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

Vaio S measurements

Depth Main Unit (mm) 228.5

Height Main Unit (mm) 27.6

Width Main Unit (mm) 329

Vaio SB measurements

Depth Main Unit (mm) 224.5

Height Main Unit (mm) 23.9

Width Main Unit (mm) 331

Vaio Z measurements

Depth Main Unit (mm) 210.82

Height Main Unit (mm) 33.02

Width Main Unit (mm) 314.96

 

That's quite obvious, the Vaio Z has got a 13. 1" display.

 

I've tried my Asia Pacific model SB19 with two different sets of 3.5mm jack combo mic/headphones (i.e the ones bundled with my iphone and blackberry). The headphones worked but not the mic for both. The early reviews of the SB referred to the jack being a combo headphone/mic jack but the manual says headphones only and I haven't found anyone online who's reported the mic working.

I've now resorted to using a USB headphone/mic adaptor which works but bulkier to carry around.

Has anyone out there managed to get this jack to work?

 

Tried the mike, you are right, this is a regular headphone jack, no mike. im actually considering returning the SB unit and holding off till SA comes out.
1. i am not a big fan of the monitor they've used
2. i went with the i7 processor to get the better gpu, but clearly the battery life suffered greatly, so my hope is that in SA version i'll be able to get the i5 with the higher end gpu
frankly these are my biggest concerns also i've noticed that power jack wiggles quite a bit which could be a potential problem in the future.

any thoughts?

 

thank you and all that are answering this, seems we should have a little chat with Sony about wrong advertising.

why don't you limit the CPU to say 60-80% use? you'll get the same battery life as the i5 version if you do your math right

 

Yeah, thats the only reason I would want it, preloaded drivers

 

yes, this is completely wrong. The i7 is a higher binned processor, that can sustain higher clocks with the same power consumption. So no difference in battery life.


btw how long does the battery lasts? and were you on speed mode all the time? What was the usage?

 

anyone having issues with windows update not working?it keeps telling me that its not running and needs a restart

 

nm fixed it by googling the issue

Deleting c:\windows\softwaredistribution\datastore\logs\edb.log

Restart and try...

 

I was checking out what other countries offer in the VAIO SB. I noticed that you can get a gray, blue or a pink SB. In Canada for example there is no tie in for getting a ATI 6630 which is awesome.

If you do get an SB CTO in the States do you get a fingerprint reader?

 

no they can't.

you can get the 6630 in Canada. not only that but also all the colors just not the fingerprint reader.

here you go (click "Available options"):
Sony Canada

 

Thanks guys! I do have a slight regret that I didn't spec the 6630 graphics, I went for the cheaper one - wish I'd just paid the £60 extra. It struggles to run GTA IV a little.

Apparently it's a last generation Macbook (not Pro) 13, which had the unibody chassis. It's about 2 years old I think.

 

Has anybody bought the pink one?

 

battery life is weak: with gpu off brightness about 50% and in power saving mode selection it lasted 3.5 hours.
I ran winamp streaming radio with visualization running full screen. now i know this might be pushing the "ordinary usage" bounds but i've checked CPU usage was in high teens so not even close to stress testing...

 

Hi guys, so any thoughts on holding off till SA comes out? i'm looking for pro's and cons (besides for waiting longer ) for example would there be a significant weight difference, better screen, battery life performance etc? i was trying to find specs for SA seems like casing might be lighter and sturdier, anything else?

Thanks!

 

are you sure it was on stamina? thus being the 6630 off?

and let me guess you were busting up your mp3 at 100% sound on the speakers?

how many battery cycles have you gone through?
(battery cycle = charge it full then use it until it reaches 0%)

 

I've seen it in store if that counts. It's very pink... Since I'm a dude it may not surprise you that I wouldn't go for it, but I think the classiness of the SB would go better with a black or a white (I have yet to see the white in person).

