Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Interesting, I don't seem to have that setting in my VAIO Control Center. I did turn off automatic brightness though. Maybe that'll help.

 

That page doesn't seem to exist, though it sounds like the problem

 

Thanks for the response. 95% faster sounds awesome, I'm interested in giving this a shot.

 

I can confirm the contrast/colour issue only happens on battery :/

 

This happens to me as well. I did a google search and apparently people with the "Radiance" displays on the HP Envy 15" have the same problem.

Whenever I load a page with a black background I can see the screen getting dimmer and then when I tab over to a page with a white background the screen gets brighter. Only happens on battery and I've tried disabling the "automatic brightness" to no avail.

 

Found the cause. Turn off 'Display Power Saving Technology' in Power > On Battery in the intel gpu panel.

 

i got it guys! thanks for the fan info! it worked, i rebooted my pc and sure enough instead of 5 minutes in 20-30 seconds the game loaded with no freeze/lag but the fan was loud, but no problem!

 

This is wierd. You don't have this option?

 

Hi there...

I am an owner of the Sony Vio S Series VPCSC2FMS, from Best Buy, which is slightly dated now, but very similar in many other ways to the 2012 S Series....

I was wondering if anyone has experience with with both models or at least some of the older s series and the new 2012 model and can speak to the noticeable differences.

I am considering selling my current model and getting a 2012 and would appreciate any impressions on the 2012 model. Does the 2012 BIOS allow SATA 3, by the way?

The biggest negatives with my model at the terrible blu-ray drive, which has been replaced with a slot-loading drive and allow the terrrrribbblleeee sound, which I believe has been improved, at least slightly. Any thoughts on these two issses would be greatly appreciated, as well.

Congrats on your new purchase... I am very jealous and hope to join the club very soon.

best regards,

jhaze

 

Hey I just got my new S13p on the 13th and i was wondering if any of you had this problem. I can connect to my home internet, but whenever i try to connect to another network ie my uncle's house i cant connect even though other people can. I dont know if this is the right place to ask, and i'll just talk to sony support as soon as i can but if you guys know how to fix this problem i would be much obliged.

 

Nope, maybe it varies between regions or something. It's fixed now anyway (see above)

 

Does anyone know if there's a way to change the functions of the touchpad's multi-touch gestures? For example, is there a way to change the three-finger swipe from back/forward to a particular keystroke?

I'm wondering because I use a program called Dexpot which allows Windows users to use the multitasking features that are found in OS X (Expose and multiple desktops). It would be convenient to be able to use gestures to navigate between programs Mac-style.

 

Not sure, i have it on mine and just in passing on my Dell as well. that is a 3K notebook. Seems to be a problem on several 1080 IPS screens.

Some color adjustments fixed it. I have to say though really you feel that a 15" IPS screen is a letdown? I think it is one of the nicest screens i have had. From my Mackbook pro's Glossy and Matte to my last Dell M4400 to this M4600,
this is by far one of the nicest.

Maybe it is just me.

 

By color adjustement, you mean increase the blue value by 20? What are exactly your adjustments?

 

Well said, this machine is one of the few on the market I find even remotely appealing.

I agree, I think its a gorgeous screen, very easy to look at, no weird screen door effects or anything.

 

Far as I know the people making the mod availiable said you cannot revert to the original Sony BIOS. Which means if you use that once you cannot send your computer in ever if it breaks.

 

Read the first post in the mod thread again...what was said was that Sony didn't provide the means to flash the stock BIOS back.

But it's a not a problem, you simply use the same non-Sony tools used to flash the modded BIOS to flash back to the stock BIOS.

 

The reason for this is Sony's BIOS flash tool does a version check, and if versions match, it just exits.

The modded BIOS has the same version as the stock BIOS, since it's the same except for changing the Boost clock speed. So you need to use the tool the modder thoughtfully provided to flash back to stock.

 

Nice, then this became a more viable thing for me to do . Depends on how much I will be gaming though, which is probably quite little.


On another note, my S13P is out for delivery today. Talked to customer service at TNT to provide some information on how to get into my apartment house. Seemed to be nice to deal with and they had no problem telling their drivers to give me a call if there were any problems getting into the house from the street. Many other shipping companies have not been as easy to deal with.

 

I think that's been updated by the modder making it possible to reinstall a bios which is identical to the original bios, unless I'm mistaken. See the bottom of the first post of that thread (not this thread).

Petrov.

 

Like what everyone mentioned, yes we can flash back to stock.
I just use back the tools provided by Sony.

