Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Saw a thread describing your exact issue,

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/676713-new-vaio-z-series-clean-install-battery-issues-help.html

One of the replies reads:

Goodluck.

 

Just placed my order for a black Vaio S13P . Mad excited

 

Did anyone else have to create 7 DVDs for Recovery discs?

 

With Fresh Start it made me make 5.

 

With my S15 it only ask for 4 DVD disks or 2DL ones. But in my region we don't get all the extra sw such as Sony Vegas, only Adobe Elements.

 

I had a fresh start s15 and mine was gonna be 5 disks. It's a real pain in the butt to reinstall too because it keeps asking for disks out of order. I think i switched disks about ten times on my reinstall. So be prepared for a long process if you ever have to use those disks.

 

I actually did use my 5 Fresh Start recovery discs to restore the stock install to my SSD. It took about 50 minutes of doing nothing but swapping discs over and over again until it was done copying to the SSD. Then it took about 2 hours for it to reinstall everything painfully slowly. It was installing from files already on the SSD! For 2 hours! I still don't know what the hell that recovery process was doing for so long that it would take 2 hours on an SSD. What the hell, Sony?

 

I've done two clean installs on my S13P. One in legacy and one in UEFI mode. Although I did have the battery warning error, it went away after I finished installing all the drivers. I'm quietly confident (but I don't know for sure) that the battery issue had nothing to do with legacy bios being used. But generally there were zero differences between legacy and uefi mode as far as I could tell.

That being said, doing a clean install using a USB disk was super quick. I think it took about 6 minutes to install win 7, then probably about 30-40 mins to install all the drivers (I rebooted the machine every time it asked me to) from the Sony support site, which I'd downloaded onto the usb stick beforehand of course.

Petrov.

 

It is the least efficient reinstall i have ever seen. I mean windows 7 takes ~20 minutes to reinstall on this machine, so it can't possibly take another hour and 40 minutes to install all the sony crapware.

I think it took about a half hour to copy the files off my flashdrive, but then like you said it spent two hours installing it all... the most ridiculous thing ever...

I wish it was just a disk image that could be copied back however fast your disk drive could copy the 17 gigs or so, that would be much faster.

If you're dvd drive could read at 5 mb/sec it would take less than an hour to copy a disk image back. I should get a job for sony designing their recovery process.

 

Dude, I'm planning to buy the S15 this week, so just wanted to know more about the build quality (tendency to get scratches)/Gpu & cpu temps under load and the display quality. edit: Batter life too (normal usage WLAN surfing @ low brightness)

Could you please comment on the above mentioned things?

Thanks a ton in advance.

Edit: Also, compare the S15 to the linked model and suggest which one should i go for. (Main purpose of lappy: gaming/pprogramming/hd movies)
NP550P5C-S02IN - OVERVIEW | SAMSUNG India

 

Been playing with my Vaio S13A all day . Got the Gunmetal version this morning. If anyone has any video requests I would be happy to do them.

I have no real issues. Installing a Crucial M4 was very easy to do.

Windows reinstallation also went extremely smoothly. Only took 2 hours to install all the Sony drivers, and everything works perfectly.

Will be doing a video review over the weekend.

 

Wow really? Ok perhaps this is no the route I should go with.

Does any one if once I swap the SSD into the laptop, if there is anything that needs changing in the BIOS apart from booting from dvd? Do I need to change any settings so the ssd is in ACHI? or is this automatically set once I begin installing from the dvd?

 

I think this is one of the best built slim 15" laptops on the market.

My model is a custom order in the black case, which looks great and the magnesium case is super sturdy. The body of the laptop doesn't even bend if you pick it up from the corner. I don't have any scratches on mine but some people report that the lid scratches fairly easily; however, they aren't very noticable.

I have the 3612qm and the gt640m le 2gb. I put the laptop under as much load as i could and the cpu got to 89 and the gpu got to 74.
While gaming the temps are around 70 for the cpu and 65 for the gpu
^^ I am running Amal77's 1000mhz graphics mod on my computer

If you're going to game, go for the 640 obviously. You only need the 3612qm if you're doing video editing or cad rendering pretty much. Anything else and the stock cpu is fine. But the laptop you linked to is a quad core so i'm guessing that's what you're planning on getting

Battery life is this laptops weak link. I can only get about 3hr - 3.5hr browsing the web, pretty low by today's standards. That will be about 4hr - 4.5hr with the base chip.

