Official 2012 Sony S Series Owners Thread

how's the temp of the S15 when watching a movie? looking at the pictures, there aren't very many vents. I run CPU intensive programs for 1-2 hours a day and i'm concerned about that.

also thinking about adding a second hd in place of the optical drive bay, and there doesn't appear to be any vents to cool the HD there at all!

 

Where did u get that skin? Is there more other design?


EDIT:
nvm.. I think I found it..
http://www.gelaskins.com/store/laptops/VAIO_S15/collection/Most_Popular

If you look at the s15, there are vent gills on the right sight that stretches for the whole width of the laptop. I believe that is the intake and all spewed at the back. For my s15, it is very silent, virtually inaudible in normal use. I actually overclocked the GPU from 500/900 to 1000/1000 .. that is doubling the GPU speed but only adding additional ~7 degrees Celsius of heat.

What do I think about the s15 cooling? It is pretty damn amazing.

 

I agree cooling is fine. In everyday browsing in a standard room temp you will see cool temps of 40-50 Celsius... when you work it it depends I was gaming and I only hit 55 with oc GPU. And I agree also about the noise. The fans when set to be silent are dead silent. When set to ventilation they do get quite loud... but at the same time I think the hard drive is half the noise. And yes it is misleading there is one not very wide vent that is partially obscured by the hinge on the back... but it really moves a lot of air

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

 

Does anyone follow Sony and know when they update their machines? Any one know when they will update the S15? I am was hoping by the Xmas season they would upgrade the laptop to 1600mhz ram, but that probably wont happen until next year with the new Intel chips. Any one know?

 

has anyone tried getting access to the CPU/GPU/Heatsink fan in the S15? if so was it difficult? a lot of times laptops I have owned need those cleaned every 6 months to a year to maintain their cooling systems.

 

I did not like the rough surface of the black laptop I tested in the store. Luckily the sliver version is smooth.

 

The KB Skin makes it less enjoyable to type on. Less tactile feedback. I may remove it. But I like the look of it though.

 

is the gunmetal color available for the S15 in the US? I'm not seeing the option on the website

 

Has anyone tried to replace S13A dvd drive with hdd?? im interested to keep the hard drive but want to remove dvd and replace it with an ssd

 

also, when buying with the student discount, what do i need to do? my brother has a .edu email account but i want to use my email and credit card.

 

should be the same process demonstrated here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYRmk6jLL30

 

I have done this. It's no harder than changing the ODD for a second HDD or SSD. Once the top of the case is removed you can just blow out the heat sink with compressed air through the fan....while holding the fan stationary of course! I can post a couple of pics if you wanna see what it looks like before you start.

 

Nope. No gunmetal or WWAN or fingerprint reader for us Americans! :-(

 

No gold or white either.

 

What makes the language bar come up on sony vaio's? Whenever I play Guild Wars 2 and then exit it's there, sitting smug on my task bar and I have no idea why

 

Do you have more than one keyboard map installed? I'm used to it because I always have US English and Canadian French keymaps installed.

 

My laptop is suppose to come with 640gb hard drive but it only says there is 576gb. Is this normal?

Also, is there a way to configure how much light is needed for the backlit keyboard to turn on? On the vaio control center I made it so it only turns on in low light conditions but the thing still turns on when there is plenty of light in my room. I only want it to turn on when its completely dark.

 

is it easy to change the paste for the CPU and GPU?

 

this might be a really geek question, but i dont know... so, im installing something but my processor still going around 5% only.... shouldnt it speedup?

 

Installing is mostly writing the software onto the harddisk. It's not really an cpu-intensive task.

 

ok cheers

 

Hey guys.

I'm getting ready to do a clean install of Win7 on my S13. I don't see anywhere on the sony site to download VAIO control center. Is it under something else? I don't want to lose the ability to easily control the fan and the keyboard backlight.

 

some of the space is probably being used by your backup software that comes pre installed on another partition. Also windows reads hardrives a little different. I cant remember what the exact explanation was but yea its normal to lose about 5-10% of drive space due to how windows reads/formats things. maybe someone else could chime in with a more scientific answer lol.

