Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

Hey, did you ever solve the issue with Samsung Magician not working with the UEFI setting etc? Just came across the same issue after I restored the recovery USB to my 256GB 830 SSD.

Don't really want to install Windows from scratch and not have all the software etc that came with the laptop.

Thanks.

 

That's a funny looking lion!

 

this might be a stupid question but where is the menu button to access the the color settings? the manual says front edge of the monitor..

 

right click on the desktop...graphic properties...then wait a while....choose advance...then look for color settings....

 

Another option is to press the VAIO button near the power switch: I think the default app is VAIO Control Center, which starts (which of course you can also start from the Windows menu), and then Display -> Color Mode Setting. But I'm not as much a fan of those settings, as I am what Rhoel ^ recommended.

-Matt

 

I tried searching but I guess I didn't find anything.

Just wondering, what are the benchmarks for the Crucial M4 in one of these Vaios?

 

One of the users here posted a review video where you can clock boot times: Sony Vaio S13 Premium (2012 Ivy Bridge) Review + Extended Battery - YouTube

looks to be about 32 seconds before windows completely settles. Although i have no idea what programs he has set to turn on start up

nope. tried it twice in UEFI and twice in legacy. Ended up sticking to legacy as boot times were also faster even before using magician

 

I received an S13p in Canada last week as well but I was lucky my screen had no problem whatsoever. I'm sure I would notice it as at the store it was pretty clear.
Probably it was a bad batch of screens and might be enough to have the laptop exchanged (maybe wait a bit to make sure they finish the batch? But well if you request an exchange because of the screen the gotta give you a better one).
Also, my screen doesn't really have a big orangegate issue. My Viewsonic is way worse on that matter.

 

The orange "issue" is only relevant to the S15's IPS 1080p screen, completely different screen on the S13

 

Actually in that video I posted I hadn't performed any SSD optimizations, which further increased my boot times.

Also, Razer's new mouse software called "Synapse" is a piece of garbage that makes your PC unresponsive for 20 seconds on boot up, so it took way longer in that video than it needed to be. Unfortunately I need to keep it installed because I use my deathadder every day. Without that software and all the optimizations in place, the laptop is usable on bootup in ~10 seconds.

 

Does anybody mind sharing how long it took for their card to be charged after ordering their vaio?

 

Meh, I hear ya. Sorry to keep bugging you, but how would you compare the keyboard on the s13 to s15. Is key travel/mushiness about the same? I notice the s13 doesn't have the number pad, so since it's only about an inch thinner, I thought that maybe the rest of the keypad didn't have to be shrunk down. I would go to my local sony store, but I'm getting married in a couple weeks and spare time is incredibly hard to come by.

 

Only took about 2 hours for me.

 

Oh, alright.. I was wondering because on the website it says it's paid and there's no open balance, but in my bank account it hasn't been charged. Don't want to over-think it and tell myself "heyy free laptop" lol. Thought it was weird that I haven't been charged and it's been shipped already

 

What is this UEFI or Legacy thing I keep hearing about? I still don't understand this...I know it has to do with the BIOS...

 

Hey I've just recently ordered a custom S15.5 and I ordered the i5 with the best graphics card + 12GB RAM (free). If I had chosen the 4 Core i7 how much would this effect my fps/performance in gaming.

Just not sure if I made a mistake by cheaping out!

 

It wouldn't affect gaming performance at all. BF3, at medium settings, at 1600x900, gets the GPU load up to 100%, and the CPU load up to 75-80%. This is all with the cheapest CPU option, the i5-3210m. This means that even with the most CPU intensive game on the market right now the CPU is still not a bottleneck, so for GAMING purposes the i7QM would not make much of a difference.

Even on Skyrim GPU load is always at 100% and CPU load rarely goes above 75% for me.

 

Mine took a week, but maybe Sony Canada is just really slow.

 

Any developments on a custom bios that the 2012 model, similar to the custom bios for the 2011 s series? (anyone?)

 

Any way to enable display rotation? (I Didn't not know sony disabled display rotation until I received my vaio. My first Sony)

Anyone know how display rotation was disabled? (BIOS/video firmware, drivers, etc).

I tried all sorts of registry edits (enabledrotation, rotateflag, etc) using stock intel and modded nvidia drivers (as opposed to sony drivers) and display rotation still doesn't work.