Display is quite amazing, but the reds do look a little orange. Discussion of this red/orange issue has taken up about 1/3 of this thread.

And the samsung series 7 you linked to I absolutely love, just not quite as much as the sony.

They are just about the same size, but the series 7 is a little heavier.

The series 7's screen is nowhere near as beautiful as the display on the S15.

The graphics card in the series 7 is faster, but the sony can be modded to the same speed or faster.

Surprisingly the samsung's battery is only slightly bigger. 56Whr vs 49Whr, so expect battery life to be pretty similar.

The samsung has bluray and the Vaio has bluray as an option so tie there.

If the screen and 1080p are important go with the sony, if not the series 7 will be great for you.
But if they are the same price or the sony is cheaper you better get the Sony because it is a damn good laptop.

 

Just got my S15 today with the i5.
Surprised how light it felt even though it said 4.4 pounds on paper, which in my head gave me an iimage of something a little heavier.
Runs everything smooth. Played DOTA 2 at 50-60fps. The battery life on the laptop is pretty weak, but that doesn't matter to me since I'm always going to have an available power source somewhere.
Speakers are meh, but what can I say?
I finished playing my game of DOTA 2 and ran Core Temp. Getting about 68-70 degrees Celcius after I was done playing. Just browsing on Chrome is around 55-58 degrees Celcius.
Very, very satisfied with my purchase.

 

Hi,
I own the 13inch VAIO SA premium CTO. It is a good laptop and I like it. But, I have noticed that there is constant fan noise and, it is annoying. Let me know if others are having this issue or if I have a defective unit.

 

I'm not ready to do a full fresh install yet. I have made my recovery media so i have in mind to delete the recovery partition to gain some space. However, i am confused by the other partitions I did not have on my previous Vaios. Do you know what they are and can any of them be safely deleted.

The first is labelled SONYSYS and is 260Mb with 13.1Mb used. It's FAT32.

The second is the recovery partition.

The third has no label and is also 260Mb. It seems to be an EFI partition.

The next seems to be the Microsoft reserved partition and is 128Mb.

Other than the recovery partition, they are all small so probably safer to leave but can someone tell me what they do?

TIA.

 

I had that too, although not loud. Coming from a Mac made the constant fan annoying.

That's a problem with doing a clean install. Sony has some crapware battery check running. So check your startup services and disable something called ISB something.

 

Which sleeve/case/bag are you guys using to carry your s13 around?

 

to those creating recovery disks..it would be faster if you create a recovery usb..though you'll need a 32gb USB2.0 flash drive..no swapping discs needed. and note the USB2.0..because I tried USB3.0 and didn't worked

oh and this is for S13A since the entire recovery disk size is 20gb.

 

Isn't one of the USB ports supposed to be always on? Like even when it's off I can charge something like a phone off it?

 

Yes there is, but you have to enable it in vaio control center.

 

Re-installing the latest Hotkey Utilities (that includes the battery stuff) did solve the problem in my case.

 

Hey, how much better do you think it got with this? Any chance you could show me by recording it (I am really interested in before that box is ticked too)? I am thinking of asking them to replace my computer instead because I am starting to think my speakers were broken. The experience I got was REALLY crappy, so I cannot understand why people can live with it (my phone had better sound when playing up clips).

 

what is fresh start?

 

From the Sony website:
"The Fresh Start option is a Configured-to-Order (CTO) option for the removal of specific VAIO® applications, trial software and games. It is only available on selected VAIO notebooks. Check the SonyStyle.com Web site for availability.

NOTES:

Games like Hearts , Cells , Chess Titans , Minesweeper etc. are a part the Windows operating system and are not removed with the Fresh Start option.
VAIO utility software such as VAIO Care , VAIO Recovery Center or VAIO Control Center are Sony VAIO proprietary maintenance software utilities and are not removed with the Fresh Start option. It is advised that these software utilities not be uninstalled as they are needed to maintain or change system settings."

