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

search and you will find

 

i have. i jsut want to know if there are some store that do not upload online.

jeeeszz

 

question: silver model doesn't have a backlit keyboard? is this true?

 

That's correct! Too bad!

I hope the silver version will have it in the future.

 

I imagine at some point it will since the silver version from Best Buy has it.

 

Yup. In Asia only the black S has a backlit keyboard.

Here are some live pics of the green S:

http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=258&t=1409009&last=17352749

 

After several weeks of use, I continue to be pleased with my VPCS111FM from Best Buy. Yes, there are some nits.

I reported a 1% per hour drain when unplugged and shutdown. I'm unable to give better statistics because I'm using it all the time. For those people concerned about this, it would be interesting to know if unplugging the battery makes any difference. Perhaps that could be a solution for some. Regardless, this is a total non-issue for me. I'm getting 4 hours of web surfing. That's all I need ... for now.

I can't emphasis enough how an SSD makes this notebook fly, it's quieter than an HDD and won't crash the hour before a presenation. I'm using an Intel X25-V 40GB drive. Restart cycle is 60 seconds. Boot times speed are 3x faster.

Wish ambient light worked better. Wish vertical viewing angles were greater. Wish keyboard ambient light sensor didn't get fooled by screen illumination.

Still haven't resolved why turbo power icons appear on screen. Anyone else get this? Perhaps it's because I did a W7 Ultimate reinstall??? This problem does not occur in power saving mode which I prefer anyways.

I'm so pleased with the speed of the Core i5 + SSD that I run in power saving mode. A Core i3 for my web surfing notebook would have done me just fine.

Don't expect much from the wireless display technology. The video fidelity is in the range of a bad DVD player. Other opinions?

 

To Bsalita,
did SSD in your Sony S come from Sony's factory or have you buyed in other store?
What kind of SSD? 1,8" or 2,5"?
Is it easy opening your notebook and changing hard drive?
Very thanks

 

Over all I am also pleased with the Vaio S from Best Buy, and the grips I do have are not deal breakers. (it does get a little warmer then I wish it did and I wish it would get just a little better battery life but its getting what advertised)

I keep mine on power saver all the time, I cant really tell the difference between the settings. Silent mod doesnt do anything either that I can tell.

I have started getting a squeak from my space bar that develops after a couple of words.


Thanks
Bud

 

Problem solved!
For the HDMI, I followed these instructions for the Z Series and worked like a charm. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=441593&highlight=hdmi+resolution

The sound issue was solved with the updated driver from Sony's site.

 

I have the asian black S (Corei5) and the screen is less contrasty than the SZ it replaced. Overall the screen is quite washed out. Other than that I am very happy on the 4th day of having it!

I would love an SSD but unfortunately I need at least 500gig storage. Wish there was a way to replace the DVD with a secondary drive.

 

Could you please tell me how long the battery lasts?

 

Just bought the Vaio S and the fan noise bothers me. Would the CW model be any better. My old HP and Gateway were quieter, but also a bit bigger.

Thanks

 

Hi

I have a S bought in Europe.
I'm checking the battery issue. After charging 100% and turn-off, after 10 hours I start again and it was at 74%. However, there is VAIO setup named "Battery care" to limit the battery charge until 80%.
Anyway, there is a 6% missing and I don't have explanation.

So I will do another test using 100%.

My view is:

- Fan is not noisy but quite silence. You can choose your wished performance, and in the lowest one the laptop is absolutely silence and battery arrives near 5 hours. I5 is enough powerful to work without problems in lowest mode. If we up the performance, then the fan starts by lapses quite normally. I mean, on "Equilibrated" performance the fan remains stopped by long times. (I don't check this with games, etc.. I talk about desktop app).
- Little hot under fan but not disturbing.
- Until now I don't have noise problems with the sound.
- Keyboard is excellent; I think one of the best.
- Design and touch also it is one of the bests, at least to me. It's really thin to host a CPU and DVD.
- Display is quite bad to me because I hate glossy displays.
- I have Core I5. I wonder the Core I7 can be some risk for the battery life. CoreI5 works like a charm after cleaning Windows7 of many useless Software. It comes with many VAIO software that I dislike.
- I have an INTEL graphics; enough to me.

