Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

you guys know if the S13 has a open mini-PCIe slot? think someone said the S15 does.

 

I just recently bought the S15 and a Samsung 830 SSD. I took out the HDD and installed the SSD, but I may have moved the computer while it was installing Windows on the SSD. When I turn the computer on, it makes a low humming/whirring noise now. I'm pretty sure it's the fan, but it never goes away. Did I just damage my computer?

 

SSD's do not have moving parts, so you can install anything on it and shake it like its a gift under a christmas tree and it won't do a thing to it. Although you might have loosen up something in your computer when you opened it...

 

SSD is virtually silent so its got to be the fan (or maybe you left a CD in the drive?).
The SSD is Solid State...so no...short of dropping it out of a building, the SSD won't be affected by moving the machine around. Most likely the case is tweaked and the fan is vibrating. try loosening and re-tightening all the screws you touched.

 

Just bought the S13a in Canada... should be on the 17th. Anyone got pics of the gunmetal black? That's the one I got.

 

I can't take a good enough picture to see the gunmetal. The brushed look is really subtle. I like it better than the matte black though.

Also, for anyone interested, CrystalDiskInfo says the stock SSD is a Samsung and has a "transfer mode" of SATA/600.

 

Just received my S13A (15 days after ordering) - first impressions are pretty good in terms of build quality etc. Screen is pretty poor at high brightness displaying black, but the contrast at low brightness (around 50% and below) is great - massive step up from my old Inspiron 1545 which notebookcheck also gave <200:1 contrast ratio - beginning to think they got a lemon.

My biggest complaint with the screen is not the contrast or colour, but the weird subtle pattern visible on large bright/white areas - likely the graininess that was discussed. Text however is not affected and is crystal clear. It's probably one of those things that drives you mad at first but after a while it isn't a big deal - like pentile matrix SAMOLED screens.

Sound is really bad by default, but pretty good with some equalisation. As the driver doesn't seem to have an equaliser I'll have to call upon one of my old tricks. Sound through the headphone jack is really good as far as onboard audio chipsets go, doesn't hold a candle to my Fiio E17 though.

And doesn't seem to include Vegas or any premium software besides PowerDVD

Now to figure out how to install the SSD and RAM I've got sitting here...

 

I just recently got my 15.6 version and I'm thinking about purchasing a cooling pad for it.

Would anyone happen to know if the cooler master notepal U2 or the U3 version would be a better fit for this particular size?

 

Just got my email from sony, my VAIO S 15.5 should be here on the 11th!

To that member asking about canadian deals. I managed to save $100 w/ a coupon that is now expired, but other than that I couldn't find any info on freebies like the amuricans.

I plan on doing a few video's of my platinum silver VAIO when I get it, I can't wait!

Seeing as we have a mini PCi Express, can we not install a mSATA SSD into this slot and run an SSD+HDD+Optical Drive? I have read some conflicting information about the compatibility of mSATA and mini pci-e so I'm not sure.

 

I also received my S13 Premium today and I totally agree with your opinion about the 900p display.

The viewing angles are fine, but the graininess at white/bright area is terrible. Looks like there is some kind of screen protector (like some used on phones/tablets to avoid fingerprints - not sure how they call it).

I don't know if that is common on non-reflective screens, but my old Studio 14 from Dell looks way better (glossy).

 

So far, my S13 is looking pretty good when it comes to cooling. I had an XPS15, the original L501x, and that was awful. Under load it'd quickly reach temps of 80-90 or so then crash/reboot. And the heat was very noticable, as it blasted hot air out of the side...

I've not done any long gaming sessions, only 20-30 mins light gaming just to test out performance, but I'm not seeing anything like that from the S13. It gets fairly warm on the underside, but only towards the rear/middle where the main vent/heatsink is. Cools down quickly when under light load, and the palmrests and keyboard area feel very little heat. But again, it's not spent too long under load yet.

