Official Sony SB/SA/SC/SD Series Owners' Thread

Yea, it will be 4GB, which is soldered to the board, with a 2 GB stick added in the DIMM slot.

 

you're better off skipping the 6GB upgrade...just get the standard 4GB and buy a 4GB SODIMM yourself

 

What good does over 4gb ram do? Won't that affect battery life?

 

Of course you are, thats how Sony and every other PC maker makes their money. The same thing with the hard drive. Thats why I got 4GB RAM and the 320GB hard drive. I have a 4GB stick of RAM I will be adding as well as a 500 GB Momentus XT hybrid hard drive.

 

make sure the hybrid drive has the latest firmware. people were having issues with it recently.

 

Yep, it's their newest one.

 

sorry wasn't talking to you, meant to direct it towards whomever wanted the 6GB setup

hybrid hard drive sounds interesting, probably won't do that but instead get a SSD to run the OS within one of these caddies that have been shown in here lately (if they make one for the SB!)

 

Gotcha. Yea, that will probably be something I will do a little down the road, going to wait and see how everything tuns out before I do that. Hopefully they will get a caddy out quickly so we can!

 

Just ordered mine, can't wait! Can anyone explain to me the "caddy" that would allow me to turn my ODD tray into a HDD slot? How does it work? Does it affect the looks of the laptop?

 

NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks they have pictures and instructions

basically you remove the ODD drive and replace it with a caddy from the vendor above. supply your own harddrive and now you have a dual harddrive lappy. newmodeus has been pretty good at making the caddy fitting flush matching colours.

 

Understand, personally if i didn't plan to use a discrete GPU, I would go with something even lighter like the Toshiba R800 series or a Lenovo X220. But then again, that's just me.

 

i owned the R700 for about 2 weeks and returned it. terrible keyboard, no backlight, terrible on-screen display, runs super hot all the time, lots of body flex when handled at the corner, ODD tray eject button is too easy to hit and pops out whenever i pull it out of my bag. it lured me with its price and value for dollar, but stay away from that monstrosity.

 

Tomorrow it will be a month since I ordered. The latest ship date I have is 4/12/2011, but that is coming up pretty fast and will probably get pushed back for the fourth time. Pretty bad service for a company of Sony's reputation. Has anyone received on of these lately? If they are not available, it should be removed from their site for sale or at least state "Coming Soon". Even the prebuilt versions state that they are out of stock with estimated ship date of 4/26/2011. Anyone know of a notebook with similar specs (light with decent video card) that is actually available?

 

I order mine on 8/3 and still not delivered (netherlands) ... It takes them ages. But I saw one in a shop today and it look very decent, looking forwards to receive mine.

 

Just because I said I don't necessarily need it doesn't mean I am not going to use it now that I have one.

Light isn't exactly on the top of my list of priorities in a new laptop, for me it's just a bonus. I definitely looked at the Toshiba R835, but when you add in the i5 processor your looking at a price which is less $100 less than the Sony SB. IMO the Sony is a much nicer looking machine and looks to be very well put together.

If the SB hadn't been made the Toshiba would more than likely have been my choice as it is a very nice and very light laptop. With the Lenovo X220, I have never really been a fan of their styling, even though it is a top notch laptop, but would definitely recommend it to someone.

Pretty much the SB hit all the important points on my list: Powerful. thin, great looking, price, etc. which is why I chose it.

 

My order says it is complete!! Woohoo!!

It took a while to work my way though the Sony website.

Looks like Anonymous is doing a pretty good job of slowing it down to a crawl and messing up the links!

Anyway, hopefully my laptop will ship tomorrow and I get it by Wednesday!!

 

Anyone having problems with the screen hinge blocking the air vent while gaming?

