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

anyone got any idea if any OBHD for SB series has been released??

thnx

 

i would take it out, if there was an enclosure to close the gaping hole, best if there was an option to have an external one, i (as i would assume a lot of other people as well) rarely use ODD and would prefer to have an eternal one for those occasions. this would take some more weight out of the laptop while adding some space.

i agree there is a 100% several types of screens going around. mine is definitely not as terrible as some people describe on the discussion boards.

 

I played with one at bby the day after I got my SB and I would take the SB over the toshiba imo.

 

For a quick and easy solution you can always use a 2nd hard caddy, ie you take out the DVD drive and replace it with a caddy containing your 2nd SSD, (this is what I've done with my DELL laptop to add another hard drive) so if you can live without having a DVD drive in your laptop, then this might be a solution to your problem. But I don't know how much performance you'll sacrifice doing it this way.

You can get one from eBay or from:
NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

BTW
This solution has been discussed previously in this thread; which is how I learned about the newmodeus site, I guess they customize the caddy so it won't look out of place, but if you're not worried about the aesthetics you can find caddies on eBay for less than you'd pay at newmodeus, currently I don't think newmodeus has one available for the SB.

 

Hi everyone.
I'm going to buy a SB, but I have some problem. Because I' m living in Vietnam, so the Sony just sale 2 models core i5 and core i7 but there is no SSD. I also ask for customize the SB but they refused. Now I want to ask if i buy a SSD and how can I install the data from the factory HDD to the SSD? In my experience, Sony Vaio have the program that called Vaio Care, etc. So could any one tell me how to transfer those programs to the SDD. In addition, If any one have use the SSD before, could you please suggest what brand is best for the SB?
Thank you very much for all of your advices.

 

newmodeus is making a caddy for the VAIO SB.. if you want it just wait a couple of months..
if all goes well i am going to buy a caddy which will than get the ODD's plate so it will maintain the same beauty the SB had before the caddy.

 

Aha, pretty cool, now how would this work with SATA III? my guess is that ODD is not connected with high speed SATA III which means running RAID on it will be either impossible or will result in a significant loss of performance. but the idea is definitely very cool

 

X220 would be my second choice. I don't think anybody would call a thinkpad "sleek" even if it only had one clicker, but the trackpoint is awesome; I think at least 90% who get accustomed to it would prefer it to a trackpad.

 

what a freaken pain: i'm trying to shrink my original drive on SB to under 110gb so i can take an image of it and mount it onto SSD, but for some reason i cant get it to go below 130gb! this is going to drive me passed the point of no return lol

 

It's the same reason I decided to buy one too.

Mine is on the way, so I'm guessing you upgraded something that I didn't choose to upgrade and there is a shortage of what they need to complete your order.

I upgraded to the i7, to the ATI 6630 and added the sheet battery, so this is how my system is spec'd at sonystyle

Customization Details

13.3" VAIO Display with LED backlight (1366 x 768)
Large Capacity Sheet Battery
500 GB Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
No Fresh Start
Norton Internet Security™ 2010 (30 day subscription)
Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (32-bit)
AMD Radeon™ HD 6630M (1GB VRAM) hybrid graphics with Intel® Wireless Display technology
Intel® Core™ i7-2620M processor (2.70GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.40GHz
CD/DVD Player / Burner
Adobe Bundle(Free - $448 value)
Bolt Black
Microsoft Windows® 7 Home Premium
4GB (4GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1333

The only thing I wished I'd chosen differently is the colour, from what I had been reading and from what pictures I've seen, I think I'd like the blue (purple) colour. But since my VAIO is on the way, maybe black is the better choice.

 

dsadak the ODD is SATA2 but the HDD port is SATA3, so you should get the SSD into the HDD tray, and the HDD to the caddy.
plus it will give you a better heat management than leaving the other way around.

also you can buy an Intel 320 160Gb SSD for the price of the Intel 510 120Gb/OCZ Vertex3 120Gb so it should relieve you of the >130Gb problem.