Explanation on how I create the stock flash tools:
-Original STOCK BIOS file link
Sony eSupport - SVS13A15GDB - Drivers & Software

- Download file : ISBSYS-00268785-1040.EXE

- Extract the ISBSYS-00268785-1040.EXE

- I will find a new EXE file called EP0000268785.EXE

- Extract the EP0000268785.EXE

- Then I will get the whole flash tools(InsydeFlash.EXE) files with the ROM(R0142C5.ROM) files with it.

- So, those are actually the same tools we've all been using all this while to flash our BIOS with the MOD BIOS without going through the Sony Screen.

By using these files, we can forcefully flash our BIOS without even get interrupted by the Sony version checker (it will still shows our current version & flashed version).

 

can someone help me?
the vaio S13. is the cpu upgradable? how many mini pci-e slots it has?

 

Can someone who has the sheet battery tell me if it's also made of magnesium?

 

No. Im sure its plastic covered.

 

I got my Vaio and installed a new SSD and all in it. I'm clmsy though so of course I dropped a HDD screw in the computer. Instead of trying to pick it up from the motherboard with a screwdriver I turned the computer upside down. Now it is completely gone, I do not know if it is inside the computer or fell out and got lost. With me being really OCD that is gonna bug me forever not knowing . Especially since the keys on the keyboard is doing a slight rattle if you shake the computer.

 

Lol. That once happened to my SAGER.
You will never find it again.

 

Yeah I bet I wont. And with the slight keyboard rattle from the chicklet keys it's making it worse! But I guess that is life, whatever happens down the road if that screw is inside the computer I guess I can deal with it then.

 

Just checked the Sony (UK) site planning to order the S15 but looks like I missed out on the free 12gb upgrade Current offer is half price upgrade at £50, need to see how that compares to buying extra RAM elsewhere.

I have noticed though that cashback on Quidco has increased to 8%, but it's not clear if this is applicable to VAIOs (details suggest it's just on digital imaging products, but it's the only rate shown)??

 

on the UK site for the s15 the gpu is the 640m but on the american site its the 640m LE, i was wondering if it was a typo or if the ship out two different gpus, also overclocking the gpu would void the warranty right?
Lastly i was wondering if it get hots and noisy under load or if its ok bearable.

 

The CPU is soldered. If you are skilled with hot air rework and the BIOS supports other processors then yes otherwise no.

Two slots, one half sized easily accessible (wlan) and one full size that is hard to get to. The full size one is intended for wwan cards and could be limited to a USB interface. It could also be unavailable for computers not configured with a wwan card.

 

The S series is only available with 640M LE.
If Sony knows the GPU was overclocked then yes. Shouldn't be a problem in practice.

 

Anyone with an S13/S15 with the 640M have any experience with Linux? With the drivers being provided only by Sony, and it being Hybrid graphics, I'm worried that running Linux wouldn't be possible/stable, and I really need Linux for programming

 

Further to this, does anybody know where I might be able to buy a 1.35V stick of 8gb RAM from in the UK? Looked on Ebuyer & Scan but they only have the 1.5V variants, cheapest is £37

 

crucial website?

 

can i put a 9.5mm height SSD into the S13 or S13P ??

@V.man thx !

 

Read the first post in this thread

 

Yep... but it's £62

 

Thanks megol

Anyone know how the heat and fans are on the s15 specifically?

 

What would be the best option for a SSD, a clean install or migrating the data over to the drive?

I have never installed any OS on a laptop before so I fear I will screw something up when I do it. I don't have access to a physical copy of win 7 so no idea how I would go about reinstalling it. Would the recovery disks be a good option to reinstall win 7? or is there something else I can do?

Also I am guessing in migration one does not have to activate windows again like with a fresh install. I would imagine I have to download all the drivers from sony's support site, I pressure the US drivers are the same as the Canadian drivers?

Any help would be appreciated. I get my hands on my S13A in early august and I would like to be set for a quick SSD swap from the hdd inside.

edit, there are drivers on the canadian support page but no s13A model that I have, only S13 :/ hmm

 

I agree that Sony have mislead customers with the "premium" tag, but I believe it's still good value for money. With the exception of the X230 (£100 more than the S13p) all the laptops you've listed are £1000+ (Zenbook prime is £1500!!) so I would hardly call that a fair comparison. Consider that the S13p can be bought for £800 with Quidco/TCB cashback, I can't think of any other laptop displays which are better at that price.

 

is the free ps3 gone?

 

I would definitely do a clean install. I'm not sure if anyone has made a clean install guide specific to the Vaio S 2012 (I've not been in the forums the last few weeks!!) but Hearst made a terrific guide for Thinkpads: LINKY. I've never done a clean install myself but it seems most of the steps in that guide can be applied to any other laptop. It's also worth reading Petrov's original post.