It runs Starcraft 2 quite nicely, med-high settings. But that really shows up the bad black levels of the screen....

 

If you haven't ordered a WWAN card, you should have a free slot. I went for the WWAN with my UK S13A, and you can see one end of the card when you removed the panel to get at the HD+RAM. The WiFi card is fully accessible, the WWAN card isn't - without further disassembly.

I'd hope that on WiFi-only systems, they'd put that card in the less accessible slot, leaving the accessible one open?

 

its called banding, heres an (extreme) example

i see it sometimes in the corners. but its a non issue during gaming or films.
you really have to look for it to see it in my case

 

I wish they did this, but on my S13 the accessible slot is taken by Intel wireless and the open one is only accessible with a full disassembly I believe.

 

Hi, I have just received my vaio 15.5 today. I used to own the se and I cannot find a wireless switch anywhere on the new s laptop. Does anyone know any disable wireless shortcut? Thanks.

 

There's a "VAIO Smart Network" icon in the Taskbar that lets you toggle WiFi and Bluetooth. I kind of miss having a physical switch or function key for it myself.

 

Is there any possibility of the price of S15 coming down by September or October as I want to buy one and can wait but no waiting after october as I will be out of US to my home country.
Just an FYI....I will be buying the laptop only from amazon as I have enough GC balance.


Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk HD

 

Also, if you've got the WWAN card, and you've done a fresh Win7 install, you *need* to install this Vaio Smart Network software to get the WWAN working - it doesn't even show up in device manager without, if you just install the drivers and connection manager.

Got mine up and running with a 3 PAYG SIM, it'll be nice not to have to carry a dongle around for 3G.

 

A question for S15 owners. Does your keyboard dip a bit toward the middle?

 

Does anyone have the issue of when you open the lid, it flickers a couple of times and then it goes back to normal?

 

I just noticed the grainness/unstable edges are alot worse on the right 10% of the screen. Basically everytime I tilt my head, I can see visible noise around the 3 Buttons (Minimize, Restore, Close) of my browser. Horizontal lines get blurry when I shake the upper-right corner, but the same thing does not seem to appear (or at with the same intensity) near the middle or left side of the screen.

Another thing I noticed is that dragging windows around produce visible blurry edges, much more than my old Vaio F. Switching to full brightness seems to stable the screen somewhat, though the left edge flickers still remain.

Not sure if I should talk to Sony tech, doubt they would do anything considering these are minor things.

 

Ok, thanks! Yeah, I remember the SE had a switch and I used it frequently. I hope there is a way to assign an fn shortcut for it. I haven't had much time to play with the laptop yet but the new S was noticeably quiet compared to the SE.

 

Just wondering, why is the Samsung 830 SSD so popular?

I am looking at an 512GB SSD to replace the HDD as I thinkg replacing the ODD with and SSD would be too hard....

 

The Samsung 830 is the most popular because performance wise it's one of the best. It uses Samsung's own controller (not SandForce) which is very reliable.

See this chart:


Also, replacing the ODD is very easy, its just a lot of screws. As long as you keep track of the screws and where they go you'll be fine.

 

well that charts weird... why would 128gb and 256 gb crucial M4 be in dif tiers?

also this open PCIe slot has me curious about an eGPU now anyone want to give it a go? xD

 

Again, this is exactly what is happening to my S13 premium also.
Are you from USA and received your Vaio recently? Maybe is this a bad batch?

It would help a lot if other people here that own a Vaio S13 Premium could write here if they observed this issues.

 

There might be a temporary sale, but the only time Sony drops their prices is if it is Refurbished, or discontinued. I say now is the best time. Get the laptop and a free PS3. Sell the PS3, or keep it and and pretend that is your discount.

 

I've been wondering this as well,

mSATA and mini pci-e are physically compatible but electronically different. some motherboard manufacturers have made dual compatible controllers, but that's not likely with Sony as they hadn't planned for the port to be user accessible...

what complicates things further is a mini pci-e SATA drives would need to have a SATA controller built-in...(which excludes the old MBA and Dell mini pci-e drives). so unless someone wants to experiment to find out, or has an inside line on the Sony mobo/bios we won't really know if it will work....