 

yeh, i thought of this layout as well. plus you would get the benefit of disconnecting the HDD to save the batter if you dont need it. however my original intention was to run raid 0 on 2 SSD drives which i dont think would be an option in this set up

 

i wouldn't recommend RAID0 SSD's... really. you're better off with a bigger SSD. will be faster and more reliable. also it's actually cheaper than 2 1,8'' SSD's.

why would you want RAID0 SSD's anyway? the only valid reason i can remember is already owning the SSD's in question, but then again it doesn't matter because:

Sony only makes one SATA3 port in the hdd tray.
Only models which Sony sell's with RAID0 SSD's come with 2 SATA3 ports on the hdd tray.

 

There are:

acer 3830tg
MBP 13''
R835
Thinkpad X1 (might come out in a few months)
The new 2560p and 2570p (hp elitebooks)
There is the Dell, something something ones (the latitude line)
Samsung 8 (or something like that, it was a 13'' not the 9 with the ulv cpu)
Asus U36, U31 are now with SB (beware to check it before you buy)
Those are as far as I can remember, but the SA with the gpu (6630m) is an extremely good balanced proposition too bad that there are so many quirks with you.

BTW the post wasnt meant to offend, but simply to state that you are not happy with it, you are only going to be more unhappy with as time goes buy, and apparently you use it for work so... get the one you like.

 

To close the gapping hole, simply get the faceplate from the ODD, and slap it on the caddy simple as that

no need to wait, just get any one and it will work (notable exceptions ultrabay, dell copy of the ultrabay)

 

Burn the recovery DVDs, install the recovery DVDs in the new drive. You are ready to go.

Best SSDs out there currently, by controllers:

Marvel: Crucial (C300, C400, M4), intel 510
Intel: 320, xm 25 g2, some A data models, and some kingston models
Toshiba: Samsung 470, some kingston models.

What you are not supposed or even allowed to get:

Sandforce: pretty much any offering from, OCZ, Corsair, mushkin, and several other companies.

The new ones, still have the hang up problems due to the lack of cache memory.

 

i know but newmodeus is making a caddy with a faceplate that mimics the SB ODD's one..

i'm gonna buy at a local store the caddy,too troublesome to buy on amazon.co.uk or something.. US is really a great place to buy hardware and compute related stuff

 

I would still get he faceplate from the ODD, since it will work anyway, newmodeus caddys are more expansive than a simple ebay one

 

I work at a fairly decent sized company that has insane numbers of thinkpads and more recent Dell's now (probably due to budgeting). So I have played with the trackpoints quite a bit and I can definitely use them, it's just the fact that its there and also has its own set of buttons below the KB. Just gives a clustered look to me.

My SB's ODD plate is not even matching the frame anyway lol. It's like grayish and the chassis is black.

From what I have heard acer build sucks.
MBP 13" is getting on the heavy side and at that point think I would go Air if I went mac again.
The toshiba I didn't care for at bby, just seemed bleh.
Elitebooks are battle tanks.
The new dells don't get comparable battery life.
Might check into the samsung 8, only heard of the 9 so far.
The U36 SB option is another avenue I might check out.
The Z is just roflexpensive imo.

Of those I might check out, usually they have glossy screens and would have to find a filter that fit really good and even then it would still be a hassle replacing it when they went bad etc. Might just suck it up at buy another 15" MBP with anti-glare option to get the ultimate horsepower in a tiny package.

 

Mr MM mentioned a few above. I also really don't like the look of Lenovo's, but that new X1 looks really sleek! If you end up going the MBA route, they will be upgrading to Sandy Bridge next month, so I would obviously hold off until then. Honestly there really isn't very many fully comparable laptops out there right now, and really there aren't any. If your not liking some of the SB aspects I would fully advise against going Acer/Asus, I have had many of them in the past few years and they make the SB look like a million dollar notebook! When the MBA upgrades to Sandy Bridge, they will only have integrated graphics, so if that's an issue..