- For some reason, LCD comes in 40khz frequency instead 60. What is the recommended?

Please, post more experiences with the battery. I'm checking this also.

here some pics. I'm sorry the low quality:

 

Unfortunately, so far I don't find anything that can do it. I've read over a few Asia Sony sites that have the footnotes where it says you can't use the Dynamic Hybrid graphics switch if you downgrade to XP. No idea what this means, perhaps future software or just a big typo here. I highly doubt it is doing this by itself already since theres no Intel drivers, or perhaps it doesn't need one o_o

I started with 95~97% charge today after leaving the battery on the desk fully charged for 2 days. I wasn't really sure if this is accurate since the Vaio Music Analyzer thing keeps hogging CPU cycles... Even if I pause it, it still chews up 25~30% cpu ...

I played half of a 1080p Bluray movie (hardware accelerated) which was about an hour at around 60% brightness + 50% speakers. This brought it down to around 70%.

I then set the brightness to 30%, which I find it perfect for indoor viewing.
I then fired up 2 demo-runs of 3dmark06 while overclocking the GPU slightly (660/1590/830)
Then ran around in a LAN game of Team Fortress 2 for about 10 minutes. It shocked me to find that it actually ran on all settings at High (tried 1024x768 first, then 1280x720, didn't try native yet) with no AA/AF/Motion Blur with a solid 60fps. Also good to report that after 3dmark and TF2 max GPU temperature was around 67C. Ambient temperature was 24c here. Fan noise is audible but definately not annoying. I find the HDD seek sound more annoying as it is a "clicking" sound.

Afterwards I played about 5 MP3s with the Vaio Media Plus program, testing the "mood" playlists with the relatively poor speakers at max setting. I also browsed around the net on wireless, transfered 1gb of files to a USB stick, opened a few word files, and just let it sit there do nothing for quite some time.

The computer went into standby 2 times for only around 5 to 10 minutes.
The battery thus lasted from 6PM to around 10:00PM before I shut it down. It now sits at 26%.
This was a combination of Balanced profile (during gaming and benchmarking), Custom Low Power (which drops the CPU to 1.3ghz), and the regular Power Saver profile (which has the CPU fly between 1.3ghz to 1.7ghz depending on load). Wifi was enabled and used, Bluetooth was disabled. I also disabled most of the indexing, backup features as well as killed the Analyzer process which keeps taking 25% of the CPU regardless if it is paused or not.

I know this isn't really well documented or done at all, but I was testing the laptop for any faults since I can get a replacement within 7 days.

I will be posting more accurate results later on.

I got 3965 with stock drivers, stock clocks, and with all applications still running. I will post an ORB to a new bench later with unneeded services/programs off.
I can play Mass Effect on relatively high settings as well at 1024x768. TF2 works, will be testing more when I have time.





CS:S Settings



WinRAR


3DMark 06 (killed most VAIO processes, OC'ed at 665/1625/840)
Highest GPU temperature was 66c, room temperature is 23c

 

Is the fan on all the time, even when just browsing or light office work?

 

My CTO S-Series has been dispatched to the logistics center so I should receive it by the end of the week I hope.
Main features are i5 540M, 6GB DDR3 and 310M. I will be swapping the HDD with my Intel G2 SSD.
I plan on doing a backup of the drive and then doing a clean install of Windows 7 straight after.

 

@snip3r_3: Thanks for all that info..!! The 3DMark06 score is about the same as my SR with the ATI 4570, and that can play CoD4 very well (though I can't remember at what settings)...

I might upgrade my SR to the S, since the S has a lot more excellent features, and a massively more powerful CPU than my T6400...

 

I bought an Intel X25-V 40GB drive from Amazon. That's adequate for web surfing plus some. Try ZipZoomFly.com. It's a 2.5" drive. Easy to install. See my review on Amazon for more info.

