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

Do both allow it to be done without a reload?

 

No clue, I know Parted Magic uses a boot disc. Partition Wizard has a windows GUI but I'm not sure if you can do it there or need to make a boot disc as well.

I would use Partition Wizard as it's more user friendly. Take the plunge and let us know how it goes.

 

OK. Thanks. Will do - but only after completing a backup image. Will let you know how it turns out.

 

So here is the screen information:

Maximum: 257 cd/m²
Average: 250.8 cd/m²
Brightness Distribution: 95 %
Center on Battery: 255 cd/m²
Black: 1.85 cd/m²
Contrast: 138:1

The contrast level and blacks is abysmal. Will not be considering the SB.

 

Just reran the assessment after replacing hard drive with SSD and now have the expected WEI of 6.7.

The Primary hard disk subscore is now 7.6.

 

You don't want to delete the 100MB partition, as that partition contains boot information.

 

Yea, this ones been discussed, and doesn't consider the fact that there are different screen out there, so I would say this is pretty pointless.

 

edit:

i fixed it.

in the speaker properties, go to the advanced tab and uncheck the applications have control over sound, then check the dolby settings, and you're set. just reset and the settings are still there.

 

Beat me to it

+1 Thanks!

 

gsainc
if you please:

1- can you post some pictures? i'd love blue but i really don't like the idea of having a purple laptop and i engraved it to make it worst than waiting another month already is... so i'm really afraid i won't like it.. it's supposed to come tomorrow or monday..

2- also hoe long does battery lasts?

i'm calling it crap as a figure of speech only. i also say all but OS+apps is the crap that goes to the HDD instead of the SSD and life would be hard withou anime,music,etc xD

Thanks!

 

I was just messing with you, I call it crap too

My annoying comment was meant for the fact that the Dolby enhancer wouldn't stay activated after a restart.

 

Just went to the Sony site and happened to look at the CTO page to see how the dates are now out of curiosity, well... you can't. Every single part says [Out of Stock] before each part in the CTO options. Strange.

 

Here in the US all the preconfig models are 'In Stock' with a ship date of tomorrow, 4/29.

The CTO shows a ship date of 5/10. As a plus, all options keep the same ship date, even the 6630 and 256GB SSD, which used to move everything back a week or two.

That is a marked improvement from what it was a week or two ago. Looks like they are catching up, at least here in the US.

 

is a spyder really worth getting to calibrate the screen. what do you all say?

 

or if anyone has done callibrations with their screens, the figures would be appreciated

 

So the only thing holding me back from getting rid of the Recovery partition is the fact that I'm thinking the Assist feature is contained in there. Can anyone confirm this and has anyone gone ahead and removed it?

 

If someone was looking for a good time to pull the trigger on a 256GB SSD, here's your chance. Provantage has the M4 256GB SSD for $456. Add in shipping and your looking at $461, thats a pretty huge discount for a just released SSD. It retails for $500 and Newegg just added it and they are selling it for $520 + $6 shipping.

Link: Provantage - Crucial M4 256GB SSD - $461

I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on that one, just don't know if I can quite justify it yet. One catch is that it is a 'Special Order' item so it will take a few weeks to get to you, totally worth it IMO. Also, I've had good experiences with Provantage.

EDIT: Also, the 128GB is $231.

Oh and the absolute true ballers out there could go for the 512GB M4, $896. >$100 discount.

 

funny thing just happened, for some reason the screen was at a higher gamma, but switching it to speed and back to stamina fixed that

 

Vaio Care is a program that is located in the "C rogram Files\Sony\VAIO" Care\
folder.

The Recovery Partition contains the installation programs, drivers, etc (you know all the stuff you need to rebuild your system to that "new car smell" <deep breath> ... ahhhhhh!)

Yes the install program of Vaio Care would be in the recovery partition, but the actual running program is on Windows partition.

 

beny90 i got the joke hence the " xD "

i can get a 100 discount on a Crucial M4 here in EU (compared to entry price of around 500€ , but someone proposed a TAX free deal to me which means 200 less on the Crucial M4 and 100 less on both the Vertex3 and the Intel 510 (so 300€ the Crucial and 400€ the other 2).. so they are all in my price range now and i really don't know what to buy....


i'm somewhat "afraid" of issues on the Vertex3 because of its 0 cache and Crucial M4's late Garbage Collection that may wreck performance in time...
if i was sure i'd have none of this issues i'd buy one of these 2 since the Vertex is the fastest and the M4 is the cheapest(and is an astonishing 1/4 less difference)
i've read all Anand's reviews some +20 times and i'm still clueless... i agree with the comments that rant about the lack of real world numbers...

 

EDIT: Whoops - pics not coming through as desired. Need to figure this out.


Don't know yet about the battery. Will let you know.

 

Just to add to what I posted earlier, (in response to the previous exchange)

The 100mb partition is vital for windows 7 to boot, I am not totally sure as to why it is needed (I think it has to do with EFI and I'll leave at that), but it is needed.

You can however, move that partition and re-size the windows 7 partition. But if you do that, then things will still get screwed up and you won't be able to boot either.