It's a nice laptop, but I wouldn't consider it in the same ballpark as the SB. The build is more mainstream that the SB is, and it obviously only has integrated graphics. The SB is way nicer and much better equipped IMO.

 

You might want to make sure that you have no wake up timers or scheduled tasks before you take any drastic action, could be something to do with that. Otherwise not good, see what Sony have to say about it.

 

I was told we should hear from them today or tomorrow regarding whats happening with the shipping, but they've been saying stuff like this for awhile so I don't know how much merit it has

 

One of my friends has a VAIO and hers does the same thing, I assumed that it was some sort of automatic updater but I'm not really sure.

 

Yes, I'm not sure either, just may be worth looking into though. I don't have my SB yet so I can't check, but many laptops have a BIOS option to "disable wake up timers" or similar.

 

it is your pc going from sleep into hibernate. it needs some time to copy contents of your memory to your hard drive. depending on the size of your memory and the speed of your hard drive, it might take a while. if that bothers your, you can go into your power options and disable hibernate option for whatever power plan your are using.

 

anybody know if you can swap in an extra battery in the optical drive slot? don't really have use for a dvd drive

 

Sounds about right!

 

no there arent the necessary connectors

 

Yeah mine is specced exactly the same, except with 6GB RAM. Are you in Canada as well? I'm leaving the country in a few weeks as well, could be problematic if they take much longer haha

 

I really doubt they'll be longer than a few weeks, at least I really hope not. I'm expecting they'll be here late this week or early next week. But then again, I've been wrong before

I'll post back when I get an update on what's going on !

 

Can't beat a MBA in weight and rigidity. Also the screens are better than **MY** SB maybe not everyone's and is higher res at 1440x900. I am a follower of Macrumors so I have seen the SB rumors and would most likely wait for that. The integrated graphics would probably be ok enough for my casual gaming uses on the go. Can't really say the SB is better equipped is a fair statement given the MBA came out in october? and is lighter/thinner, they are basically two different classes of computers. I do agree however on your statements about acer being way behind Sony. My SB is certainly a fine windows based machine as a whole, just has a few things that trigger my pet peeves.

This makes sense because it does usually say resuming windows a lot after it has sat a while. However, that is the DUMBEST default option EVER. It takes 20 seconds to "resume" windows for me and about 15 to boot it fresh. The windows logo doesn't finishing building on boot with my SSD. Using the SSD and 8GB of RAM I would think it would go to hibernate faster than the average 1 minute it runs with the lid closed. I just disabled hibernate, but don't know if I will notice it again if I end up returning it this weekend.

 

For anyone curious about battery life I thought I would post an update.

Using the slice right now I have had the laptop in "hibernate" from 8am until noon and it woke up with 100% battery around noon. I have since used it for 2 hours and 45 minutes with 82% battery left (slice 64%, internal 100%) and it is estimating 12 hours left. This is with school use sitting in a classroom with the laptop being used every couple minutes to type a couple lines of notes. So it appears 13-15 hours is possible during extreme light use and my brightness is between 50-75% most of the time. When I start clicking a few webpages the estimate drops to 7-8 hours on top of the 3 hours of use it has already. This is also under stamina mode with power saver selected in power plan.

 

nope nada nothing

 

I tried emailing Sony to get an update on my order, but I did not get any reply yet; I guess they don't reply to emails.

I tried calling as well, but didn't know which option I was supposed to press to get the correct person to speak to; not that it matters, as some of you who called seem to be getting incorrect information anyways.

Estimate for new SB CTO is now May 9; I wonder if my 3 week old order will arrive by then.

 

Yes I am in Canada

 

Just completed the trifecta of internet speed improvements!