 

Interesting only 3-3.5 with the quad core. I didn't think it would make an hour difference. Do you think the quad core is worth it if the only use is gaming and programming? I guess I'd stick with the stock CPU then, I'm not sure if the i7 dual core is really worth the $200 increase.

Also, can you comment on if there is any keyboard flex?

 

I haven't done a battery run test, but with a quad core, I probably could get at least 4 hours easily, depending on what I'm doing. Personally, I wouldn't think the upgrade to a dual core i7 is worth it, especially for $200. When I bought mine, the upgrade to the dual core i7 was actually more expensive than the quad core, so I went with the quad core upgrade. Two extra cores to me is more worth it than a bump in clock speed

 

my fingerprint sensor isn't working after doing a fresh install.. anybody know which driver it is associated with?

 

Just back from Fry's after having a look at the S15. Lightweight, screen is nice and 1080p is better than 768p.
Few queries...

1. Except black, the other color is white or silver ? I am considering a non black one but unsure whether it is white or silver. Btw which one looks better ? (I know it is personal choice).
2. The sheet battery is different for a 13" model and 15" model ? I saw one at frys and it was small and looked for a 13" model. It was also placed under 13" laptop.
But is it different or same ?

 

Ran an informal test today on the Core i5 S15:

- screen at max
- wifi on
- Chrome browser, with cnn.com reloading every 60 seconds
- MP4 video looping on Media Player
- "stamina" setting

Ended up with 3.5 hours. Kind of a "moderate-use" entertainment scenario. Tomorrow I'll try and run again with just Chrome (2-3 minute refresh), medium screen brightness, and wifi to test a "light-use" scenario.

-Matt

 

Last time I checked (yesterday) Sony's education site was listing the silver pre-built S15 (Core i5) at $900 plus a free sheet battery. I'd watch out for black -- it seems to show "oils" from touch pretty easily.

-Matt

 

Here are some shots of a Platinum Silver S15, I'm a big fan of the way it looks.

[56K]

Spoiler

SD card reader works great too!

 

@Kardon403

Can you please resize the images. We are yet to get our 1080p screens. lol

Btw thanks a million for the pics as i was unsure whether it is silver or white. Thanks again.

 

Just wanted to add that I thought people were exaggerating when they said that the laptops speakers sound worse than cell phone speakers. They weren't.

My galaxy s2 mono speaker gets louder than the Vaio speakers, and sounds just as good.

I tried listening to a few songs and you couldn't hear any treble or bass. Drums and bass guitars basically do not exist when listening to music with the speakers.

Sent from my GT-I9100

 

While these indeed sound very well, as for the volume you need to configure the sound driver correctly
In many cases you will see that no profile is selected. So go to your sound settings (Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound). Go to the Realtek sound manager and select "Front Stereo speaker" as profile.
This should improve the volume output.

 

Actually, I would just be programming(Comp Sc.), running games @ low/med settings and watching hd movies.

So, should i go for the i53210m variant of the s15 or i7 3612qm one?
(price difference is around $175)

 

I would seriously doubt that the battery life with the Quad-Core is an hour less as the i5 3210M and the i7-3612QM have exact the same TDP (35 watt). So battery life should be similar so up to 4 á 4,5 hours.

Someone actually managed to get 6,5 hours by cutting brightness down and turning off devices like the optical drive and the bluetooth card. You should also get around 10-20 mins extra if you have an SSD over an HDD.

 

Its been stated many times now. Even with basic Win 7 drivers or realtec drivers, the S speakers are still crap. Deal with it!
However, i have Tactic Alpha 3D headset connected to my S15, and im impressed how good they sound. I did not expect new S to have such powerful output.
I also have Microlab H200 connected to it (with 3.5 splitter) and the output quality to them is also totally fine. Its not much difference from my desktop card (CreativeTitanium HD) output quality.
Im running Realtec HD audio driver. version 6.01.6570.

 

For gaming and programming go for the standard i5. The only thing that would justify the quad core would be video editing/effects or 3d cad programming that required gratuitous amounts of rendering.

