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

and this is the i7 version right? if so, now that seems about right.

 

Curse you, mine comes tomorrow! Can't wait, hope you have a better experience with it than some of the others here. Just curious, are you in the GTA, and if you are, where is the depot, in case I need to do the same?

 

for all who are on the market for an 256Gb or 128Gb SSD and in Europe:

Amazon.co.uk has the Crucial M4 128Gb at £190 or 210€ (Crucial site store too)

and the M4 256Gb is just around 410€!!! Intel 510 and OCZ Vertex3 are both more than 500€..

what's up with this? Crucial is puzzling, they have the same price for all the 3 Gen of SSD...

 

US $: $130 for a 64GB SSD; $250 for a 128GB SSD; $500 for a 256GB SSD; or $1000 for a 512GB SSD

Thats just Crucial's store, they will soon be at the rest of the retailers in the US for at least a small discount.

 

No I'm not in Ontario, I'm in Saskatchewan, and since I'm in Saskatchewan, the package arrived this morning from Winnipeg, so no I can't help you with where your FedEx depot is, but if you do call FedEx (1.800.GoFedEx 1.800.463.3339) to change it for them to hold the package, they'll tell you the address of your depot. If you call the FedEx number you'll be connected to an automated system, I told it to "reroute package to hold", it then connected me with a service rep (but I guess you could probably say "talk to service representative").

BTW: I got a surprise when I unpacked my VAIO. I think it's a good surprise.

 

what surprise?

 

now imagine the 128Gb was $190 instead of 250, you call that anything else but weird or a bargain?

in Amazon.co.uk the 128Gb was £280 and is now £190 but the 256Gb is £515 while on the Crucial store it's not even £400, you think that is normal too? well if we talk about Intel or OCZ you won't see that kind of discounts... i think this is quite too weird.. like what happened with the under-priced SB's a while back...

let me add that i am talking about the M4. the latest Gen SSDs are all around the same price £250 or 250€ for 128Gb and a bit more than £500 or 500€ for the 256Gb. that's the price of both the Intel 510 and OCZ Vertex3, so why would Crucial have an -100€ price at their store?


PS: Amazon.co.uk is selling out-of-stock, so i wonder if Crucial is really sending these to buyer's home in 2 days or something like they say...

 

Actually if I remember correctly crucial and intel produce what they use, and most of the chips 60% goes to crucial (if Im mistaken intel gets 60%), yes its normal for their prices to go on sale like that, they just did a great sale on the C300 in the US, 128gb was 200 bucks

 

Hi, a stupid question: If putting SSD into the HDD slot, do I need 2.5'' version? I think so, just that I don't have the laptop yet and would like to order it before getting it.

I've chosen Intel 320 120GB, do I need the BOX version? I mean I can get the slightly cheaper OEM version, without cables and some SW. Do I need these cables?

 

No, all you need is the actual drive. And yes, it's a 2.5 inch.

 

Of course it's fair. It's a fact. Would it be unfair to say that the SB is better equipped than a spectrum? I do agree with you though that comparing such different machines doesn't make much sense!

 

I'm also curious what the surprise is!

 

Thank you, +rep. I too am curious as to what the surprise is! No wonder you got yours earlier than I did...

 

I think the reason why the OCZ Vertex 3 series is mor expensive is becuase it is A LOT faster.

Crucial M4 is rated at 415mb/s Read and 260Mb/s Write,
As the OCZ Vertex 3 Is rated at 550Mb/s Read and 525Mb/s Write...

Thats a considerable difference in speed, worth the price difference IMO

Whenever i get paid so that i can order my SB I'm going to be getting a 240GB Vertex 3.
I've got a Vertex 2 in my desktop and it is AWESOME!


Also, Wonder what the surprise is...

Has anyone got there engraved with anything?

 

What and from where are you planning to transfer with such speeds? Or you just like big numbers to show your friends? 4k random is a much more useful metric to an actual user.

 

If i were to put in in my desktop it could probably achieve close to the "advertised" speeds when transferring between SSD's, however if I'm going to spend $500 on an SSD i may aswell get the one which is rated the fastest.

Also Could This Be the Upgrade to the Z series/ SC (The 2nd picture)

 

I had that same issue a couple of years ago, squirrels were using my line as a highway across the road and had destroyed the shielding. Caused water to get inside and freeze/unfreeze during the winter. I was able to get TV, but not Internet.

