Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

About the nvidia drivers, I've a question, someone explain how to install the beta drivers, but how can I install (when I'll receive my S15) the non beta drivers?
Thank you^^

 

searched everywhere but couldn't find my answer so I'm hoping someone has an answer for me. I was wondering if the new S15" trackpad support windows 8 gestures. I know they have gesture support in windows 7 but before I install the windows 8 RP, I'd like to know if there is gesture support.

 

It's a £120 upgrade to an i7 quad core for the S15 - £50 for the S13P. It's not worth it imo, especially for the S15, so I would put the same money towards a SSD.

 

Need as many honest opinions as possible for deciding on my purchase of the Vaio S 15.5..

I'll be using my computer mainly for Web Browsing and Streaming Video...
However in the future I would like the ability to get more involved in doing
work in Adobe Photoshop and Video Editing..

Am I going to notice a signifigant increase in speed and productivity if I upgrade from the core i5 to the i7 - quad core?
Is it worth that upgrade for Photoshop and Video editing,
of will an i5 processor suffice with upgrading the ram to 12gb total?

Any help is much appreciated. One thing I will stress, is that I will NOT be using my computer for any GAMING (that's what I have a PS3 for)

Looking forward to helpful insight..

 

I think the S13P is only a dual core (not quad core) i7 option, at least, that's what my S13 P has and that was the only i7 option I had when I ordered. But I agree it's probably not/wasn't worth the money given I only use the laptop for work/gaming (not videos or video editing, etc).

Petrov.

 

XD my S13 is going to arrive at 29th!!

 

Guys has not any website or anyone publish a review about Sony Vaio S15 in details ??

 

HI, I have a SONY VAIO VPC-S120FL and I added a SSD OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB, I booted with a usb stick with Ubuntu and I installed ubuntu in the SSD drive. Then, when I booted the BIOS did not recognize the SSD drive. How can I fix this?
Thanks!

 

eVGA Precision X locked up my s15 but I may try again soon. MSI Afterburner seems to work fine for overclocking the memory, but I'm not sure if the card is locked at 540mhz for the core clock rate. Actually, in order for the monitor attachment of MSI AB to display it at 540mhz, I have to put the slider to +95, so I'm not actually sure if I'm actually overclocking the core by setting the value to anything less than 95.

GPU-Z, as someone mentioned before, is displaying the current clock speed normally, so it's reading at 595, not 540 as MSI AB is. I'm not sure which program to trust. Also, GPU-Z also reports the "boost" speed is going up by the same amount as what I increase the slider by on MSI afterburner. However, I'm not seeing my card reaching the boost speed when I play games like Deux Ex, though I have seen some artifacts during cutscenes. I'm looking at MSI afterburner's little graph by alt tabbing and running my mouse over the line to see how high the clock speed reaches, and it's never above 540. Normally boost speed is 570, and GPU-Z displays at 665.

Can anyone shed some light on this, or report with confidence any programs that work flawlessly with the 640M LE?

EDIT: I had to manually search through the thread to find some answers, (thanks to google search in part) but I think I understand now. Read on another forum that MSI AB doesn't really support much in terms of mobile GPU overclocking, so certain things might be locked (like our core, for example). Luckily, the DDR3 is not, so we can at least overclock that. Last thing someone could do is see if they get different 3d mark results but leaving the ddr3 alone and clocking the gpu at 500, 540, and +100mhz to see if there's a difference that way.

 

now that more and more people are actually receiving thier vaios, can some of you chime in on this?

is the body actually metal or is it plastic?

the vaio website makes it seem like the whole thing is made of alluminium or magnesium, but when i saw the new t-series in real life (supposely made from similar materials) the bottom felt plasticy.

any thoughts?

 

HI, I have a SONY VAIO VPC-S120FL and I added a SSD OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB, I booted with a usb stick with Ubuntu and I installed ubuntu in the SSD drive. Then, when I booted the BIOS did not recognize the SSD drive. How can I fix this?
Thanks!

 

so i'm getting this laptop and i have questions. VAIO S Series PC | Sony | Sony Store USA

i have a few questions if you don't mind to answer them please.