@Davidshadow TDP is a measure of the heat a processor gives off, so two cpu's with the same tdp can consume different amounts of power.

It makes sense that a quad core would consume a decent amount more power than a dual core when running at idle.
Both chips should clock down to the same 1.2ghz clock when under light loads like web browsing, etc... but the 3612qm has twice the number of cores running at the same frequency.
Since the quad core is only marginally more efficient, it will consume more power at idle.
When running under heavy load, i'd expect the chips to have more similar power draw figures because the dual core chip is clocked higher, and power usage increases exponentially with clock speed.
I don't have a ammeter to actually test the power draw of my laptop, but i can tell you from my experience i can only get about 3.5 hrs browsing this forum with the brightness set to 50% on stamina mode.

 

Just downloading drivers and windows 8 preview iso in preparation for my laptop sometime in the next 2 weeks! I'm going through downloading all the drivers recommended in the fresh install post, however i can't find the following:

Sony - WebCam Companion® 4 Software 4.0.21.457
Sony - VAIO® CPU Fan Diagnostics Software 1.1.0.09200 (reboot)
Sony - VAIO® Hardware Diagnostics Software 4.5.1.1424000 (reboot)

I'm not that fussed about the webcam, but do i need the other two to control fans and so on? I'm on this webpage: Sony : SVS13A1C5E updates | Download updates for SVS13A1C5E

There is also Vaio Location, Vaio Smart Network and Vaio Care that aren't in the recommended install list, any of those worth installing? Looks like bloat to me, but just checking.

Also as a Windows 8 n00b, i take it windows 7 drivers are compatible?

 

The problem I had was that the volume were really high, but the sound was so tinny that it actually was irritating.

 

Hello everybody.
I need your help guys, when i in Stamina mode nvidia card don't go to 135/405 it stays on 500/900 Mhz only if i run gpu-z in goes to 135/405, i tried to install beta drivers (304.79) but nothing changed.
What i can do to solve it ?

 

How much weight does the extended battery sheet add onto the 15.5"? Is it worth paying the extra £100/carrying more around?

 

S15 = 1931gramms
sheet battery = 613gramms.
S15 with sheet battery = 2544grams.

I weighted it myself on kitchen scale.

 

Haha, thanks! How is the battery life with the sheet? How many hours do you get out of it?

 

No, i weighted only S15 without battery. Battery weight i got from sony jp site. I dont have sheet battery on S15, but i do on my 2011 S13, which is getting 6-9 hours, depending on usage.

 

Results of second test, now simulating "light-use":

- screen at medium brightness
- wifi on
- Chrome browser, with cnn.com reloading every 2 minutes
- "stamina" setting
- power setting at "Power Saver"

Ended up with 5.5 hours of use.

-Matt

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to add the WWAN-card later on or to use the free mini PCIe-Slot for a mSATA-SSD?

 

Same question here!

And: Is there any possibility of turning the fan down (I already use the low-noise priority in the vaio control center...). The fan seems to be exagerating since the Notebook is rather cool and still it turns... It's not really loud, but in a quiet room, it's really noticeable.

Would it be worth to pay 200€ for the Samsung SSD 256gbyte instead 185 for the Crucial m4 256 gbyte? I think, the Samsung has a warranty of three years, which I can't find for the Crucial...

By the way: Thanks for answering my other questions a couple of days before

 

Guys, need your opinion...
Lately I've been reading this thread (up until page 100 for now) & the ivy bridge zenbook thread, because I'm interested on buying either the UX32VD or SVS13... Honestly now I'm leaning toward the SVS13, but still need final opinion...

I live in Indonesia, the spec that available for both machine are :
UX32VD - Intel Core i5 3317U, RAM 4GB, HDD 500GB, VGA nVidia GT620-1GB, 1366 x 768
SVS13 - Intel Core i5 3210M, RAM 4GB, HDD 640GB, VGA nVidia GT640M-1GB, 1366 x 768

The UX32VD is cheaper by more or less $150... I will use this machine for 3years at minimum, working at the office or carrying it around for meeting & presentation...
So do you think the extra money is worthed to go for the SVS13?