 

This is my 1st post using my new VAIO and I just wanted to save the surprise I got for this post.


So, anyway when I unpacked my VAIO, I saw something weird, and thought to myself that's not suppose to be there, so I looked again and lo and behold, my VAIO had a fingerprint reader.
There is no mention of it on the sonystyle site, some of the pics depict the SB with a fingerprint reader, while others show it without a fingerprint reader.

So, AFAIK the Canadian version wasn't suppose to have one of those things.

I then investigated some other things...

I looked at the headphone jack closely and it looked like it had more contacts on it than a normal headphone jack, so I dug out my ipod touch mic/earphone(which I never use, I just use normal earphones), and tried it on the jack and the microphone did work.

So the audio jack on my SB is audio in and out.

I went through the BIOS and I noticed that you can attach 4 hard drives to it, but how you would accompish that is beyond me.

I haven't gotten around to trying out the fingerprint reader, as I wanted to do some preliminary things on my new VAIO, update windows (ughhhhh it was a long process and required many reboots) create the restore discs, repartition the hard drive.

One last thing, I don't know if I'll get use to not having dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys (fn key and arrow key is taking me some time to get used to) but that's one of the tradeoffs you make when you get a 13.3" laptop.

 

I just got a call back from Sony Canada telling me my order will be shipped on the 29th. Based on the information from this thread, it sounds like they are not always correct, but I'm really hoping they are this time. At least they took the time to call me back, so I'm happy about their customer service so far.

 

Yeah just called them up (again haha) and the guy was pretty useless, but he was able to tell me that chances are I'll get an update by Friday on what's going on. He also said that the CTO SB's started shipping on the 25th, so it looks like we won't have too much longer to wait

 

Hi all. Have really found this site useful in making the decision to get the SB. I just have one more little question. Does the $1500 SB in the US have a fingerprint reader? And does the CTO in the US have a fingerprint reader as well?
Thanks

 

Hehe yea, in a perfect world...

Those numbers are purely for bragging. In the real world those numbers are nearly identical. Just check out any legitimate SSD review, such as AnAndTech, and you will see the actual real world numbers are nearly identical, and much closer than they want you to think.

 

That's not entirely accurate. You will need the cable and software if you want to clone the hard drive the easiest way possible so you have all your stock files. You won't if you plan on just installing from the recovery CD's though or if you plan on doing a clean install. You can get it from other places for cheaper depending if you need it and how much more the retail version is compared to the OEM.

 

No neither have one, it is not offered in the US unfortunately.

 

for all sony canada sb cto customers:

i just got a phone call from a live sony rep informing me that my sb is scheduled to ship Apr 29 from asia. i ordered this unit on apr 6 and its status has been stuck on "processing" since. tracking number will be assigned when the unit actually ships and my credit card will be charged then. it also seems like they will honor the massively discounted price i bought it at when sony canada website was experiencing pricing bugs. so far so good. i'll report back on friday with an update.

 

T-minus 30 minutes till I install my SSD.

So to anyone who actually knows computer related stuff, do I HAVE to include the small partition when cloning my HDD to SSD?

I will not be cloning the recovery partition but am not sure about the other one. I am pretty sure it has the system files in it and I need to include it but am obviously not 100% sure on this. Can someone help me out.

 

If you are talking about the ~100MB partition that windows makes than the answer is yes, windows keeps its bootloader there (as far as I remember). Good luck!

 

I wouldnt clone it. Either use the recovery DVD (and consequently use some software to expand the C drive) or do a clean install, it was posted sometime ago in here a guide for it.

I think we could use the 1st post as a mean to get all the guides together (its a simple matter of a mod creating a thread, them moving the posts from this thread to the new one, thus the first post would be from the mod, thus easier to get it updated.)

 

Yea, thats exactly what I thought, thanks!

Honestly, I would 100% rather clone it. It is WAY easier and I will have all my files and not have to deal with drivers, etc. I'm basically getting the benefits of a clean install, more hard drive space, without all the hassle. Plus, I actually use the included software, including Photoshop.

 

Like you, I am looking for a keyboard skin.

So I tried out a F1 series skin on my SB and it fit (except of course the F1 has a number keypad).

You can find a skin (clear) for F1 series on eBay, all you would have to do is trim off the extra part.

And then I looked at pictures of the keyboards on the different VAIOs available to see which ones had the same layout, and from the pictures I could find, it looks like the the new 14" CA uses the same keyboard layout.