 

The screen hinge has a similar design to it as the MacBook Pro line. Actually it has more air flow compared to every one of them. If you go and take a look at them you can barely see the vents as the entire thing is covered up by the hinge, unlike the Sony where only the top part looks like it is blocked. The hinge on tw Sony, even though it looks like it is blocking the vent, is designed to allow to allow air flow through, just like the MBP. I had a lengthly discussion with one of the TA's and came away fully satisfied that it will more than get the job done. I'm sure there will be some heat yes, but it will allow plenty enough of cooling. Obviously they wouldn't have gone with the design if it hadn't.

 

Thanks for addressing my concern. Can't login to Sonystyle, but my estimated shipping was April 12th, can't wait to get it!

i7 6630 white, ordered 4 gb ram and a 128gb SSD intel 320

 

Nice config! We both have the same estimated date. Today mine changed to "Complete" sweet! So hopefully it will ship out to me tomorrow. I ordered it with the expedited shipping so hopefully if everything pans out I can have it by Wednesday.

Yours probably will be the same. Sony's site seem to be a little easier to get around on now so you can hopefully check it out.

Can't wait to finally get it, it has definitely been a long time coming! Just waiting for the CTO to return was a PIA! I'm also looking forward to looking everything over. I'll definitely post up a review once I get it and try and go over all the basics and more as well as everyones questions/concerns.

 

Played some homefront, arkham asylum and episodes from liberty city this weekend (all single player) it handled all three fine (GTA required me to turn shadows to low) though the fan ran pretty loudly. I had GPU-Z running in the background logging temps on arkham and it hit a max of 91degrees.

 

Is this with the 6470 or the 6630?

 

The 6630m. Also, ran GTA again with GPU-Z logging temps and I hit a max of 93 degrees.

 

notebookcheck just posted SB review.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Sony-Vaio-VPC-SB1Z9EB-Subnotebook.51214.0.html

They generally liked it. Very good battery life, no major heat issues, very good performance etc.


Exactly my thought regarding the lousy build quality and screen:

"The silver plastic interior proves to be fingerprint resistant and has a fairly good grip. The work surface isn't as solid as a rock over its entire width while typing. We can dent the key field evidently with medium pressure. If you put value on a perfectly stiff base unit, you'll be disappointed by the Vaio SB. The area around the optical drive yields, respectively bends, obviously (standard model). In view of quality, leaving out the optical drive would definitely have been a good idea."


"We determine a contrast of 138:1 with a weak black value of 1.85 cd/m2. Higher contrasts equal bright, fresh colors. Colors look pallid and bleached. The color spectrum can't even be called that as the measurement with the colorimeter, X-Rite i1Display, illustrates."

"a bright, semi anti-reflective display. The latter is nevertheless not a high-quality, true color TFT as we experienced in the Vaio Z13. The extremely low contrast and pale colors won't lure any pro DSE worker from the woodwork

 

Hmm... wasn't the palmrest supposed to be aluminium? Here it says it is just plastic... plastic that bends.

 

I guess they made a typo. I have to give them due though, when you have sony z, macbooks etc. with solid aluminium palmrests, it is really hard to call SB's flexy palmrest aluminium.

 

The problem is that, as far as I know, aluminium doesn't flex... it bends.
Can any user that has the SB confirm it's aluminium or is it really plastic?

 

hi guys i was about to pull the trigger on the C series until i saw the SB.

one thing i was wondering about.

the battery. its not removable as easily like other notebooks and should i worry about overcharging it, since i do mostly work at my desk with this.
for my notebooks when i had it plugged in, i took it out whenever i noticed that the battery was charged.

 

why wouldn't it flex ? Every metal will flex until some point then it will start bending.

search for young's modulus

 

Just got my email confirming shipment of my CTO SB. I got free expedited shipping with my order so I should be receiving my new laptop by the 14th. So EXCITED!

 

You only have to remove the back cover and then you can remove it. Indeed a bit more work than other laptops, but at least t's possible.

 

The palmrest is very clearly metal, I really don't see how a reviewer could mistake it for plastic.

The keyboard will flex slightly but only when you apply considerable force. There is no flex under normal usage.

