Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

That's odd-- I've been playing (too much) Diablo III on the 13.3" premium at 1600 x 900 using the Nvidia card without error.

 

Did anyone else notice they changed the PS3 deal?

Now you have to buy an $1000 dollar S series model to get it. The "standard" isn't included anymore and neither is the T series.

Bummer, cause I was gonna get the base model, but might just get the Envy now.

 

That's good news. Do you have the i7 or i5? Also can you play the PVP war zone at high frame rates?

 

yes indeed. that USB port supports charging while on sleep mode

 

Actually, it is while in sleep mode or even when powered off.

 

I have the i7, but the i5 is just as fast, with fewer cores. It does not use all of the cores on either CPU.

I do not PVP much. I do play at 1920 x 1080, with frame rates > 30 FPS, with most of the graphics settings turned up. I'm sure I could reach 60 FPS if I turned down the graphics settings.

If you want more details about my hardware spec, please use the link in the earlier post.

 

Anyone else get any dead pixels? I have 1 about 3 inches from the bottom and right.

 

You're right.
No more PS3 for standard S13.
I also notice my S13 Premium was just shipped from China yesterday.
Ordered on 6/21.

 

Thanks for the info. I was hoping for higher, but of it seems functional

 

I ordered mine on the 19th and its still in production... laaaaaaaaaame

 

err, whats your model? i ordered mine on the 18th and i am gonna receive it tmr!!

 

Just wondering, I heard that you can't install fresh drivers on Vaios and only install the Sony ones. Is that true? Because it is kind of a downer (and I've had that experience with other laptops).

 

normal s13, with some upgrades (premium screen and GPU). Hopefully i will get shipping confirmation before the weekend, but i wont hold my breath.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by "fresh drivers"? If you are performing a clean install then you can get the drivers from the link to the US Sony site that is in the first post of this thread.

As Sony makes the machine, I would imagine that all the drivers will have been created (or verified/tweaked by Sony) to work with it. In fact I prefer that (unless its the graphics drivers).

 

Thanks all for you contribution to this SATA2 / SATA3 discussion. + Rep for you all. Luckily it doesn't seems to be as worse as one time Topper59 had:

The write speeds looks way more worse than the others.

More results of others will be great, definitely if you have some SATA3 speeds like Topper59 have (sometimes). Of course the chance is very low, but maybe we then could find an indication of a possible solution for this issue...

 

It helps a lot if you guys tell us what SSDs you have too.

 

Has anyone tried to flash soldered DDR3 in to higher speeds? Perhaps 1600mhz cl9? I wonder which chips does it have?
1300mhz soldered ram is major drawdown for me, as i need better performing ram for my work.

 

True! The thought hasn't even crossed my mind, as I just assumed everybody went for the Samsung 830 Series =P

 

Well I've been reading this thread since the beginning and I am now the proud owner of the S13P! Key points:

- I'm in the UK
- Ordered on the 15th of June, received on the 28th
- CPU upgraded to the dual core i7 (1.9Ghz) and a blu ray drive added
- After market SSD installed (crucial M4 128GB running latest firmware)

- I can confirm the UK model has a UK keyboard layout
- GPU is 640M LE
- the laptop to me feels very sturdy and of a high build quality. The lid does have flex but I thought it was still pretty sturdy and have enough confidence to open it via one corner.
- Using the headphone jack requires a fair push - so much so that I sometimes have to hold the other side of the laptop. But it goes in and works fine. Looks like they have the tolerances on these things a little too tight!
- There wasn't much trouble replacing the hard-drive, though I decided to leave the screw under the gold cable out, because putting it back in made me nervous. If I ever have to put the old HDD back in, I'll put the screw back in too.
- The thing absolutely flies with an SSD installed. ~10 second boot times (I can also confirm I'm getting SATAII speeds).
- I managed to create a UEFI bootable USB drive with windows by following this guide: Installing Windows 7 in native EFI mode from USB - bit-tech.net Forums
- I followed the driver order specified elsewhere in this thread and it was fine.
- I backed up and restored my windows activation details using ARB (as mentioned by someone else in the thread)
- I'm pretty glad I'm using an SSD because the hard-drive it came with gave out a horrible low frequency noise (320GB 5400rpm) and the unit is now a lot quieter with SSD (barely audible in stamina mode)


Anyone got any questions?

for myself: I understand it's not possible to install viao care or vaio gate on a fresh install? can anyone confirm this?

 

The performance difference between 1333MHz and 1600MHz is pretty small at least if one doesn't use the integrated graphics.
Replacing the RAM isn't a problem for a skilled repair technician with a hot air rework station however it depends on how Sony implements the RAM speed. If it's hardcoded in the BIOS it will be very hard work changing the work speed, if they essentially soldered a whole SO-DIMM stick on the motherboard one can reprogram the associated SPD memory.
Again the performance difference would be relatively small.