I won't guarantee that it'll be the exact same layout and size, but my guess is that it is the same. So you could look for that skin too.


I didn't come across a black keyboard skin.

 

What I might do is to clone the original HDD. Really depends on how much work I want to do to get it up and running...

 

seems like you got a EU-like version of the SB CTO, congrats. we have fingerprint readers here, they cost 30€.

Thank You for clearing that Mic jack issue!! i was already set in using that as leverage against Sony to win some discount or something since they claim it has the mic support in their site's.. now what do i do with all the printscreens and webpages i had saved to prove it in case they ninja-changed it? xD


the chipset offers that much hdd ports but you need the connections to actually use them so i'm not seeing how someone would mod the SB to support more than 2 hdd's, now some RAID0 enthusiasts might be interested in that but i don't think those guys exist. (or rather the one's that do go for other options)

 

Nope, I have the i5-2520m.

Way to contradict yourself by saying its fair then essentially said its not fair due to being such different machines. And I would say it's fair to compare say sandy bridge to sandy bridge notebooks or something within 2-3 months or so. Anything past that and usually some new chip, ssd, video card etc has been released that doesn't allow you to compare hardware brand/design vs brand/design.

 

Won't the recovery disk allow you to 1. not have to deal with drivers and 2. keep the included software?

Just got my SB today, also in Canada and I can confirm that there is indeed a fingerprint reader (haven't tested the mic jack yet). Currently making recovery disks and updating, but first impressions are that it's build solidly and the screen is fine, viewing angles aside. Much brighter than this old Toshiba I'm using to post now. One thing I have noticed so far though... the trackpad feels REALLY inaccurate... Perhaps a driver update will fix that?

 

Honestly? You are going to get more often than not performance issues to the cloning. The performance of the SSD is going to be limited, no clone software can actually read the file format, so its going to be a mess.

I would use the recovery DVDs, since they pack everything that the pc came with

 

anyone using 128gb SSD? any space issues? i just bought one 128gb but now considering upsizing to 256 since my basic set up took out over 42GBs which i did not expect....

 

also any issues using 5ghz wifi? for some reason i connect np @ 2 but not @ 5...

 

Did you upgrade your wireless card? I think benny had to upgrade his to get the 5GHZ band

 

correct, you need to upgrade the card, the Intel Wifi 1000 card doesn't support 5GHz

 

actually the network adapter gives me a choice between 2ghz band and 5 or mixed mode. but i did not upgrade anything as i did not have a choice to do so (i have a us version laptop)

 

a really? i just checked the device manager and it says Wifi Link 1000 BGN, i'm guessing thats the one you are referring to. how come intel config software still asks me which band i would like to use? i.e. i got 3 choices: Mixed mode, 2GHz mode, 5GHz mode. now is this just a software glitch??

 

nah same drivers for the entire centrino line. I would grab a 6300 from ebay and put it there, its 30 bucks usually. Although you are not going to have the necessary 3 antennas to get it to its maximum performance.

 

Of course you can always pick up an antenna off of eBay as well, but where would you place it?

 

thanks MM,

this is becoming a pain: upgrade SSD, add ram, upgrade wifi, take out the screen and shove another one in. and the base price of this thing was 1369$ just went up to 2k, i think Z was very reasonably priced after all

 

Yeah but think this way, you are going to re use most of what you get extra for you new notebook in 2 years

 

doubt it, thats the crappy part, technology evolves quickly hence anything you get now, including the tiny SSD is going to be dirt cheap 2-3 years from now... any idea if SA is going to come out with dual band wifi?

 

Just took a stroll through the owner's forum and saw your post about the VGA.

Not a 100% answer per se but it makes it useable:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/570102-vga-output-issue-vaio-sb-3.html

 

I wouldnt think or actually anticipate the fall of the SSD prices. those are not getting to the 1g/1U$ mark anytime soon, much less in 3 years. Only recently they reached the barrier of less than 2/1.

Hell I remember when I used a 6gb top of the line HDD in a pentium.

 

thanks, i've used HDMI->DVI adapter that made it much better (my monitor is a DVI) but again i still think its a hardware issue that sony must address

 

Ha, exactly my point MM, so investing in technology is the worst thing you can do with your money. thats why i'm really trying to weigh in if im getting my money's worth here. i'm going to perform all the upgrades and analyze the performance (everything from battery to gaming) and if i'm not fully satisfied this baby is going home to china