1. Completely rewire coax throughout house with direct connection to outside.
I had one of the Charter technicians come out to the house the other day to figure out why I was having issues with my internet. Basically, the cable connecting the house to the grid was almost entirely chewed through. Amazing that I could even get TV let alone surf the web! After exchanging that the guy went way above and beyond what would normally be done and pretty much completely reroute all the cables throughout the house as well as install power conditioners. Spent about 4.5 hours doing everything! Simply amazing, as the other guys who have come out would pretty much do nothing and leave as soon as they could, and I'm sure you guys have experienced that as well.

2. Get new Docsis 3.0 modem. Went with the Motorolla Surfboard extreme (SB6120), got it at a awesome price. And holy $hit is it fast! HUGE difference!

3. Upgraded my wifi card in the SB to the Intel Centrino Advanced-N pcie card, as mentioned before.

Now, everything is almost instant! When I load up the forum, which used to take atleast 10 seconds to fully load with all the pictures, now takes less than a second! If your tired of your slow internet I highly recommend these additions as it has made an amazing improvement, much more than I expected. Netflix HD, no problems at all, haven't seen the bar load that fast ever. Also, this is on a platter HDD.

 

Its option 1, 1, 3, 1 - I've called quite a few times

 

I have my Corsair 128GB SSD coming in tomorrow. It's a Refurb I picked up from Fry's for $140 that will be coming back from Corsair since the first one was DOA (only took a week from them getting it to me receiving the replacement BTW). It will be interesting to see what kind of speed improvements the Corsair offers over the Momentus XT Hybrid HDD. I have a feeling I will definitely be happy with the Corsair, 270/195 transfer rates.

Crucial just released their C300 update today, the M4, with upgraded specs. I'm going to see how the performance of the Corsair is before considering to upgrade to a SATA III SSD, due to the price difference in what I paid for mine.

 

I found 2 reviews on the SB that included battery runtimes. They both are on VAIOs equipped with the 6470 video card.

This first one says that you get 3 hrs 19 mins with the SB under heavy load, and 6 hrs 5 mins under light load.

The second one says the VAIO has a rundown time for blu-ray viewing at 3 hrs 57 mins and a light reading rundown time of 8 hrs 40 mins with a recharge time of 2 hrs 47 mins.

The first review is an introductory review of the VAIO SB (Australia) while the second one is a review in which they have examined it from top to bottom and have done a bunch of different tests on the VAIO SB (Europe).

Sony Sony VAIO SB Series (VPCSB16FG) - reviews - Notebooks - All Purpose - PC World Australia

Review Sony Vaio VPC-SB1Z9EB Subnotebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

Hi all. I've been lurking and finally pulled the trigger on a new SB. My specs are as follows:
Product: US-VPCSB190X-LBOM
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ Player
Component: Large Capacity Sheet Battery
Component: AMD Radeon™ HD 6630M (1GB VRAM) hybrid graphics with Intel® Wireless Display technology
Component: No Fresh Start
Component: Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30 Day Trial)
Component: Adobe Bundle (Free - $448 value)
Component: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-2620M processor (2.70GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.40GHz
Component: 500GB Hard Drive (7200rpm)
Component: Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (Click More Info for details.)
Component: Black
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Component: 13.3" VAIO Display with LED backlight (1366 x 768)

Loving the new computer. My old laptop was an SZ. Couple key differences I've noticed
1. Hinge on old SZ was held on the sides. On the new SB hinge is directly in the middle. Definitely doesnt feel as secure as the old side hinges on SZ.
2. Stamina/Power button doesnt require a restart on SB vs. SZ.
3. Light sensor is located right next to the Stamina/Power button. Takes about 2 seconds to kick keyboard lights up.
4. Case on the SB is a definite fingerprint magnet, more so than the old SZ.
5. There is a dedicated eject button for the DVD drive on the SB vs the old eject button directly on the DVD drive on the SZ.
6. DVD drive located on the left side. USB/hdmi/sd card/memory card slots located on the right..
7. webcam is run by arcsoft. tested it on windows live messenger and looks nice. there is a built in microphone but havent been able to locate it
8. slice battery is great.