 

It comes with the hotkey utilities

make sure you install the SFEP and sony shared libraries first, and restart twice when the install asks you to do so

 

You have to completely disassemble the lappy and remove the motherboard. Not for the faint of heart. I have done it for mine (S15) and it resulted in about a 5 degree reduction in GPU temp during gaming. If you are comfortable working with delicate parts and good at remembering how things fit back together it's very doable. BUT. The routing of the wires to the mobo from the power plug is complex and very space critical. Take pics of how it looked BEFORE you disassemble it! Also there are several hidden screws at the hinge side of the unit that secure a small cover plate for the wiring to the display.

Bottom line: bring lots of time and patience. I can post some pics if that would help.

 

first time poster!

excited to get my S13P next week! just a quick question, I tried searching for the answer but havent found it in the older posts.

If I do the bios mod to lets say the same clock at a 650m, does it just stay at that speed? or can the system still underclock the gpu when not needed? I dont want anything crazy, so it is just like my laptop has a 650m instead of 640m LE.

 

The larger the drive the more loss you will see. Its not big bad windows that reads it wrong. Windows reads a gig as 1024mb. The standard derived from 4bits in a nibble 8bits in a bite... and so on and so forth. Google it. Hard drive manufacturers if you look at the box will say something like 1gb=100000000000bites (number of zeros are inaccurate just hit it a lot) and they truncate the 24mb per gig.

As to the GPU it will down clock when not used fully but not perfectly. There are supposed to be 3 levels idle full and turbo we loose turbo. So it is 135mhz and 950mhz but it down clocks when idle fine. I would just use the stamina switch and shut it off most of the time. That's why its there!!!

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

 

Check out this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/677079-sony-vaio-s-bios-mod-gt640m-le.html

It has everything you need. Consensus is that it downclocks just fine EXCEPT if you have GPU-Z active at the same time....which seems to be a glitch. I'm using the mod on my S15 and it works just fine. I just make sure I don't load GPU-Z unless I really need it...like when gaming to monitor temps!

 

hi guys,

i am new on this forum and a fresh owner of a Sony Vaio S which replaced my Dell n5010, and i have a few question. first of all i am not really familiar with Sony's pre installed software. i have uninstalled a few buyt i still remained with some of them which i do not know really if they are helpfull or not (see below) :



Is Sony Care any good? What software should i keep?

Also regarding the startup, what can i disable (these processes are not really familiar to me) :



Thanks!

 

Thats pretty lame i lost about 64gb of storage. It's exactly 10% of what I read on the specs. i don't think my last laptop lost that much storage. It was probably less than 5%.

 

I think you should disable utorent, yahoo messenger, and maybe that btmtrayagent. Also uninstall mcafee and install avast or avg.

For the sony programs you should use them all and see what you like. Vaio care and vaio control center really good. I think things like gesture control are stupid but you might think its cool.

 

thanks for info and quick reply! cannot wait to finally join the Vaio S party with you guys

 

How many displays can the 2012 S Series 15.5in drive? Can it do two external plus the internal? Or, is there anyway (such as using the dock) to use three external displays?

 

Do you guys know if the 2011 S 15.5 and 2012 S 15.5 keyboards are exactly the same? Thanks.

 

Anybody have a very .... bipolar keyboard? It seems very confused about whether it wants to keep the backlight on. It keeps flashing.

 

My keyboard backlight is fine. It does that sometimes due to the room light and get confused but nothing close to flashing.

 

I had ordered the S15 6GB/640GB/1GB Nvidia variant last week from amazon and i am going to receive it tomorrow. Few questions here...

1. What all things i need to check after i open the package, to see that everything is fine with the laptop ?
2. How do i partition the HDD. I believe it will come with a single C drive but i would like to add 2 more drives. Which will be the best software ? I have not done partitioning much so am not fully aware.

Anything else you experts would like to add, anything i should definitely check ?

 

i'm having an issue with the backlit keyboard as well. The problem is that it lights up even when there is sufficient light in my room. I can turn on both of my lamps and the backlit keyboard still comes on.