 

[redacted]

 

Thanks for this!

 

Damn, just heard back from Quidco and Sony are no longer offering cashback on laptops! This makes the S15 considerably more expensive than the Dell XPS15 (taking into account discounts). Having finally decided on the Sony I am now going to have to keep looking (Unless someone knows of any promo/discount/voucher codes??)

 

Thanks, I already grabbed the drivers from the support site and will stick them onto a external drive.

Hopefully my install will go smoothly, although I did opt for fresh start for my vaio so maybe a migration could also be an option.

 

Thought you were a student Cooki3Dude? You would qualify for student discount!
What's the config you're looking at on both laptops?

 

None of the machines you compared are in same ballpark, voyanger.
Asus is like 2 times weaker machine.
Samsung doesnt have any model witch is close with perfomance/size.
Envy 14 is also extremely weak and costs way more.
There are couple notebooks which are comparable. Like U2442N or Vizio new lineup models.

 

I am not including any cashbacks in my comparison which mean that the s13p sits at around £889, in fact Cashback ended a while ago since Sony doesn't appear to be offering it any more.

I was talking about the Asus UX32VD-R4002V (not prime) which has 1080p panel for £836.92 @ kikatek - Has 4GB ram ULV i7, 500GB hdd and 620M gpu. So that's a fair comparison for specs refer to this page.

Samsung Series 7 chronos 17'' Is around $1500 ~ £1000, I've seen it in the states it's absolutely mahoosive, yet very powerful, I guess it has more room but considering the extra cost of the bigger screen and components, it has a good price/performance ration, it is not available in the UK yet .

Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook base model is £1049, now that's i5 ULV, 8GB ram, 1GB 630m GPU and 900p display. (Note dell will inevitably do offers on this after a few months after release).

I forgot to add the Thinkpad T430 £918.25 - i5 3210m, 4GB ram, 900p display and 1GB NVS 5400m (Similar to 630m).

And whilst I'm at it:
GIGABYTE U2442N Ultrabook €1199 ~ £940, i5 3210m, 8GB ram, 900p Display (have no idea what's it like though), 128 SSD boot and 750GB HDD data drives and 2GB GT 640M, it is released in Germany but not the UK yet, though I could import it to the UK, I don't fancy a qwertz keyboard layout. Here's the store link, btw price includes tax (Lovely EU rules means UK can't put any additional import tax or vat when importing from another EU state).

I'll give you the HP envy 14 spectre, it is quite expensive at £1200 with not so hot specs, but it is constructed mainly out of magnesium alloy and gorilla glass, so it's expensive because of the material it uses. It also has numerous QC issues.

So really you can't accuse me of comparing laptops that aren't similar in price as all the laptops I've compared are all in the same ballpark (price), note I am currently looking for a machine in this price ballpark. Sony S13p is only winning because of the better price/performance ratio, shame about the screen though, although sony does most of the other things right, trackpad is nice, keyboard is better than most machines (not thinkpads though), size is nice also good construction.
I might change my mind and order the GIGABYTE machine if it gets good reviews and is released in the UK at a decent price, at the moment because of the scarcity of it, it could either be a cracking laptop or be a complete failure. So atm my Sony choice still stands. I am going to order my laptop after my holiday.

I'm going to try and avoid windows 8, I don't like it very much.

Yes I was editing it whilst you replied so look above.

I am only comparing price and what machine you can get with it. Although yes you may say that the Asus is less powerful, many people wouldn't use it all that power, I don't believe that all of you will be video editing, cad modelling .etc, so yes the asus will be sufficient for most people.

I'm not a fan of Samsung anyway so I'm not going to consider any of its offering apart from their phones.
Envy is just nice to look at not necessarily better, I just said it was more expensive due to its materials, note I am only comparing price.

 

No, haven't been a student for a long time

I work in design (mainly 3D) so looking for an i7 QC system with a good graphics card (the 640M LE is the lowest I want to go) and plenty of RAM (8gb minimum). I'd also like to have a BR Drive (which the Dell doesn't have) as most of my movie collection is now in this format. I nearly took the plunge on the Sony week before last, but then went on holiday and didn't get chance. Never expected all of the deals would disappear

I was originally looking at a budget of under £1k, hoping the Asus N56VZ would be released in the UK around that price. But, as this hasn't happened, the Dell and Sony are my only real options. I swayed towards the Sony due to the IPS Screen, BR and weight... now it's about £150 more expensive £1200 is my absolute limit, was hoping to get something before the Olympics so I could work from home (I work in London) , doesn't look likely anymore.