 

i was on my 8th battery cycle (cycles were performed with extended battery so i would charge both of them to 100% and then discharge till 5%). speakers off as i did not want to include speaker consumption into battery life. yes, GPU was off.

 

were you on speed mode? because those figures were way off, from what people have been getting. They got close to 6h doing the usual stuff, wi fi on, surfing the web, editing docs...

The difference is basically, a carbon fiber shell (basically plastic with some carbon fiber slap on it), the weight reduction is something close to 100-200g

and yes the screen is going to be 1600*900, however the quality of it we dont know yet

 

Whats the release date for the Carbon Fiber One?

 

Thanks MM, i think the screen quality in SB is the biggest drawback, as most expert reviews pointed out colors are quite off and blacks are crappy.

no as i've stated before gpu was off i.e. Stamina mode - i hope i did not get a defective battery. I think i'll continue running the battery through another couple of cycles, if the battery life does not improve i'll return it and will hold off till SA comes out....

 

hmm.. that does not look good. i'm getting the i7 too so this worries me.

are you saying 3,5h with both battery's?
all the reviews got 3,5h of the standard battery on the i5 2410+6470 on "heavy" load. even if the i7 was eating more it's impossible it would be that much more, i'm assuming its 3,5h on the standard battery alone and it's still not right, i'm guessing somewhere around >4h at least if not 5h...

 

not at all, if you read my post carefully, I said cycling was done with both batteries (i've pointed that out as i am not sure whether this would have any affect on the procedure. battery testing was done using standard battery only

 

here are the specs of the laptop i got. did not order additional ram or SSD as i'm going to perform these upgrades myself. by the way newegg is having a great sale on SSDs: Newegg.com - Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

as you can see ordering these 2 SSDs yourself will save you 400$ over what sony will charge you. just an FYI

 

you ordered just like me xD and i'm planing on getting the extra 4Gb ram and the SSD too..

yeah i figured as much, but it should go to 4-5h and not 3 and a half on light load... can you test how much you get in speed mode on some heavy stuff? games or whatnot.. because from what it seems you'd get what? 2h? 1,5h? =/


PS: in my country for that SSD they'd charge me $280~$290 more or less.mind as well give a little more and get a G3 one...

 

I will, give me a couple of days as I would like to run a couple of more cycles on both batteries. however i do believe that SSD should provide another hour of battery life as i noticed HD is being used quite a bit (may be for page file as i only have 4gb of ram) but i dont really have that much stuff running in the background so thats questionable.

honestly i dont believe any laptop will deliver you over 4 hours of battery life with heavy usage, especially with i7. also does anyone know whether CPU usage with new i7 incorporates usage for gpu processing?

 

as for battery cycles, i am charging both batteries and then draining them under heavy usage, would this have any affect on my battery performance?

 

Ahhhh, I think I got what is going on, you said your test was using winamp with the visualization skin open, so that is equal to playing music and watching a video, so watching videos always consume more battery.

btw the difference in battery life should not be that great, something close to half hour should be expected

 

agreed, the test is a bit more intensive than what would usually constitute a "regular usage" and should result in battery life by about 1h-30min shorter than advertized but that again would get me nowhere close to 7hours... thats why i was so disappointed. i would be very content with a result of around 5h for this test given that i've also bought the extended battery should have been over 10h total. but i'm nowhere close there...

 

you get 1-2h less from the usage that i described to you, surfing the web, and editing docs, when doing more intensive stuff that need more cpu power like watching videos the battery will be less

Im getting interested in this notebook again, since one of my hinges just broke, and I already need to replace my keyboard

 

hmm any programs that would run this type of simulation? i.e. simulate surfing the web? realistically speaking winamp streaming radio should put a similar strain on wifi while visualization simulates cpu usage in low to high teens. to me this looks like average laptop usage.

 

hey guys im having a problem with my speed/stamina. i'm in speed right now, but when i try to switch to stamina, it keeps saying i need to close all programs for it to switch. i did that, and it won't fully switch over. help please?

