.99
Description: 13.3" S Series Customizable Laptop
Ship Method: Express Delivery
Estimated Ship Date: 07/09/2012
Subtotal: $1,050.69
Environmental Fee: $0.70
HST: $136.59
Promotional Discount: -$100.00
eCoupons: Exclusive to Great Canadian Rebates
Order Total: $1,187.28

I already have a 120 GB OCZ Vertex 3 from her old laptop that I will transfer over, and I will add an 8GB SODIMM.

I was surprised at the price, usually we get screwed in Canada. I am also getting 3% cashback from Great Canadian Rebates for the click-through and 1% cashback from my credit card, totaling for just under $50.

I'll take some pictures of the gold colour when it arrives.

 

Any Canadians know where to order the Sony S Series?

 

sony.ca....

 

What do you mean by .inf hack? I'll receive my Sony S13 in a few days, and I prefer to anticipate any "problems"

 

Thanks a lot! I found it on page 43 by wizzardxexe.

 

That would be really appreciated! I'm now 99% sure I will buy it, will check it out in store first, tomorrow

 

Hey Francis,

When you update your video card drivers, you can't from Nvidia.com's download section. It will tell you to go download Sony's official driver. Sony's drivers however, don't get updated as frequent.
So they have less performance than the latest.

However, this can be overridden very easily with a .inf hack. When you download a video card driver there is a little .inf file you have to rename and poof - you can then install any driver on your Sony laptop. I hope that explains.

 

Was engraving a possibility in the canadian store? they took it out of most in Europe (if not all?). Engraving is pretty sweet actually.

 

I'm such a newbie... This is what I'd appreciate!

 

Yeah, it is a $0 option for the customized models.

 

Thanks for your clear answer!

If it's not too much too ask, which .inf file have you to rename, and to what? Thanks in advance!

 

Thank faceless rebel for this info:

Hope that helps

 

ODD replacement video is compressing now, thanks for free Vegas, Sony!
I also briefly covered replacing the ram and hard drive.

 

Thanks! I'll try that as soon as I receive my S13!

 

Yet another thing for me to watch while I impatiently wait for my laptop to arrive. Thanks

 

How much space does the OE software take?

 

Not so much, just looking for a video of the computer, since I haven't really been able to find any on youtube or anything.. Maybe just a short clip of the computer turning on, and then what the desktop looks like when it loads up

 

Mini-review of Vaio SE 15.5” (Core i5, 500GB 7200rpm HDD, 2GB Nvidia 640LE, Windows 8 CP)

Build:
Mostly pleased. Very soft patch between W and S keys where pressure causes deflection. Some small gaps between screen and screen frame. Rear vent exits directly into screen hinge however this does not cause much restriction to air flow.
Screen is bendy when pushed at opposite corners but can be lifted and moved from one corner with ease (no need to hold the base)
feels pretty solid and well built and the above are only minor things. Exceptionally light and very thin for the power that’s inside!  Power pack is quite a portable size and weight.

Screen:
Yes, reds are a shade of orange! However, unless you are holding a piece of red card next to the screen, you don’t notice! Its quite easy to see the difference between what is red and what is actually orange. (small colour calibration required to remove a little redness from whites)
Quite a large frame around the screen but easily forgotten, especialy as the lid drops below the body when opened.
Viewing angles are excellent (of course - IPS) and the screen is very bright (at least compared to my previous laptop) no visual uniformity problems.
Screen is slightly glossy but no reflectivity issues have been experienced and colours look vibrant. Contrast is good (blacks look pretty black and whites very bright)

Graphics:
Have only played a few minutes of fallout new vegas which it managed with ultra settings at 1920x1080 without any visual stuttering (no FPS recorded im afraid) GPU got up to around 67’C from 5 to 10 mins of using explosives and attacking 3 securitrons.
Laptop stays cool when not in games

Sound:
The worst part of this laptop: the sound is probably equal to my old laptop at half volume. In a quiet room this is ok but I imagine its going to get frustrating when there is even just a small amount of background noise. Think i might invest in a small portable speaker. I guess this is the sacrifice for the size and weight.