 

I received my S13A yesterday and I fresh installed the OS on a Crucial M4.

I'm not sure, but every time I open my lid, it flickers like I'm adding a display.

Here are the things I have tried:

1. I tried setting my "turn off display" to never
2. I tried to disable TMM via regedit
3. I tried to update my Intel HD 4000 driver
4. I made sure my video card is at "max performance"

What am I doing wrong?

Here's a video of the flicker:

MyMovie.mp4 video by DREAMRE - Photobucket

 

Hey Theory,

1) put your orgininal drive back in and see if does the same thing.
2) did you reinstall the actual Sony video driver for the Nvidia card? If not, this may be your issue.
3) Seems like a video driver thing. Nothing bad, my guess is that the video ram is getting refreshed and or it is resizing the resolution to fit the screen when you reopen the lid. The screen goes blank while the resolution shift/ and or the ram gets refreshed which can cause a redraw.

Again, not hard facts, just an observation.

 

I'm from Canada but it shouldn't matter, all the customized machines are shipped directed from China. The one I have is also S13A, got it less than a week ago.

The top right corner is the area with the most flicking. If I just blinks while staring at that corner then I can see the flicking.

 

Yeap, same thing here. We should investigate to see if all S13A are like this. If not, I'll ask a replacement. Please keep me informed here about your situation

 

I have serious doubt they'll replace it or even admit that this is a problem. Hopefully the flicking will be limited to just that edge, else it will be a serious problem.

 

I uninstalled the newer Nvidia drivers and I installed the ones from Sony. Everything seems back to normal.

Thanks so much!!!

 

The top right of my S13 seems normal, I've tried different angles and everything but I'm not noticing any flicking or anything. What's the best way to replicate it?

 

Me too. My screen doesn't seem to have flickers or blurriness, but maybe I'm doing it wrong or I don't know exactly what to look for? Slightly more clear instructions how to replicate and what we're looking for would be helpful.

Thanks,
Petrov.

 

Just added this to the first post of thread:

- To simulate load testing, I ran Prime 95 at the same time as running the GPU DX10 test that comes with OCCT. I had to manually set OCCT (in Settings) to raise the temperature threshold for terminating the test to 95C from 85C (default).

- Under load of Prime 95 *and* OCCT's GPU test being run simultaneously, the GPU maxed out at 76C at stock speeds (500mhz core/900mhz memory), and the CPU was at 93-94C (sometimes hitting 95C for a second). 95C for CPU temps struck me as high, but I did not see any throttling even at those levels.

- Note, this was with an i7 processor (3520M) in the S13 Premium.

Petrov.

 

Why are you guys trying to find flaws?? You know you're not going to be happy once you find them!

 

Agreed, just enjoy your new toy

If a problem should arise whilst using it normally then there's cause for concern, otherwise your just forcing the issue

 

It is common for the smaller capacities of SSDs to have slower rated speeds than the higher capacities in the same family. The reason for this can be thought of being similar to how a single DRAM DIMM in single-channel mode is slower than two DIMMs interleaved in dual-channel mode. The NAND flash get stacked by the manufacturers in much the same way, so a simple (and not entirely accurate) way of describing it is the 128 GB Crucial M4 is running in "single-channel" and the 256 GB Crucial M4 is running in "dual-channel".

This is one very good reason why you shouldn't buy the lower capacity versions of SSDs.

 

That's exactly what I get - when my eyes move from the centre of the screen to the top right, the min/max/close buttons are extremely shimmery.

Whilst the usually-fairly-bright Windows desktop looks OK, the black levels suck for gaming (at least for anything dark). Haven't tried watching movies on it, don't think I'd want to. And the 'dirty' look of areas of solid colour is irritating.