Thats all i can think of right now. no dead pixels thank goodness and really loving the speed of this machine. already installed bioshock 2 and it runs perfectly on med settings. got a thermaltake laptop cooler and ordered a new logitech anywhere mouse.

oh one more thing
1. my old bluetooth mouse (kensington) loses connection quite often. Im guessing it is interference from 2.4 wireless modem. hence my switch to a newer logitech mouse.

 

Product: US-VPCSB190X-LBOM
Component: Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30 Day Trial)
Component: No Engraving
Component: CD/DVD Player / Burner
Component: Standard capacity battery
Component: AMD Radeon™ HD 6630M (1GB VRAM) hybrid graphics with Intel® Wireless Display technology
Component: Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (Click More Info for details.)
Component: No Fresh Start
Component: 4GB (4GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-2620M processor (2.70GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.40GHz
Component: 320GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
Component: Adobe Bundle (Free - $448 value)
Component: Black
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Component: 13.3" VAIO Display with LED backlight (1366 x 768)
Per Unit Price: $1,142.99
Quantity: 1
Total Price: $1,142.99
Description: VPCSB190X Configure-to-Order
Ship Method: Expedited
Estimated Ship Date: 05/09/2011
Extended Service Plan: 2 Year Express Ship Service Plan for Laptops
Price: $112.49

Finally pulled the trigger on the SB in the United States! I'm hoping for a good experience and a great laptop. I went to the sony style store to check it out today and I thought the computer had pretty decent quality. The screen was ok but I definitely can deal with it. Two questions for everyone here. It says May 9th expected ship date. For all the US CTO's how long do you usually have to wait for your computer and also this laptop can fit a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB right?!

 

Congrats!

Nice! I have the Momentus XT in my computer right now. Great hard drive, very fast as well! It will be replaced tomorrow with my Corsair SSD but I definitely like the added space in the XT. I will probably be putting it in the ODD caddy once it becomes available so I'll have the best of both.

 

I just wanted to add that I love Newegg! There isn't a better company out there!

I had a return that I needed to send back and forgot I should do it over the phone and ended up doing it online. The online RMA ended up charging me a restocking fee and doesn't give a return label to ship it back. All it took was a quick call to them and they fixed both the issues, hassle free.

I have used Newegg for as long as I can remember and will continue to do so, they simply are the best. Dealing with other companies can be a serious PIA, but they are super easy to work with, every time!

 

Is the SB easy to take apart to replace the HDD and also did you purchase in the US?

 

hmm i dont really use sleep mode, my PC did that out of hybernation...

 

im a bit confused about the pricing, i got the same laptop for 1400$ now for 1200$ its definitely worth the money!

 

It ended up to be $1330 but I have a student discount.

 

Yes I just got. The VAIO arrived in my city this morning, and I called FedEX and had them put it on hold, so I could pick it up at the depot (instead of waiting for it to be delivered) so I went to the FedEX depot and picked it up.

I guess it was iPad delivery day as there were 3 or 4 people picking up their iPad.

So now that I've unpacked everything, I'm just doing some preliminary stuff on it (updating windows, charging the slice battery, etc)

Initial impressions

Other than that little gap on the underside where the DVD drive sticks out a mm or two, the thing looks awesome.

I don't think that the noise from the fan is too loud.

The screen seems fine to me, I think the picture quality is good.

Anyway I'm going back to my setting up of the VAIO.

 

Will be receiving mine on may 3. so excited will post daily updates here.
waiting is driving me crazy -.- is there really a huge difference with installing
a new copy of windows and picking through the drivers rather than just uninstalling
the programs that you dont need? performance wise and capacity. Dont know
if i will just uninstall the prog that i dont need or give it a clean install. i think giving it a clean install is just troublesome :|
or will i really benefit from a clean install?
thanks!

 

Yes and yes. 2 screws for the bottom cover and 4 for the hard drive bracket, easy as it gets.