Touchpad:
Personal preference but I really don’t like not having separate buttons. Im sure I will get used to it eventually though and since i found all the synaptic touchpad settings I have managed to improve things a lot! Its very big which is quite nice to experiance.
For gamers, turn off the smartsense option as this disables the mouse when two keys are pressed however i do notice now when typing my palm keeps taping the touchpad and moving the cursor. hopefuly ill come up with a workaround for this.)

Keyboard:
I have a silver laptop which does not work in daylight with backlit keys as it makes them impossible to read. This can be adjusted so that it only turns on in dark environments.

Other:
Fingerprint reader is located centre right, at the back which was nice to find when it arrived!
Hard drive makes a loud click every time I move the laptop as the safety feature activates every 5 seconds or so. 500GB, 7200rpm. Not realy a problem.
Battery life seems fairly decent though i havnt given it a timed test yet.

Final Notes:
Cons - low sound volume. Pros - Everything else! (minus touchpad)
Overall this laptop seems to match or exceed the performance of my old laptop (Clevo M860TU, Nvidia 9800M GT, FHD screen) on all features except for sound while managing to fit it half the size and weight (almost). Im very happy with it and plan to keep it for a good while!

feel free to ask me any other questions. Hope this helps!

 

Hey Forum! Disassembly video is finished. Here is the thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/673048-sony-s15-2012-disassembly-odd-caddy-video-tutorial.html
Petrov maybe you could link this in the first post?
The video is still processing, it will eventually be available in 720p

 

Then why Sony block SATA3? Is it any benefit to Sony? Is there any reason to do that suck things?

Funny thing is, S.Korea's S13P's SSD model *does* support SATA3!!

So korean user assumes Sony want to marketing SSD model (way cost more(1.5 times more approx.) than HDD model+256 private SSD buying and replacing) more compared to HDD model. So its sh*ty things.

 

That is fantastic. I'll be following your video as soon as I get the time and courage. Thanks for the effort, I'm sure the entire forum appreciates it.

 

Good to hear about the fingerprints. Is the brushed look simply a look or is it actually brushed carbon fiber that you can feel. Another question, is the gunmetal simply a paintjob? This goes for any color on the S series really.

I miss the days when you didn't have any color choice.

 

good job

 

yes, see this post and the YouTube video there.

 

sorry for the late comparison test, just got back from vacation.
the attached photos are a simple comparison of the IPS Display. they were taken from my 7year old cell...so pretty bad quality. but again..just for u guys to see the difference. at first it appeared a bit orange..but i could live with it since i have an external display that has a good RGB range and it doesnt have any problems displaying the red color. i then changed the brightness of the blue color on the graphics control panel, as a result the red did appear to be better. hope this helps




a video i found on youtube for disasembling the S15 to replace SSDs, RAM and the optical drive.
Sony Vaio S15 Disassembly and ODD Replacement Tutorial - YouTube

 

finally it shows payment processed! does it mean i am going to receive my S13 soon?

 

actually..u probably still have about a week to wait..cuz i recieved mine about 8days after they processed my payment.

 

........that sounds really frustrating!!

 

The beta drivers run smoothly for the most part. I just played a 2v2 and did notice some minor hiccups/drops in framerate. They weren't too frequent and only lasted a second so it's not a big deal. Did downgrading to the non-beta drivers fix this for you?

I also use a cooling fan if that changes anything. I doubt it though because the laptop runs pretty cool even without it.

 

Random question. Do they sell replacement batteries for the S series laptops?

 

I wonder what they do will all the extra internal space in the 15 inch...it doesn't seem they use it for the battery, and for the most part the components are the same.

On another note, does anyone know if you can get the free docking station deal AND the PS3 deal?

 

"Extra space"? Maybe it looks like that in the video, but really there isn't a whole lot of space. And you still need air to be moved through the system to cool it.