Don't think it's a defect, I think they've just cut costs on the screen (or maybe just tried to reduce power consumption in that area?) - expecting average consumers to think it's fine. Shame, as just about everything else about the machine is pretty awesome.

Even 5 years ago, I don't think I'd have classed this as a particularly good screen. However, I'll live with it, as the rest of the package is very good. Wonder if there's any potential for an aftermarket panel replacement? - whether there's a better panel out there that'd be compatible and an exact fit?...

- Great keyboard+touchpad, very good performance, good cooling system, fairly quiet fan. Good build quality/case materials.
- Weak screen, and poor speakers.

(UK model S13A with 1600x900 screen, for those jumping around the thread)

 

I just got my replacement S15. This one is thankfully quiet and doesn't have the buzzing fan problem.

This S15 has the Fresh Start, and it's much nicer than the regular incredibly bloated software install. The only things on the hard drive are the various drivers and VAIO system apps, Adobe Flash and Reader, Cyberlink PowerDVD, and the ACID Music Studio, DVD Architect Studio, Sound Forge Audio Studio, and Sony Vegas Movie Studio apps. Well, there's also this TriDef 3D app, I don't even know what that does. Interestingly enough the Fresh Start doesn't include the PS3 Remote Play app, fortunately that can be downloaded and installed separately.

Fresh Start doesn't include VAIO Gate, PlayMemories Home, and Media Go, among the other Sony junk that nobody wanted. It also thankfully doesn't include Kaspersky trial or Microsoft Office Starter. I don't even know what the point of VAIO Gate even was in the first place, why does Windows need a launcher app? PlayMemories Home and Media Go seem even more useless, and now they're gone.

I'm pleased enough with how not-bloated Fresh Start is that I'm going to create my Recovery Media and just pull the stock HDD out, pop my Samsung 830 series SSD in, and restore the Fresh Start installation directly to the SSD so I don't need to re-install everything myself and I won't lose Sony Vegas.

 

Maybe they're getting ready for Windows 8, where a launcher app might be of more use...

 

Does every S15 have this option "fresh start" or is Sony who is selling it?

 

Custom built S series laptops have the option for Fresh Start.

 

I also noticed the flicker/graininess on the 1600x900 panel on S13, but it really only bothered me for a couple of hours on the first night. After a few days I don't really even notice it anymore. Though of course a flaw (by design?) like that on a laptop of this level (Sony calling it their most powerful Vaio etc.) is quite stupid.

 

Hi all, I'm having trouble with the trackpad on my S13p. It sometimes doesn't register movement, instead triggering the zoom function and it now won't recognise taps or touches (so select or scroll won't work). I can only click things by physically clicking the touchpad. Has anyone else had these problems?

Also, is the newer bios available to anyone in the UK? it isn't listed under the drivers/firmware section on the sony site.

Edit: the problem didn't fix itself after a restart or a driver re-install but it did fix itself after a hard shutdown (full power off) and a fresh boot. Does this indicate a bios problem? It shows that the hardware and the drivers aren't faulty. The problem only occurs after a log sleep (overnight) so maybe on wake the bios isn't initialising the hardware properly?

I notice there is a newer bios available through the US sony support site, albeit for a slightly different model number. Why isn't this available in the UK?

 

Hey joe. I don't know why the newer bios isnt on the UK site. I have the UK model and I updated the bios from the US site and it worked fine for me.

Petrov.

 

Also did fresh start on my S13A, so wondering if I do the recovery CDs can I just then pop in the cds after I install the SSD or should I just do a clone of the HDD to the SSD and pop that in? anyone?

 

which model number did you use on the US support site to get the bios? My model is: SVS13A1C5E. The closest on the US website to this are:

SVS13A1 CGXB
SVS13A1 DGXB
SVS13A1 EGXB

What is the difference between the letters C/D/E?

I suppose they'll all install the same bios anyway. Just want to make sure!