 

Factory fitted 256GB SSD in a S15 with 3612QM. Drive is in RAID0 config (2x128GB drives) and is reported as being a Samsung drive.

 

That looks way better, of course because of t the RAID0 configuration. Some questions:

Can you confirm it is using SATA3?

Can you tell us what version of the bios you have?

Not sure about this, is it possible to share the BIOS version? Maybe someone else could explain this?

 

Weird. I just got the Blue Screen of Death on Windows 7. Anyone else gotten one before? I was just browsing on Chrome and all of a sudden no pages would load. Then, I closed Chrome. It then said Oops Google Chrome has crashed would you like to reopen it. Then I could move my mouse but couldn't click anything. After that, the BSOD came up with a stop error then created physical dump. Couldn't write down the STOP number since it rebooted right after. I'll check my event viewer and update later.

UPDATE: Here's the error in event viewer I got, hopefully this might be helpful to someone in the future (which is the reason I am posting here):
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x000000f4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xfffffa800ceba640, 0xfffffa800ceba920, 0xfffff80002f86510). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 062912-7737-01.

Researched a bit on the "0x000000f4". Could be a number of hardware problems such as RAM stick or SATA connection apparently. I'll update more on this later if it happens again and if I am able to fix the problem.

 

Man exProp, you get hit hard by all kinds of stuff. I hope it doesn't persist; having to return brand new faulty hardware is a drag.

@vbed
Now that's just cheatn'. We don't take kindly to your types around here, git! git!

 

That must have just happened within the past day or so because I ordered the standard and got the PS3. If you haven't already, you might want to talk to a representative to see what they can do. I was disappointed that I couldn't swing a deal to get the docking station with the standard model.

 

I know right?! It seems it wasn't my fault I had a minor urge to return this particular laptop. Might be defective sigh..
Update on the BSOD: Happened twice already. Error in the event viewer:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x000000f4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xfffffa800cee3b30, 0xfffffa800cee3e10, 0xfffff80002f84510). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 062912-8361-01.

I'm going to try my best to fix this before I exchange it. insertsadfacehere

 

Went to the Sony Store today.

Was supposed to have a look at the S13 Premium.

End up buying it!

Nice laptop!

 

Does anyone know if S13 or S15 are able to run 2 external monitors + native screen together?

Since 640M LE is kepler, it should support it. Also Intel i7-3 supports it.
But i´d like to have a conformation before i buy.

 

which one is better?

Amazon.com: Dell 9.5mm SATA To SATA 2nd HDD Hard Drive Caddy For Dell Latitude Dell-E4310-HDD-Caddy-AU: Computers & Accessories

or

2.5" Laptop SATA HDD to Slim CD DVD RW BOX Caddy 9.5mm | eBay

im getting the 15.5 inch

 

I'm thinking about getting the Sony VAIO S 15" laptop. Could somebody do me a favour and take a clear picture of the screen (while in a game or just in desktop is fine) and also of the touchpad from above, please?
The gallery on Sony's site are too small and a bit crappy to take a good detailed look.

 

hi all

just thought id share my experience with an issue i had only minutes ago.

my laptop hibernates and waking up from it this afternoon, i lost the webcam driver. it was displayed as unknown device in device manager.

after reading the thousand or so references on how to fix it, nothing worked. i do this stuff for a living and so i truly thought the hardware was screwed.

i ended up going to esupport.sony.com for a live chat session.

he remote controlled the laptop, and within 5 mins it was fixed.

Totally Stoked!

anyway, if it happens to your S Series try this.

he uninstalled the unknown device driver and shutdown my laptop. once off, i then held the power button down for 30 seconds (it doesnt power on when its held). I then lifted, then pushed the power button again it turn it back on. the OS then found the correct driver and off I went.

big ups Sony!

 

Don't know if it's been mentioned, or if anyone else has noticed the issue, but my S15 has a weird problem.

The S15 chassis itself is warped. If I look down at the magnesium below the trackpad, there's a visible 2-3mm downward warp toward the center of the notebook. I confirmed this by laying a ruler across the top of the palm rest area, and noting that there's a gap between the chassis and the ruler near the center of the notebook, showing the magnesium bowing downward.

I contacted Sony, and within 5 minutes they set up an RMA, no questions asked. They said as soon as they receive my tracking info with the return laptop, they will send out a new one, which should help to expedite the turn-around time.

When I found this issue, I was considering just sending the notebook back and trying something else, but Sony's customer service seems to have stepped it up...and I've truthfully fallen in love with the S15.

 

Those numbers look good. However, theorically, you only have peak throughput at 600MBps for SATA3, so I am just curious about the report.