 

@zvo:

Can you use the display for outdoors or even under bright conditions?

 

Not all the time (at least not at noticable volume) but it rev's up pretty frequently (every 15 - 30 seconds) even when just surfing a single simple webpage.

 

Which screen is better?
The display from the S series or the SR series?

 

that's just weird.. why on earth would they remove the back lit keyboard on different colors? >.< can't think of a good reason

 

well, yes because display can become very bright if you wants and the automatic balance helps with reflections. However it's glossy and reflections exists.
If you keep a lowest bright in order to avoid high brillance (to write texts two hours, in example) then when you moves your head or the display there is the typical "water" distortion.
If you keep the common and default bright there is not problem and the video is high quality, no doubt. But I miss very much an option to buy matte screen. Not everybody wants the notebook for games and video. Sometimes we are froced to work.

Definetly I will order a silicon film

I will be glad to know if snip3r_3 (thanks for the hardware review) has the same experience with the screen. I have Intel and I don't know if NVIDIA can change what I'm talking

thx

 

On my all-black TZ it is pretty much impossible to see the keys with the glare of the screen (even dim) in low light, whereas my silver SR isn't too bad. Maybe they think you only need it with the dark keys and casing of the black machine..?

But it would be nice to have the backlit option on all colours...

 

Does anyone know, when Sony NL will ship the S-serie, because on the Sonystyle website there's still standig, delivery end of January.

 

Has anyone here with the Best Buy (Canada/USA) version of the S Series been able to get the bluetooth working on their laptop? I'm unable to pair to any Bluetooth device.
It's almost as if the laptop doesn't even have Bluetooth installed (Even though the specs say it does)

 

Has anyone did any sort of color calibration with their monitor? IMO, it's way off and displays things way to 'cool'. The only change I've made was change the blue channel's gamma to .7

I'm an amateur photographer and do tons of image editing but its a waste of time if it looks different on everyone elses monitor. Anyone do any calibrations yet?

 

S has slightly higher resolution, but is 16:9 (1366x768) vs 16:10 on the SR (1280x800)

Both have relatively poor vertical viewing angles but decent horizontal. I haven't really used the SR before but judging from in-store demo-machines they are about the same.

I don't really understand what you are talking about (the bold part).
I typically use brightness level of 2 (2nd bar from left) indoors. I haven't brought this laptop out yet and it is currently cloudy here so I can't really test it under sunshine. I have a screen protector that Sony installed (so I don't really know before/after since even their demo-machines have it...). The sales person claimed that it helps a little with the reflection issue but it's still as bad as my glass covered desktop monitor. I bought it mainly to prevent the keyboard/mousepad/wrist-rest scratching the screen.

My father's laptop uses a matte screen and under very bright light/sunlight you can't really read anything either as it just has a horrible blob of light reflected off it.

I know what you mean, I actively use Photoshop for posters/artwork brushup and editing pictures. The colors are on the cold side as you stated and not as vivid as my desktop monitor which has quite accurate colors (at least what I get from my prints is 95~99% the same color).
I've changed a few settings in Rivatuner to match up two reference pictures I had designed previously, but I haven't really put in the time to calibrate it. I also change the brightness often so I have to setup a profile...

 

I beg to differ. The SR screen has great viewing angles, both up and down ( vertical ) and side to side ( horizontal.) Right out of the box it was this way and have not made any adjustments to the color profiles or gamma settings.

 

Hmm... I remember seeing the SR's screen as being somewhat limited vertically and also read about it too. It's also a trademark of TN panels so perhaps "limited" has to be defined more accurately.

Maybe different revisions of the SR had different screens I suppose. The S' screen out of the box is decent as well, but not really optimal as after about 20 minutes of fumbling I got it looking quite nice and resembling my desktop's monitor. Not all panels are made the same, thus all require slightly different calibration to suit the requirements (as I need it to be as accurate as it can be) or needs of the user (brightness/viewing angles).