 

Darn Sony cancelled my order from March 11 for no reason. They tell me their system screwed up. A month of waiting for nothing. I have been buying Sonys for years. They appear to be having major problems. Their products right now seem questionable. I don't know what is going on with them, but I hope they get their act together someday. Acer TimelineX looks better everyday.

 

do Li-Poly batteries degrade less over time as compared to Li-Ions? Nice that I can take it out, but I don't wanna take it out all the time when it is charged and putit back on again.

 

paying $1000+ more gets you a better screen...shocking news.

 

what were the SB specs you ordered? are you the unites states? canada? overseas? anything out of the ordinary happened when you ordered (i.e. unrealistic pricing, website glitches, pre-order, etc?)

 

I'll hazard a guess. The Canadian CTO price just changed from $999.99 for the 2410+6630 to $1049.99. This is because the 2410+6470 in-store is $999.99, so they had made a mistake. The better graphics card is usually either a $50 or $100 dollar upgrade from the base model so I knew something was wrong and I had thought that they would change it eventually.

Also, the shipping date is now unknown.

 

and they've also finally consolidated all the different SB, SB CTO, SC models into one S page. last week the SB CTO was under the previous gen S page

 

Hi guys, I was planning to buy Toshiba Portege R835-P56X but I have read somewhere that it has poor wireless range capabilities and then I came across Sony's Series S laptops. It has more or less, the same specs but I haven't really came across any reviews on this laptop regarding its wireless capabilities. Can you guys comment on that?

Also, I was wondering what is the difference between SA, SB, SC and SD. Thanks!

 

if the R835 is at all any similar to the R700 it is replacing (which it looks like it is), then stay away from it. or at least go to the microsoft store first and try it out before spending your cash. i cannot speak about it's wireless range (it seemed fine for me) but that machine is just poorly built and i was not impressed, imo.

 

you have a misconception about charging. It automatically switches off when the battery is fully charged, so you cannot overcharge it.

 

I really interested to buy sony vaio sb but when i go sony centre and check the rev, it still b2 stepping and REV_04.

is sony still using old chipset but with fixed? if fixed, y still show b2 rev chipset?

 

Why is it taking forever for people to review the SB?

 

From what I've heard, not first hand, they've improved the cooling significantly. I haven't bothered looking at the tests though since I wasn't interested.

 

Nothing out of the ordinary with my order...it was CTO. PayPal says it was Sony's fault. Sony says it was PalPal's fault. Either way, they are pointing fingers at one another and but I still have to start over with a new order. With all the hassles I have had with this product and the continuously changing specs since March 11...as well as the poor display, I am seriously leaning towards other companies. I have seen the SB display in the Sony store and it is poor...dull colors and horrible viewing angles. I can't see how the Acer Timeline could have a worse display.

 

I am planning to let a relative of mine buy it in the US. Do you guys know which stores is it available? Thanks!

 

Most screenshots I've seen are showing B2, REV 09. From what I've read, it seems that this is more a bios issue than anything. They just haven't updated the software to reflect the new stepping. From one of the threads on the Alienware forum, looks like the m17R3 has the same problem but when someone took apart their computer, it shows the updated chipset on there. So SB should be ok.

 

Does anyone of you still have the link with the teardown-PDF? The search doesn't work for me and I already went through the whole thread. No luck

P.S. Nevermind, I found the file in my cache
Here's the link once more:
http://www.nutral.net/images/inside.pdf

 

Of course, that's true, but that won't change the fact that its life expectancy will decrease since it's used at a higher temperature.

 

I looked at an R835-p50x, it was $750 (with an I3 Sandy Bridge processor) at Best Buy. Everything seemed fine until I tried out the speakers, I was literally about to buy it for my mom. The speakers were so bad that my cellphones' (Samsung Fascinate and iPhone 4) speakers were about the same volume at max. It may have just been that unit, but when asking an employee if that was the norm, he said that's about what you'll see on the portege models.