Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

I'm afraid when you see the price in US$, they usually just turn the $ sign into a £ sign, Sony might do cashback again but I wouldn't hold my breath, I think because of the olympics they don't have to give as many offers due to the increased amount of potential consumers during that period thus businesses are taking advantage of that. So I guess your best bet would be after the Olympics for any sizeable offers.

 

Just did a test config for you on the S15 (main specs):
- S15 white version
- i7-3612QM,2.1GHz
- 12gb ram
- 320 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
- Blu-ray Disc(TM) player
- NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M LE 2gb

comes up to £ 1,183.99 without delivery...so cutting it close. It comes down if you remove the Mcafee anti-virus and adobe elements software...tempted?

 

You mean, it performs like a desktop HD4870? It seems unlikely!

If it's true, then what does the 640m LE performs like?

 

I think it depends most on what IDE you're using. Is it Visual Studio?

 

If you order over the phone from Sony Store you may be able to get a 5% discount on the total price. I used my company's name (even though I paid with my personal credit card) and I got 5%. If you want, I can speak to my contact at Sony Store to see whether he will give you the discount. What model are you looking at?

 

Well the 620m actually a fermi albeit 28nm, Asus didn't want to splash out on kepler.
Sony uses the 640m LE which is the same chip use in the 640m, 650m and well there's now a hacked bios to overclock these with some very good results, check this thread. The only bottleneck is the GDDR3 memory used rather than the more expensive GDDR5.

 

I suppose "price range" is subjective. Personally I don't want to spend more than £900 (exc SSD) and I've found laptops with >720p screens (13"-14") are far and few between within that budget. The only other viable option I see is the T430 but apparently it uses the same panel as the T420, which according to notebookcheck, scores lower in both contrast and black levels compared to the Vaio.
I actually disregarded the S13P until I saw your sig - very sneaky indeed! Also, if you're gonna install an SSD then you may as well downgrade to the 5400 RPM HDD, bringing the total cost down to £859.

Regarding cashback, topcashback.co.uk have a 6% offer. There aren't any details on product eligibility though.

 

Thanks, but that doesn't really answer my question.
I'm asking what the 640m LE is like compared to a desktop GPU counterpart.

 

Im having some trouble with my Vaio. First it said my battery was not connected properly (a call to Vaio support made it clear I had to disable something called ISB Utlity in the autostart). Secondly I cannot get my brightness keys to work properly even though I installed drivers according to the list linked from the first post. Any ideas?

 

I noticed in a youtube video that some 2012 s15 do not have a fingerprint reader. mine does just to the left of the assist button, just wondering how many others do as it was not an option when I customised my laptop.

Will the fact that I have a fingerprint reader affect my BIOS so that I cant use the graphics overclock mod? when I ordered my laptop it was SVS1511C5E however on my laptop, a grey sticker says model: SVS151A12M however a white sticker says Product Name: SVS1511C5E. im a little confused! SVS151A12M dosnt seem to exist on the downloads section of the sony site. maybe it is the chasis number which includes fingerprint reader?

Also, I am not able to access the processor power control under the change advanced power settings. Any ideas?

 

Maybe the missing screw is messing with your keyboard

Sorry...had to be done
I haven't received my s15 yet so I can't actually help you

 

Are you in the U.S.?

Mine does not have a fingerprint reader.

 

Haha. You have no idea what rushed through my head when the "battery not properly connected" thing popped up. But apparently you can get that when you reinstall a clean windows copy until you inactivate the Sony battery checker.

Apparently my volume keys work, but not the brightness ones.

 

Does anyone's S15 make a clicking noise whenever you open up the lid? Just curious.


Other then that the laptop works great and handles everything without a problem. Screen looks nice and if I hadn't read about the orange thing before hand I would never have noticed it (barely do now but then again I don't do graphics). Battery isn't great but i'll live with it especially since I love how quiet the fan is when doing everyday tasks... There's my two cents on the laptop

 

Thanks, but I refuse to get a white laptop It's black or silver or nothing. I should also point out that I want Win7 Pro which adds £50. I guess I could opt for the weakest HDD (was going to go for the 500gb 7200rpm option, again £50 option), but would then have to swap it for an SSD adding additional cost.

 

I prefer Topcashback to Quidco but be aware that for Sony "VAT may be excluded from the cashback offer with this merchant." Presumably that means the cashback is just about 5% and the average payment speed is 13 wks 4 days. Better try and get 5% discount immediately from Sony. Their phone sales people are quite good.

 

Just wondering, what is the best deal that Sony Canada has gave to their Canadian customers?

I just love it how everything in the USA has better deals than us even if we live like 2 hours away in the Great White North...

 

Thanks, that would be great

I'm after the S15 in black with:
i7-3612QM
Win 7 Pro 64bit
500gb 7200rpm
12gb RAM
Blu-Ray disc player
640M LE 2gb

Currently £1309 so any discount would be great, if I can get it down to £1199 that would be fantastic

 

I tried reinstalling drivers and whatnot for a while now, nothing seems to be working properly...