 

Should i care about the bad speaker quality if i almost never listen music on laptop and if ever i see videos / movies i use external speakers almost always ?

 

Sounds like a no to me.

 

Hi,

yesterday I ordered my Gun Metallic (my wife said I´m nuts...spending 30 Euros only for "Design") S13P i7, 12 GB (Special Offer 40 Euros ;-)), 1 GB Nvida, 500 GB, 7200 HDD and the Slice Battery in the German Sony Online Store.

In the Mail they write Delivery in 4 - 5 Weeks!!! ... Do they deliver by horse and rowing-boat?? On the phone they said 2 - 3 Weeks.. that's OK for me.

Will there be an original Windows 7 Pro DVD in the box?
Has anyone tried to install Linux or BSD on his S13P?

Paddie

 

When I ordered my gunmetal S13A, check out page showed expected ship date as 30 July. Later when I checked the online order information, it was showing 14th August as shipping date. I called sony and explained them the problem. They called me back to tell me that my laptop will ship by 30 July and the date in the mail/website was inaccurate. In my case, the laptop even shipped earlier (26 July) and I should have it by August 1. So don't worry, the phone information is more correct than the mail one.

 

Ordered mine on the 19th, shipped from Germany yesterday, the 27th...

Hopefully German couriers work all weekend and I will have it by Monday

I've already refreshed the tracking info ten times this morning

 

hehe ;-).

In Germany the most couriers do next business-day. So If they ship it on Friday it arrives on Monday (but without guarantee...for this you have to pay express-fees). I don´t know if this works for "export".

 

I don't think Sony includes the dvd, but you can make recovery discs using the software provided. Or just grab an iso of win 7, make ur own disc and install it using your win 7 serial.

 

Hmm.. If I make these recovery Discs could I delete the Recovery Partition?

Thanks

Paddie

 

Yep, but I'd go with a USB stick (probably 32GB) rather than 3 (DL) - 5 (SL) DVDs.

 

I'm interested in buying a vaio s 15 i7 quadcore, but I've heard the fan noise is very loud. Or at least on the 2011 model. What do you s15 quadcore 2012 model owners out there think about this years model?

 

Anyone have a clue as to whether the free ps3 deal will come back? currently the only student offers available from the sony website are for the e and t series laptops. I know that the current deals will expire on 1st August, if anyone has studied manufacturers strategies from previous years, what are the likelihoods that sony will announce a new, different discount from 1st August onwards?

 

On my S15 2012 i7-3612QM, in stamina mode I can't even hear the fan.

When in speed mode and fan set to "balanced", the fan is hardly audible.

When in speed mode with the fan set to "priority to ventilation" and gaming, the fan isn't too loud.

In all honestly, it's the quietest laptop I've ever used.

 

The best thing to do imo is just forget that you've ordered it and when it comes it'll be a supprise

 

I've heard the keyboard sucks though. Any truth to that?

 

Very interested in the ps3 action too. I would probably order the laptop around the 25th of august. Any back to school actions starting around then?

 

Yep, it looks like 2-finger scrolling in the steam library was the cause of the freezes. I've avoided doing that for a day and haven't had any problems with it.

I did have another problem when I woke up this morning though. The screen wouldn't turn on.

I restarted the laptop twice, the second time waiting a couple minutes with it turned off, and finally the screen came back. For a laptop that's less than a week old, this is unacceptable. Is there anything I should consider, like maybe there's some way to avoid this in the future? Otherwise I'm just going to return it.

EDIT: I'm talking about the S 13 premium btw

 

I would exchange it for a new one, most likely a loose wire or bad contact.

 

I've had the screen on mine not come on about 2-3 times, had to turn it fully off at the button then on again to get it back.

Hasn't happened recently though, not sure what it was

 

Hi guys... I've seen the ODD replacement tutorial for the 15 inch model...
Is there any tutorial for the 13 inch one? (Yes, I've heard the process is very similar, but still?)

And one more question, would this caddy fit:
Designer's 2.5" SATA to SATA HDD / SSD Caddy for 9.5mm Optical Drive - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

I'm guessing it has to be a 9,5 mm one, right?

 

The ODD is a slot loading one, so not sure if that will work.

