Official Sony S11/S12/S13 (2010) Owners Thread

Thank you Mark, it was extremely helpful. Whilst looking at the links, I cam across John Lwis's and bought one from them (and cancelled Amazon). JL offer an extra year warranty free of charge.

 

You should get two years as standard from Sony as it has Win 7 Pro loaded on it.

HTH

Mark

 

Sorry Duplicate post.

 

Restoring is my last chance but in any case I'm really worry because sometimes, when I stop the notebook from the freeze, it tried to start but a black screen before bios splash remain .... or sometimes it freeze during windows logon (when I enter the password) .... very very strange ....

today I removed WWAN driver, intel storage driver, with no solution.

This is the 2th time I wrote this message, the first time my notebook froze ....

 

UPDATE:

After usual freeze my S12 started at low resolution .... looking at the screen properties I see a vgasafe driver .... and now it's 3 hours without issue .... I think graphics device is fault.

Now I'm backuping all my documents for a restore ... ready to send to assistance ...

 

Mark,
Just to double check, is the warranty for 2 years on all the machines irrespective of where you buy them from? I ask this because I rang a few suppliers (after JL messed up my order and gave me an option to re-order or cancel) and all of them, including sony centre said that warranty was for 1 year.The sony direct said that it was for one year and after I said it was suppose to be for 2, they said "oh yes, its 2 years" but they will not confirm that in an e mail.

 

It is two years on Vaio with Windows 7 Pro. You can download the documents from the Sony website.

Here :- ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Manuals/GUARANTEE/2010Q3_GUAR_EN.pdf

Page 21

HTH

Mark

 

You are a star mate. Thanks very much indeed.

 

Hey, I got a brand new laptop as a replacement for my S111FM but now this BRAND NEW system is having tracking issues... Whenever I use the trackpad the cursor will skip upward... I have the vpcs131fm, and they're going to replace the trackpad on it but I don't knowhow long that will take...

 

guessing it was all talk about the dvd harddrive

 

Has anyone claimed their VAT back yet?

I have the downloaded the form and ready to send, but have not got the 'European Guarantee Information Document'. Do I need to register online with Sony Vaio to get this?

Also @MAK136 I got my laptop from Sony VAIO VPCS13V9E/B VPCS13V9E/B.CEK I think they had the cheapest price for the VPCS13V9E.

 

I have been having "some mother's do ave em" moments with this laptop. After going round the houses, I managed to order it on Amazon and now waiting as the delivery will be delayed due to the weather.

I did look at saveonlaptops, but whilst ordering, it automatically added £20 for the debit card use. Now if they had made it clear on their website, it would have been ok, as I know it cost merchants to process the credit card payments, but the way they automatically add this charge is sneaky to say the least. Amazon is overall cheaper then them and they have a very good returns policy hence I went with them.

Regarding the warranty card, I thought all the electronic devices came with it, how come yours is missing?
I have read somewhere that some laptops (it was about another supplier with similar price) were already registerd with Sony although they were sold as new to the customers!

 

I've sent it off but not had a response yet. I expect they will take their time to sort through them all.

You need to send this :- ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Manuals/GUARANTEE/2010Q3_GUAR_EN.pdf

A hard copy should have been included with your laptop.

HTH

Mark

 

Mark,
My last sony vaio came with preinstalled acrobat standard (that lets you write into pdf etc), does this model have similar stuff on it? and is the charging port on the left or right of the laptop?

 

It comes with a time limited demo of MS Office 2010. But only the adobe reader.

HTH

Mark

 

Thanks Cones I wouldn't have known I had to send that.

Just read the small print! Have to send the original receipt and the European Guarantee Information booklet and they will send them back.

 

The guarantee starts when you register online for it, which I need to get down and do.

 

Hello all, I'm new to these forums and hope you guys can help.
About a month ago I bought a new Vaio VPCS13S9 to replace my SR. What an awesome laptop.

Unfortunately the current weather in Amsterdam is kinda slippery and I fell with the laptop in my backpack, hitting the laptop. No hardware is broken, but I cracked and broke the case near the corner of the DVD-drive.

I've been trying to find instructions, on this forum and by googleing, for removing the palmrest so I can try to repair and rebend something of the case myself, but I cannot find these. Is there anyone on this forum who has done that before and can help me out, or is it very difficult?

 

Since this is a huge thread and I couldn't find it right away I apologise upfront if this has been asked before but, does the sony vaio s model suffer from battery drain?
I've found a nice deal for 860€ in a webstore, which is quite less than the new asus or samsung 13" models with the same gpu which is why i'm asking.

 

you have to litterally take apart the whole laptop and it takes about 3 hours its not a easy task and you have to remeber where every screw goes

 

Hey Boo Boo

Have u ever tried to use the mini pcie slot that is located behind the expresscard? For some reason mine one is disabled

 

Thanks! I figured as much when I tried a bit last night and decided not to go for it. Instead I gave the laptop a kind of bandaid, giving it a small personal touch.

 

there is no mini pci card slot behind the express card slot.