 

OK the normal GT640m (not LE) is actually is on par with a ATI Radeon HD 5670 (According to notebook check) which is better than my 512MB nvidia GTS 250. Now since the LE is roughly 20% slower, which makes it worse than the HD 5670. You could say that it is similar to my GTS 250, now I've played skyrim, GTA IV and Saints Row III on High settings at a resolution of 1280x1024 with AA at 4x, well I'd say that's quite decent for a mobile GPU.

Now if you chose to overclock the LE to about the level of the GT 650m then your GPU will be on par with a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 which is (Still) quite a decent Mid Range card.

Check this thread out on overclocking. Note not for the faint hearted.

I hope this helps - I got my info from notebookcheck and tomshardware.

Yep whoops I forgot I had Gunmetallic on, I think it looks better.
Don't worry sony is trying to raise revenue on selling s**t we don't need, such as mcafee internet security (crap and slow), Adobe photoshop elements. I got free kaspersky internet security (Thanks Barclays) and I already have the licences for microsoft office and adobe cs5 (Thanks university).
I'm going to put my own 7200 rpm drive in it and put the 5400rpm in an enclosure. I'm also going to get an additional 4GB ram from crucial.

I've already signed up to quidco and I don't want to sign up to a second cashback site. I already get my 7% Education discount but an additional 6% would be nice - that would bring my price down to £777.

I won't be upgrading to an SSD until flash memory reaches 0.25US$/GB, at the moment it is around 0.80US$/GB, so using moores law I would guess around 2-3 years later until I can justify the price for one. For me it's Space > Speed.

Now people complaining that HDD prices are expensive, I remember paying something like £80 for 300GB, now that can get you around 1TB for that amount now, granted 2 years ago I got a 1TB drive for £50 before the floods in Thailand happened.

 

I have left him a message to call me and let you know how it goes.

 

I gave up on trying to get my clean install of windows work. So now I switched back to the HDD that came with the Vaio and creating the 5 recovery disks and gonna install from them....

 

What's wrong with using legacy boot mode over UEFI?

 

Dunno, it's easy to get UEFI mode to work though.

 

There was a $100 off coupon until end of June, not sure if that is still on.

David, please keep me notified if you can how this goes, since I will probably be doing the same thing. Did you have to change anything in the bios when you installed the SSD? I presume to boot from the dvd?

 

Sony advertised that the maximum resolution for the HDMI port on second screen is only 1920x1080 but is this true?

HDMI supports up to 2560x1600 at 60 hz, the GT640M LE support up to 2800x1800 or something. So I can't imagine that it can only do 1080p unless Sony uses al HDMI 1.1 standard.

Im planning to use this laptop in combination with a Crossover 27Q which is 2560x1440 or a Dell 2412HM which is 1920x1200 so it's important that the HDMI port can output one of those resolutions.

 

As far as I know, 1920x1200 is the maximum you will get out of the HDMI port. I state this figure because the "pre-configured" models have it in their specs online. However I played it safe and went for a 1920x1080 panel so I'm 99.9999% sure it will handle that resolution. I'm also 99.9999% sure you wont be driving a 2560x1440 panel with it.....

I had a Dell 2711 but sold it because 27 was too big for me and 23 is much nicer to work with (I do miss the extra res though but I'll get used to it).

If you want to drive the higher resolutions, you need to get a Displayport output - the Dell XPS 13/15z look quite good. If you want a powerhouse the HP Elitebooks are also great (but their screens suck bigtime).

 

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I swear the flickering on my S13 has got worse. At first I hardly noticed it. It's all in the top right and under certain colours is really obvious and distracting.

Changing the refresh rate in the Intel graphics panel seemed to help, I think.. It was set to 40 for some reason, so I cranked it up to 60. Still slightly noticeable though. Not happy for a machine that's supposedly equipped with a "premium" display and costs so much.

 

That sound unbelievable, I guess you have to send it back to sony and get your screen fixed (though the monkeys that fix the laptops may scratch something).
A new feature of the "premium" display - it deteriorates over time. Just kidding, it sounds like you have a bad unit, no one has said it got worse.

Wrong HDMI version 1.4 can support quadhd (4096×2160) but it's not madatory so sony probably left that bit out, however I think what Sony put in from v1.4 is 3d over hdmi and I think that's about it, overwise it looks like a v1.3 , the PS3 is v1.3a and that was from 2006, I doubt sony would go backwards from that, so assuming it is 1.3a the max resolution would be 2560×1600 and for the worst v1.0 (no devices come with this anymore) its 1920×1200.
I think sony just advertised that it can only display a maximum of 1080p to cover their butts when users try and hook up to a large monitor and find out that they can't.

VGA has a max resolution of 2048x1536 if the video card supports 400MHz DAC whcih most video cards support today (check).