 

Just a thought, could it not be the 8 GB 1600 Mhz stick you put in that is faulty / having compatability issues? Run memtest or test without the 8 GB stick in.

 

Yes SATAII is limited to about 300MB/s.

From wiki:
With a native transfer rate of 3.0 Gbit/s, and taking 8b/10b encoding into account, the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 2.4 Gbit/s (300 MB/s)

Although there is some RAID magic going on because SATAIII should be limited to 600MB/s...

 

1.2GB/s total for two disks?

 

Wait, what size caddy fits in the S13? 9.5mm or 12.7mm?

 

Ah good point. Now I'm glad I added that it my signature. Wouldn't it be better if I ran the memtest with and without the 8GB stick? I'll do that now and report back. Apparently it could also be a hard drive or motherboard issue. I'll run tests on those too. If I keep getting the BSOD even after passing these tests, I'll probably end up exchanging it.. crossing fingers and toes!

 

Is anyone able to try out inner screen + 2 external screens via vga and hdmi?

Please.

 

it seems people are reporting the 9.5mm for s15. i'm guessing 9.5mm will also work for s13.

 

HEy everyone, I posted this in the Samsung thread as well, but I thought I would try here too in case anyone had made a decision between the two.

Right now I am stuck between the Series 7 15 inch IB and the S15 IB models.

From what I can tell the Sony is lighter, and has the better screen, while the Samsung has better battery life. Any thoughts or opinions from people who considered both?Both have two models, each at 999 and 1299 respectively as well. Thanks a lot.

 

Hi Supranium - I tried this out for you. Well, I tried to try this out for you - ended up laughing.

Its physically impossible to plug an HDMI lead in at the same time as VGA - the sockets are so close to each other that you can't plug them in at the same time!

However, all is not lost - I am running my S15 with two external monitors and the internal one is running too. One of the monitors is running on HDMI and the other on USB3.0 using a plugable (brand name) USB3.0 to DVI dongle. It uses DisplayLink technology and is excellent imho.

To ensure I had the horsepower to run all the pixels I made sure I spec'd the 2GB GT640M

 

You're USB3.0 to DVI dongle is not using any graphics card or abilities that are built-in to the laptop. The GT640M LE w/2GB is not used for that. The USB adapter is a separate "graphics card" all on its own as far as the laptop/OS is concerned.

 

I have a question for those with the S13 Premium - How are the colors on your display? The display on mine seems to have a green push. More specifically, if you look at shades of yellow and orange, they have a green tint to them.

I did a quick calibration using Windows 7's built in display calibration tool and the Intel Graphics Control Panel. While it looks better than before, greens are still a little too dominant. Anyone else seeing something similar?

 

I didn't actually consider both, since I was sold already six months ago to the 15,5" fullHD display and 2kg weight of the Vaio SE. But I decided to wait for ivy bridge models, and I think it paid off.

For Vaio S, you can get the slice battery. It puts the laptop's weight at the same range with the Series 7, but it'll give you up to 10-12 hours uptime. With the slice battery you can choose every day if you want to carry something heavy that can last long or a lighter computer that you can just plug in when you're running out of power. And even the 5-6 hours that you get without the slice is still a long uptime. Think about a flight from New York to San Francisco.

But my opinions might be a bit biased, since I've already ordered my S15

 

I think a little bit of both is true - quoting from DisplayLink's site..

"DisplayLink's award winning technology uses the CPU and GPU in your computer to compress the desktop image in realtime."

 

Nice marketing speak from the manufacturer....

What they really mean is that the dongle is a "soft adapter". It is not a real video card. It uses software to emulate a video card like the old "Win Modems". Your CPU (and it sounds like they may be trying to use something from the GPU) does the actual work that a real video card would be doing. This means you will see a noticeable performance impact. Software emulating hardware takes a lot more horsepower.

 

Thanks very much for your thoughts. So do you find you actually do get 5-6 hours with light use? I just at least want it to be five, I read 4 somewhere and that is just not enough I think.

 

I think one possibility would be using the laptop dock which has the same ports on the back, hdmi and vga and enough distance to plug them in at the same time but this of course is an extra cost so there might be cheaper alternatives.

 

And the answer to your question was on page 83:

"Bei sehr geringer Belastung mit gelegentlichem WLAN-Surfen und allen aktivierbaren Energiesparmaßnahmen hält der Akku des Sony S13A gut sieben Stunden durch."

So, with light usage and occassional wlan surfing and all power saving measures enabled you can get to 7 hours. I know this is the 13" in the test, but I'd expect at least 5-6 hours from the 15" model under the same conditions. Four hours could be quite average uptime for the battery though, on a bit heavier usage.