 

do u have the link to the korea S13P page? if it's really SATA III we can download the BIOS and analyze it

 

I still don't understand how the cooling works on this laptop. The location of the exhaust is fairly obvious in the center rear under the screen hinge. Where is the intake? Is it just the perforated area below the ports and card readers on the bottom right side?

I love how this laptop has "smart" auto-brightness, you can manually adjust the brightness higher if you find the default too low, and the laptop will take your setting as the new set point and auto-adjust the brightness based on your new set point. I wish smartphones could do this, the auto-brightness is too low on my Galaxy Nexus and I can't adjust that without turning off auto-brightness entirely.

The touchpad on this laptop would be perfect if it was 0.5" narrower on the left and right so your palms don't hit it while typing resulting in unwanted inputs, and if it had buttons. I hate hate hate clickpads, it's an example of form preceding function and Apple can keep that nonsense, I want a touchpad which reliably works for simple things like right-clicking and click-and-drag.

 

Hi guys, on my Vaio S 15.5, I know the fan exhaust is in the centre at the back. But I can only feel hot air blowing out towards the right side of this.

Is this correct? Does the Vaio has dual fan or single?

The low hum of the fan exhaust is quite distracting when it kicks in.

 

Get the new OCZ Agility 4 / Vertex 4 they're using their own Marvell co-developed solution and I'm using the Agility 4 (since the Vaio S is capped at SATA 2) on mine.

The new ones has higher IOPS than most currently on market and having been out for a few months it hasn't had any noticable reports of reliability problems. Though mind you the Agility 4 comes with 3 year warranty but the Vertex 4 comes with 5.

 

I use MSI Afterburner 2.2.1 and the program does only show 540MHz even if the bar for adjusting "Clock Core" is dragged all the way to the rightmost (+135MHz). However, GPU-Z 0.6.2 in the meanwhile does show 635MHz, exactly equal to 500MHz plus the extra 135MHz.

Is this a minor bug with MSI Afterburner, or with GPU-Z? I'd hope it is the former....

[Edit] Have read pages of discussion after that, and too bad to understand that MSI afterburner is showing the right thing....

 

I been a long time observer of NBR and decided to join. So I just ordered the barebone s13 carbon fiber gunmetal and it wont arrive until july 6 but my free ps3 already shipped.

I'm kinda worry about the gold vaio lettering in the back. Can someone with the S13 post some pics of the back cover with the gold vaio lettering? Is it too flashy? Thanks

 

I can confirm that SSD versions of the S15 have SATA III because Im following à french forum and a member post a bench of the SSD : Sony VAIO S Series - Tests et discussions - Page : 146 - Ultraportable - Ordinateurs portables - FORUM HardWare.fr
We can see that the pers aren't limited by SATA II but How could it be possible?

 

It is not gold. It looks more like copper and dont worry its pretty nice with the grey case.

And the grey turns a bit purple under sunlight.

 

Actually, wouldn't it be easier to just install it from here?
NVIDIA DRIVERS 304.48BETA

I just went to the Nvidia website then when it said it couldn't find drivers, I hit the link to include the beta drivers. These seem to install fine for me ^_^

This made me LOL XDDD

 

Downgrading to non beta drivers did appear to make gaming smoother, less choppy. I've only tried on Path of Exile -but I'll try on Civ 5 and Skyrim tonight hopefully and report back further.

Also, when reverting back to the non beta drivers I've lost the ability to choose which GPU I use when right-clicking on a program - odd. Doesn;'t seem a big deal as they always seem to load with the 640LE now by default.

Petrov.

 

ooo interesting. If that really is the case, i'm sure the BIOS modder Camiloml would be able to find a fix for SATA III!

From the link, it's clear that the SSDs are in RAID mode in the S15 SSD versions. Is the configuration for the Europe VAIOS 64gb x 4 (like in the Z series) or is it 128gb x 2? If it's the latter, then it's definitely SATA III.