 

I think it may have been Intel's power saving features toning the refresh down to 40Hz on battery. It's not quite bad enough that I'd be happy to go 4 or so weeks without a laptop for.

And it keeps resetting after coming out of sleep. Really annoying!

 

Has anybody tried connecting to the full-length mPCI-e slot? Can this laptop be modded for eGPU support?

My BIOS modded 640M LE is roughly like a desktop GTS 450 or GT 550Ti. However those desktop cards have GDDR5, at lower resolutions they should be comparable but at 1080p+ resolution the desktop cards will outpace the 640M LE by 20-50% depending on shader complexity due to bandwidth constraints of DDR3.

Both Intel HD4000 and Nvidia GT 640M LE are HDMI 1.4 devices but you also need an HDMI transmitter to output over HDMI. Sony probably used a transmitter that only outputs up to 1.3a resolutions. This is a pretty common cost-saving measure. If you need large-screen digital output, DisplayPort is preferred for sure.

 

For sure, version 1.4 only builds upon v1.3, and you're right sony used a transmitter that doesn't support quad hd, or ethernet over HDMI, but sony did include support for 3D over HDMI according to Sony Japan and that's v1.4 spec.

Yes I agree that GDDR3 is the bottle neck here but I currently have a GTS 250 and well that only came with GDDR 3.

I don't think sony will be using display port any time soon, I mean Sony was one of the founding members of HDMI, I don't think they have to pay any royalties to use HDMI, Display port is good as it is an open source development, but I've yet to see it more widely distributed, I have not seen a projector that has a display port in it, only VGA, DVI/HDMI and the usual RCA/component video guff.

 

Thanks for the info. I am aware of what hdmi is capable of but I was just pointing out that I would be very surprised if the hdmi port can drive more than 1920x1200 (pleasantly surprised mind you).

 

My S13A's hinge also makes a slight squeak noise when I open the lid. I'm not sure if I should exchange.

 

No you shouldn't unless it prevents the laptop from functioning properly like the lid doesn't open or close properly or misaligned. A number of people already posted about the hinge creaking.

If it annoys you feel free to exchange it, but be prepared to wait. If it is over 30 days old then Sony might repair it but you may get a monkey that will make your laptop worse by repairing it, like missing screws and scratches .etc. So would you risk that for such a minor thing?

Also there's the chance that the courier will lose the laptop.

 

who does this keep happening to me???? 3 tabs gets mixed up...?


(besides the black)



and vaio gate is invisible i cant see anything but the setting and "x" button..... wth!?

 

Hello everyone,
Just received my premium 13 inch not book.

Everything checks out okay screen, and headphone jack included.
The hinge is squeaky everytome I open and close but not annoying enough to justify sending it in for a new one.

Is there any hard case available for this laptop as of yet? If not I'm going to just buy a sleeve but would much rather prefer a hard case.

 

I'm sure all lids squeak. I'd personally be more concerned if it stopped squeaking. To me sqeaking means that there is good enough friction to keep the lid to stay in teh position i want it to be in.

 

My S15 doesn't squeak at all when I open or close the lid

 

My extended battery and free PS Vita arrive this week, but Sony told FedEx to require a signature. I work the whole week .

Anyone else have FedEx in the United States leave the package in front of the door or something?

 

Just received my s15, has anyone tried windows 8 release preview? Since I'm going to clean install windows I thought maybe I should give windows 8 a go.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

I tried it. I used it for around 2 weeks.

I can only say that it is garbage compared to Windows 7. I'd even use Vista or XP over Windows 8. Especially the start orb... Why remove something most people use every day?

 

what code did you use for the PS vita? not working for me :/

 

U missed kitchen. Ended on saturdday

 

Promotion ended July 14th

 

Can't you call them and tell them to deliver it to your work instead?

 

I had that battery message after a clean reinstall. I disabled the ISB thing and it's been fine since (charging both the standard and sheet batteries OK)

For the brightness keys, go through the Sony driver/software installs again, but be sure to let it reboot every time it asks. Some of them don't complete the install until after the first reboot, and may not install if you delay the reboot to install more drivers...

 

I know I would be safe with a laptop with Displayport, except they are somewhat expensive if you look at the models that have them (Dell XPS 15, Apple Macbooks).

I think it is just Sony playing safe because even if they use a HMDI 1.3a transmitter it could still do 2560x1600 at 60 Hz over Single Link. So Sony used a HDMI 1.0/1.2a transmitter and port which is unlikely because that standard is deprecated so then they just wanted to be safe.

So I had hoped that anybody with an S13/S15 has tried to put out 1920x1200 or highter resolutions so we know if the laptop is capable of putting out those resolutions.

 

anyone here tried to use a SDXC card (64/128 gb) to complement their SSDs on their vaio s13? i don't want to remove the optical drive to add another HDD and SD cards today are fast and cheap enough. would probably use them as a download or document drive that is always attached on the laptop and to minimize writes as well on the SSD