1. does this laptop over heat? if it does how fast.

2. is the sound quality that bad, if so will my headphones and my own speakers sound bad?

3. is the fan loud?

4. is it fast for surfing the web, gaming and other stuff

5. should i get 15.5 inch or 13.3?

my spec's will be:
Quad-core i7 at 2.1 ghz, 1080P display, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE (2GB), 640GB (7200rpm) HDD, 4 GB RAM

thanks!

 

guess would be going into bios during startup (del/f2 usually) then go to boot priority and pick usb drive as first priority. then it should boot from there. thats usually how you force a windows install so its my guess it would be same for linux, but not sure.

 

Runs very cool, cooler than a lot of laptops, speakers highs and mids are clear, but you can't hear the bass virtually at all. Headphones, even earbuds, probably have more audible bass. Quietest fan I've ever heard on a laptop even under full load/spin, plays games like diablo 3 and civ 5 on max settings, deus ex on medium-high, web browsing is very fast. get the 15.5 inch if you like a really nice IPS screen with great viewing angles, high HD resolution (1920x1080), want the numpad, and don't mind reds looking a bit orange (you can adjust the colors a bit to take decrease the orange tinge). I couldn't see myself gaming comfortably on a 13 inch screen. 15.5 is small enough when I'm used to 21.5. bigger laptop still only comes in at about 4.4 lbs, very thin and still very portable.

 

thanks for all that information so what do ssd's do and does it go instead of a dvd/cd driver?

 

Does anyone have any information at all regarding the battery life of the S13 and S15? Do they have any information about it in the recent 25 minute review posted on Youtube? I don't have time at the moment to watch the whole thing.

 

Magnesium alloy bottom, aluminum top and either magnesium or carbon composite screen lid.

 

I have the S15 and so far I've been getting roughly 4 hours with WIFI on, web browsing and watching videos.

 

But the question he's asking (as I am myself) is: does it feel plasticy?

 

Doesn't feel plasticy at all to me. I especially like the metallic/solid feeling where my palms rest when typing on the keyboard.

 

Do you have the standard carbon black or gunmetal?

 

The plastic part does. The strip along the top of the lid to allow the antennae to work properly. And that's a part you touch a lot when opening or adjusting the screen.

Rest of it does not feel like a MacBook Pro or even one of the dozens of copycats, if that's what you're asking. It's a rough texture, and the metal is thin, it doesn't feel like it's carved out of a solid block of aluminium. Which to me is a good thing.

 

I'm going to put in a 8 gig stick and a 256 ssd anyway, so I don't want to have to buy the 6 gig and 640 gig HDD. It'll save a few bucks if I could choose the standard model of the 15S.

Anybody able to swing that yet? LiveChat was useless. Would calling help out?

 

No? Really the question makes me confused. The metal parts can't per definition feel like plastic and the carbon fiber composite must per definition feel like plastic.

 

If you can show them that the VAIOs are on SATAII and not SATAIII, they could treat it as a bug and maybe be convinced to fix it in a future firmware!

 

Definitely worth a try

Though I suspect the support rep either doesn't have a clue or possibly there was a miscommunication of SATA III vs SATA 3Gb/s

 

Just ordered my Vaio 15.5 S after days of laborious research and doubt. I decided it was going to be the best balance of performance, mobility, build quality, and price for me. The only other laptops I was still strongly considering were the Envy 15 (too big), the XPS 15 (too expensive and I haven't like the XPS keyboards I've seen at the Microsoft Store), and the MBP+R (way too expensive, but the specs are perfect.

I have to thank some people in this thread who alleviated my concerns about Orangegate (I'm not a graphics professional and I think I will be able to stand it) and posted performance in D3 and SC2. I was really not happy with LE numbers I was seeing online, but the numbers I saw in this thread killed my concerns.

I opted for a customized i7 build as I'll be running multiple virtual machines concurrently, and the extra logical cores help a lot. I went with 12GB of RAM because it was $48.50, which was about what it would cost to upgrade aftermarket. I "saved" $104 with the college discount and got the free docking station, which I will infrequently use. College students be sure to get the discount! I was very pleased with the overall build value, especially combined with 12-month interest-free financing. Edit: It occurred to me that there was no actual validation of the fact that I attend the school I selected. Unless Sony truly has an automated validation system setup on the back end, which I highly doubt, I don't think that they actually check. Just saying...