So if you are intent on deleting the recovery partition and resizing your windows partition.

So, after you have deleted the recovery partition, and moved the system reserved partition, and resized your windows partition, you'll need to use your recovery disc set again, you will use it to repair the boot process

Here's what you need to (it's pretty straightforward):

Boot your recovery disc.

Your first choice you make is to choose the option "Repair Windows 7 (64 bit)"

Then there is a popup that asks you to choose your keyboard (US)

The next popup has two options, click the radio button corresponding to "Use recovery tools..." (you don't need to load drivers)

On the next popup you have 5 choices, pick the one on top "Startup Repair"

If everything goes as planned, you should be able boot windows again, (on hard drives windows does integrity checks on the partition, I don't know what does it for SSD's)

Hopefully this works for you.

 

I'll try one pic at a time:

Still too large.

I snapped them from my iPhone and copied to my desktop. How do I get them to show up here?

 

Thanks for the warnings and suggestions.

I'll give it a try when I have some more time to spare.

 

You have to attach them.

use the "paper clip" icon, click on it to upload

then on the triangle to attach

 

Definitely good info for those that are going to be repartitioning.


What I was planning on doing is to keep that just how it is now, obviously don't want to mess with the boot part. I'm just getting rid of the Recovery partition and possibly merging it with the C: drive. I might leave a tiny bit of room just in case though as you mentioned before, still undecided. Honestly all this will probably be put off for a while as I'm not exactly needing more space right now.

 

I've tried that several times.

Individual .jpg files as well as all 3 at a time.

Every attempt results in connection failure after a minute or so.

Very strange.

The files are between 1.4mb and 1.8mb.

Are the files too large to attach - even singly?

 

Just completed the task of deleting the recovery partition, moving the small system-reserved partition to the beginning of the drive, moving the main Windows partition (C: drive) next to system partition, and finally expanding the Windows partition to fill the entire drive - all with the free Partition Wizard.

Very easy and intuative and no repair required.

Total time required for the entire process to complete was approx. 45 minutes.

Thanks to Benny90 (+1) for the recommendation to use Partition Wizard and to Area306 (+1) for the wise advice to eschew deletion of the system-reserved partition.

BTW, Area306 was worried about the possible untoward effects of deleting the recovery partition. Not to worry, VAIO-care works fine - as do all other utilities.

I believe the only functionality now missing is the ability to create a Recovery Media set. But that's okay - that was Step1 in my todo list well before embarking upon partition scrambling.

 

size limit per file is 585kb

 

so who keeps their machine plugged in all day? i don't know if i should use the vaio battery care or not

 

Just finished deleting the recovery partition and merging it with the C: drive. Got back the roughly 15 or so GB of storage.

It's obviously not as easy as just clicking delete and merge. You actually have to move the recovery partition to merge it with the C: drive.

I will post up a full "how-to" maybe sometime tomorrow. The end part area306 went over well on the last page.

Congrats as well gsanic!

 

Thanks. That 'splains it.

 

gsainc why not uploading the pics to imageshack or something?
just please, show meee show meeee xD


WOW i just found out you can get a 512Gb Crucial M4 for a bit over 600€ while the Vertex3 with 480Gb is over 1300€.. Micron is making a 512Gb SSD almost affordable! almost a 1,2€/GB SSD!!!
if i hadn't spent 130€ on a backpack and a skin i'd be ordering RIGHT NOW..

 

question for some of you as well. is it normal for the battery remaining time to jump all over the place? mine will be 4 hr then jump to 7, etc

 

I'm going to go ahead and list the entire procedure for deleting the recovery partition and merging that storage to the C: drive. This is all purely based on memory, so if I miss something let me know.


As brought to my attention by Markwebster1 (thanks!), there is an option to restore from the Recovery discs that allows you to NOT install the Recovery Partition.

I checked it out myself and it in fact does work.

Recovery with NO Partition Created Option:

1. When you boot into the Recovery mode with the Recovery Discs that you created, select the "Optional Setup" option.
2. Then select to recover your laptop without making a recovery partition.

Notes: It still creates about a 1-2GB partition but is obviously MUCH better than having a 20GB Recovery Partition on your disc, especially if you have a limited amount of disc space.


Recovery Partition Removal:

Steps to get into the "Partition Manager" in Parted Magic:

-1st Step: Download Parted Magic:
CNET - Parted Magic
-2nd: Take that file and burn it to a CD
-3rd: Insert the CD and restart the computer
-4th: Boot to the CD by pressing the Escape key (not sure if that is necessary or not) and boot Parted Magic using the Default settings.
-5th: It will load up all the files onto the RAM and eject the CD, go ahead and remove it.
-6th: You will be presented with a Linux type desktop (if the screen is offset don't worry about it, doesn't matter), double click on the "Partition Manager"

Steps to do when in "Partition Manager":

-1st: Once you open the manager it will show a screen with what is on the hard drive. You should have a Recovery Partition ~20GB, Boot Files ~100MB, and you C: drive ~?.
-2nd: The first thing to do is to delete the Recovery Partition. Just click on the roughly 20GB partition, "/dev/sda1", click 'Delete'. Do not click 'Apply' till the end.
-3rd: You should now have a empty partition.
-4th: Click on the Boot partition ~100MB "/dev/sda2" and then click "Move/Resize". Move that partition all the way to the left, making sure that you do NOT change the size of it.
-5th: Click on 'Move/Resize' again. Click on the left side of the C: drive, "/dev/sda3" and enlarge it all the way to the end of the empty space left by the deleted partition.
-6th: Go ahead and click Apply that and it will move the Boot partition and merge the recovery partition with your C: drive, giving you about ~15-20GB of extra storage space on your hard drive or SSD. It should take about 30 minutes with an SSD, longer for a HDD.