 

What do you mean by this? That the caddy wont work or that it wont be possible to replace the ODD?

 

Again not sure, but the ODD is 9.5mm and it is a standard sized ODD so any caddy designed for laptops should work.

Checking wizzards video, he has the same one in his laptop as you posted, so it will work I'd recommend looking at his video, link in the 1st post, it seems like a lot of work.

 

Is there any way to turn the keyboard backlight off? That'd give more battery time, and I haven't seen anyone talking about that :x

 

Just to help people out a bit.

I was having issues with lag when I right click on my desktop. I figured others might be having this issue too.

Intel has a fix for this and here is the link for anyone that needs it.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=17570

download it and it will work flawlessly. Lag is 100% gone.


Blitz

 

If you mean "off all the time" there's the option for that in the VAIO Control Center: Keyboard & Mouse -> Backlit Keyboard -> Do not turn on

Very cool, thanks!

-Matt

 

Yes it's in the sony control panel somewhere

I've had it permanently off since I got the thing - annoyingly bright and just distracting

 

Thank you both for the answer. I suppose none of you got Linux \ W8 installed to see if it still works there, but at least there's a way =).

I'm also a bit worried about the cooling in the 15'' unit, the exhaust opening is kinda small and the intake air has to travel through all laptop.

I'll probably get one by the end of August, but I think I'll open it all up to check the thermal contacts between CPU \ GPU and the heat spreader, and I don't trust it too much and Sony laptops from my experience seem to be made to last only 2 years tops :x

 

Just a quick bit of data for anyone of the verge of going HDD -> SSD (i.e., the voyeurs out there). The main reason I'm posting is to reassure anyone who's reading about complications during the reinstallation process -- I really didn't have any:

(1) I carefully read the OP -- worth it's weight in gold!
(2) Downloaded the S15 drivers/software from Sony's support page
(3) Copied the Win 7 Professional installation to an 8GB USB thumb drive
(4) Booted into BIOS (wow it IS hard to press F2 fast enough!), changed boot mode to Legacy, enabled boot to external device, and made sure external device had first boot priority
(5) Opened the back door and swapped drives, HDD out -> SSD (OCZ Agility 3 128GB) in
(6) Rebooted with USB stick; deleted all partitions and formatted SSD
(7) Win 7 installation was fast and smooth

After installing Win 7, most "secondary" hardware (e.g., wifi, ethernet, fan control, keyboard light, etc.) wasn't working.

*** As noted by others, I got an error message about the battery (and a prompt to start hibernation) -- I just ignored the prompt and kept installing drivers

(8) Slowly went through the driver reinstall list, and the error message vanished

At this point I basically have a clean, minimal installation. The key ingredients were (1) a Win installation disk/ISO and (2) the S15 drivers/system software. FWIW before I reinstalled all the drivers, boot-up time to Windows login was 10 seconds (remember that's SATA II) -- after getting all the hardware back in working order (plus several Sony/Intel patches and misc utilities) it now takes about 13-15 seconds to get there. Also: total disk usage with nothing else installed is ~32GB but remember I haven't done ANY optimization, e.g., kill virtual memory, hibernation file, etc. This was just a demonstration-proof for me to gauge the process -- the HDD is going back in sometime soon (my daughter is pissed that her laptop aka "organ donor" is sitting in pieces on the dinner table!).

On a more personal note: I unfortunately realize that I must have VERY sensitive hands. I've always been tuned into temperatures on laptop palmrests, and I noticed the stock S15 was just a bit too warm for me on the right side. I assumed it was the HDD directly underneath that area. However I have the same issue with the SSD. After exploring a little more, I wonder if what I'm getting on the right side is CPU heat (runs ~45C idle and 50s+ under load, which means ~110F minimum). I can pick up a light stream of warm air under the right side of the keyboard, which I guess is contributing to the problem. Anyway, I doubt it will be an issue for others but it may be a deal-breaker for me.

-Matt

 

Alright, I think I'll just order that one then, seems like I can't go wrong with this.

Do I void the warranty if I replace the ODD?
(And if so, only in theory or is it possible to see it?)

Regards

 

You don't void the warranty by doing that. It's just some basic screwing \ unscrewing.

You'll probably have to put the ODD back in its place if you send it for warranty though, or at least remove the caddy.