 

Some of you are labeling the screen as 'bad' by comparing it to all sorts of screens, including even plasma TV screens. Of course the viewing angles are bad in such a comparison, it's a notebook panel!

Others are labeling it as 'great' by comparing it only to other notebook screens. In my eyes that puts things in the right perspective, but don't forget that this 'great in comparison', does not mean the screen really is all that great, it's just less bad than the rest.


Two more points. First, not all screens are equal. And I don't aim for the difference between two notebooks here. Some S notebooks will have a somewhat better screen than other S notebooks. It's just a matter of luck whether you get a good one or not.

And finally, judging the quality of the screen as 'great' or 'bad' is purely subjective. There is no point in arguing about it, as there are too many (unknown) variables between the quality of the screen and the judgements.


There are at least two ways you can get a more unified measurement of the screen quality. The first is to set up a new poll specifically asking about the rated quality in comparison with other notebooks. Not much better, but better nonetheless and doable. The proper method would be to get a set of instruments to do measurements, repeated with a few notebooks to compare the results. This would be great, but obviously less doable.

Just arguing on about who is right and wrong is absolutely pointless.

 

@ Solinx : Points well taken. When I happen to make any comparisons, it will be with other notebook screens. And yes, perhaps I've been lucky to have great screens with my notebooks. I am very pickey though about the screen. If I'm spending the money on any " premium " notebook....that being only Sony VAIO notebooks, I'll scrutinize, evaluate, compare, and think about it quite a bit before I buy it, as I'm sure others do as well. My 3 VAIO notebooks I currently own, and the 4th being a V505 that I just retired, all have great screens with excellent viewing angles, side to side and up and down. I personally wouldn't purchase anything less, or accept anything as being " just acceptable, " like the CW's out now. I own 3 HDTV's which are all LCD and know those panels are in a different league than a notebook screen. That being said, without performing any scientific tests, I stand by my position but add the disclaimer " my customized SR590...the latest SR in the series....looks great, and not just comparing it to any old Dell, Compaq, or whatever, but comparing it with my other " premium " VAIO notebooks. Yep, I admit it, I guess I'm pickey.

 

I apologize if this is off topic, even though the point is still about the SR's screen. But another thing. Some non-scientific tests of a notebook panel, or let's call it " real world " testing of viewing angles could be things like :

How often do you find yourself adjusting the panel ever so slightly trying to achieve that sweet spot ? Did it a lot with the CW.

How does a screen look when on a desk with let's say 2 other notebooks on the same desk and the ones not in the middle ? Is there significant washout or are the screens still uniform and bright with minimal ( subjective word I guess ) washout or darkening of the screen ?

Let's say you are walking into the room and happen to walk beside the notebook ? You get a new instant message notification. A good screen will still be viewable from the side where you notice that new message unlike where a poor screen would be too washed out to notice that message.

A good screen is one that allows you to view a movie with another person at the same time without suffering from washout and darkening of the screen.

So I guess my points could be that in my opinion, a great, or even good screen is one that you don't need to sit directly in the middle of to still experience excellent quality. Sony VAIO notebooks I guess can be a hit or miss experience like any other notebook but are usually better than most from what I've seen.

 

So I don't have that protector but I will order one anti-glare to avoid headaches. Although I agree it is a matter of personal preferences and situations.


I have the display default configuration using "Equilibrated mode".
In my home, I have the typical yellow and low light, similar to this:

in this situation the automatic bright VAIO becomes an horrible thing, because display becomes too dark for work. I'm forced to up bright until maxim or to create a personalized mode in "Advanced" using another parameters. Anyway, because the display is glossy, to get a good result I need a lot of bright, and it is not comfortable for texts tasks.


However, in the following situation the glossy display it's excellent and not so bad for texts tasks, precisely because the automatic regulation:


so I think for situation 1, the only problem is the glossy display.

in the S the bright can be very high. I suspect a matte screen can be really nice. I will install a silicon filter to test that.