I'll most likely swap the 256GB Crucial M4 from my desktop to the Vaio. The SATA III thing has me disappointed, but I think I will live, and I bet there were be a BIOS update eventually.

This thread is a monster, but I'm glad I took the time to go through it. I really had a good feeling when I looked at the Vaio S series, and I think I'll be happy with my decision. Hopefully it won't really take two weeks to ship.

 

Has anyone tried virtualisation yet?

Hope they haven't locked it to disabled in the bios..

 

We're you able to get the 8%, docking cradle and the PS3? I am trying to see if people have been successful getting all 3, and if so, how did you do it?

 

It's disabled by default, but I have an option to enable VT-d in the BIOS. I flipped it on, fired up VMWare Workstation 8. 64 bit Ubuntu guest works excellent

 

When I ordered mine it was the docking cradle and then either the 8% OR the PS3, not both. Although I was also offered $100 off the sheet battery as well.

 

Hey does anyone else have not working mic/headphone jacks on the S15? None of my headphones can plug in all the way, and the sound is broken. If I get the positioning perfect I can listen to it fine, but this seems abnormal.

 

Holy crap! After reformatting, installing an SSD, and adding another 4GB of RAM, I can run SC2 @1080p/Ultra settings with a steady 50-60fps. No hiccups or anything.

For some reason it's showing 6:34 on the battery life as well. I'm not sure how accurate that is though.

 

If you're within the 30 day return period, time to exchange it for another one.

 

They let you have the option of choosing the docking cradle + 8% or a PS3? When i asked the sales rep i had, she said that i wasn't able to get both the ps3 and the docking station..

 

Well it wasn't that straight forward, but our conversation went something like this:

Me: Does the docking station have the HDD in it?
Rep: No
Me: Oh well I don't even want that then.
Rep: Oh ok. Well I can give you $100 off a sheet battery instead.
Me: Cool. Anything else?
Rep: Are you a student?
Me: Yes
Rep: Then you can get either a PS3, Vita, or 8% discount.

So I didn't actually get the docking station and PS3, but had I chosen that instead of the battery discount I think I still would have been offered both. One is a weekly special and one is a student special, so they should be combineable.

 

Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. I'll call them tomorrow and see if I can get any other discount because it seems like i only got the 3% discount too. I'm so excited for my laptop to arrive though! Such an upgrade from my current Sony S from years ago.

 

Well, couldn't swing the free docking station on the custom S15 standard, but was able to get the free PS3 which is pretty sweet. Have to wait until the morning to actually place the order because apparently GE Capital computers sleep at night so they couldn't actually process the order.

I think I might try to get $100 off the sheet though instead of the PS3.

 

I didn't try. I got the discount and the docking. The PS3 was $250. I get that it's still a good deal, but I didn't need a 2nd one and I CBF to taking the tell to sell one.

 

Did you order off of the Sony US site? If so, do you have to talk to a CSR to get the $100 off the sheet battery as well as the free PS Vita/PS3? If I can get both with my S13/S15 that would be fantastic.

 

Norton Ghost is included with the purchase of a Samsung 830 Series SSD. It was a very pleasant surprise!

I just downloaded and installed them, without any problems. Note that I did a clean W7 install (and it was on the S13).

I've tried out both the Verde beta drivers now, and the Sony released ones.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm sticking to the non-beta drivers, until new drivers are released. In my experience the performance of the beta drivers are generally subpar.
A simple example is the Diablo 3 character menu. With the Sony drivers, the fps is much more stable, staying between 50-60 fps when not touching anything. The Verde drivers will jump all over the place, between 35-55 fps.

I'll have a video up showing the performance of D3 on the GT 640M LE a bit later, I'll just have to update some stuff.