 

Are you plugged in? The default is always on when plugged in.

 

Speaking of the keyboard (which I have to say I love), is there a way to easily disable the back-light with a keystroke, like the fn-f2 for the trackpad? I use that all the time, and it'd be nice to be able to quickly disable the keyboard backlight too rather than depending on the ambient light sensor.

 

Guys here's a question:
I have my display on output to an external monitor through the HDMI, and I also output the sound through the HDMI.
But when I game I'd like to be able to connect my headphones to the 3.5mm jack and have the sound output change automatically to the headphones, instead of the HDMI.
Is it in anyway possible? (It was on my last CPU)

 

Quick Question, here in Germany options for S-Series got fewer some weeks ago, especially for S1311. No HD+-Display for S1311 anymore, no LTE-module for an of the three, UMTS is mandatory for S13P, fewer colors (black, silver and white for S1311, no pink anymore, only black and silver for S1511 and only black and gun metal for S13P).

I was waiting for more colors like red or blue like the old S-Series as well as mor CPU-Options like Core i3-3110M, instead now I have to choose S13P if I want 13" with HD+. Is this permanent or just temporaly e.g. until it gets a refresh with new colors and options? Can't imagine they would proudly present one of the first LTE-notebooks and then just sell it for a couple of months.

 

Should be possible I guess.
Right click on the sound icon on the below right, and select playback devices.
There you will see a number of playback devices.
Select the one you wanted to use(Speaker/HP), and set it as default.

 

Is there a way to use the S15's HDMI port as video input for a second computer?

 

The same here in Holland. Apparently they ran out of the more rare colour options and are waiting for new stock. It should arrive around 17 september is what I've heard on a Dutch forum from a guy who called Sony.

 

question: i have a Sony Vaio SVS1511N3ES, i5, 4gb 1333 GZH. Can someone tell me if this 4gb are in one slot? how can i find out? Also can i upgrade to 1600 gzh frequency, does the mother board support?

 

I wa just wondering, on the underside of my custom Sony Vaio theres a sticker with product name: SVS1511C5E then theres a black sticker with MODEL SVS151A12M

When I look up SVS151A12M it doesn't exist, what do all your stickers say top right underside of your vaios, was wondering if theres a model number for every single combination of RAM, HDD, GPU etc

 

Thanks for the answer, but I was looking for an automated process. What you described is exactly what I want to avoid, I don't want to have to right click and select etc... every time I want to change source (few times per day)..

 

Autohotkey

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/673678-vaio-s15-orangegate-again-10.html

11:00 PM Blake - (C4QF): Hi. Welcome to Sony Online Support. I'm Blake.
11:00 PM Customer: Hello
11:02 PM Customer: Have you read my query?
11:02 PM Blake - (C4QF): I understand that you are looking information about red orange issue.
11:02 PM Customer: yes
11:03 PM Blake - (C4QF): Can you explain the red orange issue?
11:03 PM Customer: It means, the red colour appears as Orange instead of red
11:04 PM Customer: into the display
11:04 PM Customer: It's a known problem, are you not aware of it?
11:06 PM Blake - (C4QF): I've checked the information in our database.
11:06 PM Blake - (C4QF): We have not yet received any red-orange issue with the display of SVS151190X model notebook.
11:07 PM Blake - (C4QF): Sony will usually put an update in News and Alerts page of the computer.
11:08 PM Customer: Then, do you know anything about this problem in new S series 15.5 inch?
11:08 PM Blake - (C4QF): This model doesn't have any issue with the display.
11:08 PM Customer: Please, have a look there: you will understand everything. http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/673678-vaio-s15-orangegate-again-4.html
11:09 PM Customer: but the other models have? Right? Then can I buy this specific model that does not have this issue?
11:09 PM Blake - (C4QF): Yes. You can go ahead and purchase that model.
11:09 PM Customer: Thank You Blake.
11:09 PM Blake - (C4QF): You are welcome.

So, I am confused. Is that person lying?