I understand you. I know it depends also of personal needs. Normally I don't use the laptop under the Sun. Always inside offices, pubs, airports, etc.. These situations with artificial light are much more frequent to me. Glossy display of S works very well, EXCEPT with low light levels. ANY glossy display causes headaches in such situations, it is not a VAIO S problem. On the contrary, I think this glossy display is much better than competence.

Just I note the matte screen is much better to expend hours in front text, programming, etc. Under the sun any option can have problems:




I think Sony can join the Apple politics, who were forced to offer again the matte display because the pressure of many users.
Marketing of expensive laptops "for business" can be quite contradictory with offering a display mainly designed for games and multimedia. I think so.

best,

 

What about Canada? There are plenty of CW i3 in stores but I can't find a single SR anywhere in stores, salesman told me that they only have it on CTO and I couldn't see a S serie anywhere even if it's only out tmrw..

I don't want that crappy low end i5, I want the faster one so I'll probably order my S serie on the website. anyone knows when its gonna be available?

The canadian sony site doesn't even offer the SR series...

 

Actually the i5 520M (2.4ghz) is faster than a 3.0ghz C2D, well at least it beats my old rig at doing WinRar and 06 CPU score.

@ zvo

I understand you I guess I didn't notice because I turned off automatic brightness since day one.

 

its that much faster? Damn.. well I was thinking of getting the 2.4 or 2.53..

I know lots of people want the best spec because they want the highest number.. but I actually need a laptop for live performances for both video and audio... with several softwares are once.. i'm gonna use that turbo boost...

 

Does anyone know if the VPCS11V5E is dual core? I'm going to order the sameone as steve78 "Black, backlit keyboard, i5-540M 2.53GHz, 320GB 7200RPM, GeForce 310M"

Thank, Julie

 

Yes it's dual core.

 

if the cpu is i5-540 it's a dual core. This is a very good cpu.

Where did you see this laptop advertized? I'd like to a webpage or something because it's what I'd like to buy.. with 7200rpm hdd.. and 4gb of ram I guess.

 

Turbo boost only works when you have one thread heavily loaded while the other core and HT threads are idling. It will not turbo boost if you load more than 2 threads. They did this so that it remains within it's TDP while helping out older applications to perform better on multi-core CPUs.

Live performances should do fine, the CPU is definately up to task but you would need a relatively fast HD to be able to quickly stream all that data without choking.

Regarding the performance, it is unfortunate that Core Tweaker doesn't work (never designed for mobile computers...), I find it funny how I got RAM rated at 7-7-7-20 but its running at 8-7-7-20...

 

Hmm thx for the infos on how turboboost works.

Where can I get my S serie Sony machine???

I definitely want the 2.4ghz or 2.53ghz cpu.. with 4gb of ram (best ram/price ratio) and I'd rather have a 7200rpm hdd rather than 5400rpm no matter what the sizes are as long as it's over 250.. I already have tons of hdd space everywhere so I'll be alright with a small one... finally, no gpu is fine as long as it means I get more battery life.

The thing is, I can't find such machine!! Only one I saw so far is on the bestbuy website and it's available since today...

Sony websites don't say anything about these machines, they don't even have this serie.. they only have the old SR.

 

Called Sony and I'm receiving my S-Series CTO this Monday.
They confirmed that UK CTOs are built in Japan, then shipped to Netherlands and then here to the UK, that's a long way.

 

Can someone please post pics of their S series!

 

you're from UK?

DAmnit when are they arriving to us/canada?

 

Could someone please post battery times with the S equipped with the NVIDIA GPU. Pics would be nice too. Thanks!

 

Ugh... nice how there is still no S-series CTO available in the Netherlands.

 

Hello,

Thank you for the info!

The link for S series VPCS11V5E is here:
http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vn-s-series

Click on where it says '2 products found' and from there you can customise it to the desired spec.

 

Oh thanks... Seeing the specs, it's exactly what I want to buy, except I'm in Canada.. I'd also expect a lower price tag than what you got in uk.