Once that is done doing its thing go ahead and restart your computer. It might prompt you that there is an issue with install of Windows and it could not boot properly. No problem, follow these steps.

Final Steps:

-1: Once you get the message find your VAIO Recovery DVD's and put in the first one and restart your computer.
-2: Boot into the DVD's and click on "Restore Windows".
-3: Click which ever keyboard that you use and then continue.
-4: Chose the "Use Recovery Tools" option.
-5: It will go through some steps and reboot.
-6: You might be prompted to scan your hard drive, go ahead and do so.
-7: Once that is done it should boot into Windows. Your done!
-8: Success!

And thats that. I now have every bit of usable storage available to me to use, for my 128GB SSD, that is 119GB. Hopefully we can add this to the front page or something. If I missed something or you have a different way of doing something let me know and I can add it in. Enjoy!

** Please remember to +1 rep if this information helps you out. (Lower left of this post / click the weigh scale) It always helps me to keep adding to the HOW-TO's knowing it is helping people! **

 

Where at?

Yes, it takes a few cycles to learn how you use your computer and adjusts the time accordingly.

 

yeah certainly. it follows what you are using in the past 5 minutes, so 4h in speed will jump to 8h in stamina for example...

 

pixmania-pro (tax free, so with tax the price would jump to somewhere around 20% more, well in my country it's +23%)

 

What's the deal with these tax-free offers I keep hearing about ?
I am also from the EU but in my country shops keep charging me VAT
Is there a guide or something with tax-free shops and with what you have to do in order to buy tax free?

 

If you want to PM a moderator a link to a post or you yourself compile any useful information in a post these posts can be linked to on the first page if you PM me a link.

 

PM'd you with a link. Thanks

 

no need for a guide, what you need is a relative or friend that own a company and can buy tax-free stuff to re-sell. so basically you need a company's taxpayer number and your set to save 1/5 of product's price.. ^^

 

Ive been lurking in this thread for awhile. My SB should arrive in the mail today. If the screen is as horrible as some have mentioned on here, I'll be returning it but I hope not as Im pretty excited about this machine..

Ordered: i7, 6630, 4GB, Blu-ray

 

Does anyone think its worth upgrade to 8GB ram (only ~50$) to get dual channel?

 

too. expensive.

I'll let you kids have at that one, ha

 

I just completed the procedure - and it's not as complicated as it seems.

First, you can install the software directly from the website - no need to create CD and run from CD. You can execute it while in Windows.

So, after installing software, you can simply follow the steps in Part B (but you really don't need to format the deleted Recovery partition - simply expand your active Windows partition into it at the appropriate stage.)

The software is really quite easy and intuative.

In my case, after waiting approx. 40 minutes for the software to complete its magic, there was no need to use my recovery discs to fix anything - Windows simply came up normally after reboot with the added space in my C drive.

 

I noticed on mine it doesn't update till the battery % changes. Like I can use it for 15 minutes with the sheet battery before it updates the time because it takes so long to drop a % with 2 batteries. When it updates, it does tend to jump around depending on if I had a few flash pages open or if I was just typing notes in word which changes by an hour or 2 some times.

 

I called sony last night and explained my issues to tech support. When I told him about the fan he told me if it was an issue of being too loud to select the "silent" option which is even worse as teh fan stops and spins up all the time. I found the balanced fan option worked best to average out the fan more. For the screen he had me pull the battery and hold the power button for a while then reset the BIOS settings (useless tech lol), but I did it anyway. He then told me that I should exchange it as the screens vary from time to time. For what it's worth he said they "vary", but who knows if this guy knows what he's talking about as he lost all credibility on the screen fix idea imo. All this said, I ended up talking to customer service and did a return and already got my Fedex label. Hopefully everyone else continues to love their new SB's and they stay trouble free.

Time to enter the hunt for a new laptop. Anyone interested in a 4GB crucial RAM chip or an Intel 320 160GB can PM me. Newegg wants a restocking fee + shipping for the RAM and won't take back the SSD. Tried the SSD in my macbook and it's nice, but only SATA 1 so it's very limiting.

 

Personally I like the boot environment, less likely of a chance of something to happen as there is nothing else going on in the background in the boot environment. I'll note that as well though.

It isn't absolutely necessary but considering the "format" actually takes 2 seconds to complete, at least on my SSD, I figured it doesn't make a difference.

Yea, that's why I put that at the end showing that if it happens. It totally depends on how windows sees the boot part. Those steps are also about 30 seconds long.