 

sorry if my question was unclear.

i saw a T series in the other day, and was unsure if the bottom part was plastic or alloy

apparently the S series has a similar build, so i was wondering if it felt similar

petrov seemed to also be unsure if certain parts were metal or plastic, so i was curious if others also found the body plasticy

 

Sigh. I'm performing the Factory Recovery on my buzzing S15 now. So sad to see it nuking and paving the hard drive back to the state it was in when it arrived so I can send the laptop back.

They sent the free PS3 right away, so it actually arrives tomorrow. The status of the replacement laptop itself still says "Your VAIO is being built" and the estimated ship date still says 7/6. I hope it ships sooner than that because I'm bringing this buzzer to the nearest FedEx office tomorrow to begin it's long trip to Sony's Returns department in Laredo, TX.

 

I have the 13.3 inch S Premium version Gunmetal. Does anyone want me to do a video of a quick walk around of it? If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll post it up on youtube or something ^_^

Oh and switching the controls on my keyboard (instead of using regular directional arrow keys) fixed my key ghosting problem. Also, installing everything in the correct order fixed my battery problem. Thank you for all the help here on this forum. Very much appreciated; this thing is beast! Battery estimate with the sheet battery is around 8 hours for stamina mode. Gaming + netbook battery life = BEAST

 

Has anyone tried out the built-in microphone on the S15?

Is the sound quality audible and decent at a typing distance? Mainly for using skype etc. I would hate to wear a separate mic..

I ordered the S15 on 15/6, and reordered it on the 20/6 to get the free sheet battery.. Got also a 5% sales rep discount! So my quad-core fullHD beauty with a 14 hour battery cost only 1200€. Can't wait to get my hands on it!

 

Definitely interested ex!

Would love a video especially if you could play some games and give us some idea about the fan.

How does it feel to type on? Nice keyboard? It has chicklet spacing right?

Do you like the brightness of the screen? How does it do outside?

Any more info about the battery life is appreciated though it sounded like the consensus was 4 hours with multimedia without the sheet?

Lastly (whew thank you!) why did you choose the 13.3 incher over the 15.5 inch? I'm currently on the fence between the two. Leaning towards the larger laptop because the full HD IPS screen sounds like a worthwhile upgrade at the cost of .5lb greater weight. Also as a newb, I like that there's a video walkthrough for the HDD caddy installation in the 15".

Thank you again!

 

I put up a video of Diablo 3 running on the S13, for anyone interested.
If any desired details are missing in the description, let me know.

Even though it's the broken code of patch 1.0.3, I'd say it still runs pretty good on the GT 640M LE.

 

I'll go ahead and play Skyrim on it in the video ^_^ only game I got on it right now. Can't really show FPS but runs damn smooth even with HD textures on.

The keyboard is very nice to type on. I used an m11x before and that keyboard got oily after time (especially on WASD XD). This type of keyboard, since it's all spaced out, seems it will be less prone to super oiliness. The backlight is also kool. I like how it turns off after a while when you don't type on it to save battery life. You just press any key to turn it back on for a few seconds.

The screen is actually pretty bright and vibrant. Sometimes too bright haha (which is a great thing since you can always reduce brightness). Haven't tried it outdoors really (been working from 11AM to 11PM overtime haha). Automatic brightness feature is also nice but sometimes too dark for me so I usually set the brightness myself.

Without the sheet, I'm not sure. I usually have it on so haven't tested without the sheet (why not just get it since I hear you can get a $100 discount on it [which I didn't get >_<])

Honestly, I decided on the 13.3" right away because I hate big and bulky things. I had the m11x (which I stated before) because I love love love small and compact things (seems more efficient in ideal life terms).

I'll go ahead and try making the video either tonight or tomorrow night then upload ^_^

Very nice! LOL at the music. Makes it more epic haha kudos man

 

By the way, does anyone know how to make utilize the TurboBoost? From my understanding, it just kicks in when there's a large amount of load on the CPU? Any way to boost it on command or to a certain speed you'd always like it?

 

HP doesn't actually check either. So you can get the HP Academy discount too this way if you buy anything online from HP.

Has anybody gotten the sleeve from Sony? Is it any good? If not, what sleeve would you guys recommend for the S15?