 

I am sure that there is a mini pcie slot ,it is on the opposite side of the wifi card.Im gonna see if i can do a diy vidock with the laptop but i need two pcie port to get x2 link.

 

its not user accessable. only access is ram and hard drive. if you want to tear yours apart and damage the access board you go ahead but I never saw a second pci slot that I recall. and it sure isnt worth the hassle

 

Yea , it took a lot of effort to open the whole back cover. I opened mine 3 times and it still work just fine xD

 

i just bought this laptop today, sooo good...

 

there's just one thing that i'm worried of... how come once in a while when i turn on an application, the screen would turn black first. any idea?

 

NEW UPDATE: yesterday UPS come to me to pick my S12V9 for repair.

During talk with assistance it froze about 10 times ... in BIOS screen ... during restore ..... it's definitely a non windows issues .....hope their return me as new as it is ... I bought it 1th october ...

Do you know if, normally, assistance returns a replace or the same repaired ? They said it will return in 5 days .... it's very not probably that my S12 start from Italy, arrive in Germany, repair, and return in Italy in 5days ....

Bye !

 

is this laptop gonna be durable at all? im hoping for this laptop to last for at least 3 years -_-"

 

oh and by the way, i just noticed that when I use earphones on this laptop... the sound is so horrible!!!! im wondering if any of u guys experience this too, hopefully this is just because my laptop is defective i really want to keep this laptop

 

Hi raptorstv

Unfortunately, the sound of this laptop sucks, is not damaged.
However, is a good machine

Regards from Chile

 

Oh wow, how can your sony vaio S comes with Nvidia geforce 310m? mine only comes with intel HD... sucks

 

The sound quality is IMO average to good. I can't complain!

Don't forget this is NOT a multimedia notebook. If you were looking for one you made a mistake with the S.

 

Hey guys I'm the proud new owner of a Vaio S Series. Bought a customized configuration from Sony UK with i7 processor and NVidia graphics but lowest memory and hard drive options. Then bought 8GB ram from crucial and a 160GB Intel SSD second hand from ebay. Everything went in smoothly and I did a clean install, seems to be working well, and super fast!

Just thought I'd post incase anyone was thinking of doing the same, I saved £100 getting the memory from crucial and SSD was only £200 for £160 instead of even more for 128GB from Sony. Am pretty interested in the idea of replacing the optical drive with a hard drive but maybe later...

Am finding the backlight a bit tempremental, is there any way to change the low light level trigger?

 

i have a question, what's the difference between S and Y series???? aren't hey both 13.3"???

 

Yes they are. But not all 13.3" are the same, are they

Y is a cheaper version of the S - no optical drive (and no option to add one), plastic LID cover, no WWAN, etc., etc.

Compare them on Sony's website...

 

oh i see... but i dont get it... here in Canada, there's only S series. And it only comes with silver color, I want the black one! :S

 

Laptops, Notebooks - Computers Vaio | Sony | Sony Style Canada

 

it doesnt show

 

wow my audio is loud and clear. no issues playing music or anything sound fine a couple feet away

 

yea mine is fine now all of the sudden lol..

 

At high volumes or with good headphones I can hear faint popping noises -- probably as a result of the cheap a** sound card -- so i use a usb sound card when i can..... it's not good enough really, for possibly the most expensive laptop in it's class.

 

It is neither the most expensive nor a multimedia notebook. Don't expect a ferrari to drive comfortably, neither a mini-van - sporty! Each notebook has it's purpose and concept.

 

Hi Gracie, don't get me wrong, my overall opinion of the s is that it's a great unit - solidly constructed with ample speed and memory for most applications - and knew I wouldn't be getting super high fidelity sound... But I just want to listen to a cd through headphones without hearing background static in the mix -- Is that too much to ask? Much cheaper laptops are capable of it. Maybe mine has a manufacturing fault?

 

update your bios.

also I guess the guy who was going to post pics and tell us about the dvd/hard drive either lied or flaked out

 

For linux users...
What do you do for the power and fan management on your Vaio S series ?
The speedstep run? And the fan management ?
There is a tool under windows for that , but on linux ?

I think that the fan run more time than under windows...

 

I have bought a S13 (i5) a few days age and am having following issues with it:-

1- “Intel Storage technology icon on task bar most of the time has an error triangle it.

2- When I open it, it has a green tick on the hard drive and under it says internal port empty 1.

3- On start-up, the laptop randomly states that new hardware found, installing drivers (when no other devices are plugged in or connected via Bluetooth).

4- The one click check-up always shows issue with device manager, when there is no issues highlighted.

Anyone else having all or some of the above issues on their S13?

 

I'm with S11, but no, never had these issues.

Have you tried to reinstall it? Maybe a software problem? Just restore back to 0 and check again. Even if it is a hardware problem, this is the first thing they will ask you to do before you send it for repair.

What is it installing driver for then!?

 

Hi Gracy,

I did restore everything twice. these issues were present before I installed any software, devices etc.
It doesnt say what device it is installing drivers for, when I click on the icon, it disappears.

I always try to buy online (as it gives 7 days to return it without any reason) and I think I am going to ask for a replacement instead of repair.