 

there is the famous battery eater, not the very reliable kind of thing.

I would still, do what you do with your laptop. this is your best test.

I rarely watch videos on the interwebs, however Im always on in forums, flash disabled, and other blockers enabled.

Some other usages would be visual studio 2010 and c++ builder, writing docs and editing panels. Thats my usage under battery, running VMs is when plugged in.

So probably no other test right there would give me THE or even a good estimate.

 

fair enough, judging the description of your usage, your build will differ from mine quite significantly. i dont think you would require the i7 nor the upgraded gpu (honestly i dont see any benefit from 6470M as it wount provide anything further than what intel has already built into the cpu but thats IMHO). so with SSD i think you will squeeze all 7 hours out of this baby quite easily

 

obviously something is still accessing your drivers. if you dont know what it is, the most basic solution is restarting and then switching over to stamina. so far i have not experience anything like what you've described.

 

done that multiple times. even when i restart i put it to stamina, and when windows logs on, it says it will switch over, etc but that message saying to close all programs still appears

 

two things,
1 update your bios (i think there was an update if you got your laptop early)
2 there could be some program starting up with OS that starts using your graphics driver (frankly have not seen them myself)

i would recommend using "hijack this" its a great tool to view what programs boot up with your OS and to get rid of any superfluous ones.

 

i got my lapto yesterday, so it should be the current bios.

 

i found out wat was wrong. i disabled some stuff i thought was useless in msconfig. only tinkered with startup items this time and it works now

 

Mine has R1030H4 bios and I just got it yesterday. I am having no issues with my switch, but the fan is becoming a major annoyance to me. Just loading a page with flash on it and you can hear the fan step up a couple notches, 2nd tab with flash you get a little more noise. Click an icon on the desktop, get more noise. The fan changes so often and is clearly audible. I am using the SSD so I have no HDD to drown out the lower end fan noises.

 

I am seriously about to break some face if this fan doesn't stop going up and down every 5 seconds. All I am doing is downloading a file... how do I know if I have the updated BIOS?

Also I am REALLY disappointed with the blacks and vertical viewing angles. I don't even expect perfect because it's a laptop after all. I use IPS panels on my desktop, but my 3 year old MBP is putting this thing to shame. My last trip to the apple store made my MBP screen look like too, yet still way better than this VAIO.

 

i'm having no issue with the screen/fan personally. its just the vaio crapware i have to get used to.

 

The fan issue is... slightly better... when I turn on power saving mode. The stamina - balanced mode messes with the fan for me. Even Speed mode was quieter.

 

on balanced its quieter lol and speed i had no issue except when i was playing 1080p vids and even then the fan was quiet imo

 

The only thing I am happy with so far is how light and thin it is. My 15" MBP feels like a battle tank now. Also like the boot speed. The windows logo doesn't even finish building before I am staring at the desktop with this SSD installed. Faster boot than my desktop with the C300 by far. Plus no annoying boot screens and SATA 3 checks like the desktop. I would say its about 10-15 secs power button to responsive desktop.

The main things I am disliking so far is the fan noise/spikes up and down, screen vertical angles (only on blacks really), loose power port, and I can't leave the lid almost closed. I commonly lower the lid on my laptop really close to closing, but not to put it to sleep when working on my monitor behind it. This SB the lid closes itself if its less than like a 25degree angle open.

 

you got the latest bios, i've checked sony's website for any updates...
you said you got another monitor plugged in, did you notice any jittering on the external monitor? i've updated all the drivers and cant get rid of the f*ing jittering, its quite disturbing and noticeable. also are you using VGA or HDMI? i've notices some improvement when using HDMI but not 100%

 

Oh, sorry if that was confusing. I had my laptop on my desk infront of my desktop dual display. I was referring to lowering the vaio lid to see my desktops monitor behind it. I haven't tried the external display ports.