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

ya i get it.

oh.But why does the warranty say limited international warranty it should have been continent warranty or something
anyway say if i buy SB in malaysia and then get it to india then i ll have no problem with warranty is that what you meant to say??

i just cant justify paying 1400$ for SB in my country with following config
i5 2520M 2.5 GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6470M
4GB RAM
500GB HDD

the same in US is 1050$.the difference might not sound much but if you are planning to upgrade to SSD then it ll be a kill

 

New here. I also spent a few days reading through the entire thread. I'm debating the SB vs the CA. I went to a local BB store and noticed that the screen/monitor on the SC unit is prone to wobbling. Someone here suggested that the materials used for the screen cover/bezel might be different between SB/SC.

Do you SB owners notice screen wobbling with your units? Is it pretty much the same with the SC (if you've had a chance to compare)?

Also, does anyone have a link comparing the 6600 Radeon vs the 6400 Radeon. I'm moving up from a 3400 Radeon and would like a good improvement. (EDIT: found one comparison here)

 

I had an important question regarding the switchable graphics. I was reading in an other forum that said we need to switch to the Intel graphics while using WiDi and cannot use the AMD graphics. Is that true? Can someone please try it out.

Thanks

 

Yes, this is true.

 

Did you read the test?

If it downclocks when "the speeds aren't necessary", why does Unigine runs at 2.9GHz and Unigine + Prime run at 2.2GHz?

Do you think that Unigine + Prime require less processing power than Unigine alone?

 

just saw the SC at best buy today. the touchpad is terrible at higher speeds, fine when slower. but i prefer a faster speed. any current owners using different drivers or something to improve the touchpad?

 

Intel WIDI and Protected Content.

I just received the Best Buy SC Bundle with the Netgear PTV2000. If you upgrade the WIDI application and the firmware on the PTV2000 -it is capable of playing protected Blu Ray and DVD Disks. It looks like you also need to upgrade the Mobile Intel HD Graphics drivers as well, which they have on the Intel download site BUT they won't install on the SC as the current drivers 8.811.8.0 are Sony drivers complied to support the hybrid graphics (I suppose).

Any thoughts on how to get this to work or are we just going to have to wait for the next revisions of the Sony HD Graphics driver version that supports HDCP.

Mitch Bart

 

Initial thoughts on the SB: ordered (canada) on april 18, delivered may 3.
CTO was i5-2540,4G,500G(WD scorpio blue BEVT),Win7Pro,6630,std burner,blue,fresh start (hence the required win7pro!). The 2410 to 2540 upgrade was $100 which I figured was worth it. Paid $1175 cdn + tax. Mine came with a fingerprint reader which is cool, though using it looks a bit tricky so far.
It was with great trepidation that I unboxed and fired up the SB, as I had previously tried to cancel, which is not allowed in canada as are returns of cto’s at all.
The iridescent blue (looks purple to me) is great to gaze upon. Very good color choice, though the lid is still black which seems a bit strange. Far better looking than my boring silver ’07 MBpro.
drum roll….. the screen is fine, in fact I’d give it a ‘very good’. I definitely got one of the ‘good ones’ if there really is such a thing. full screen vimeo HD movies are really impressive to these old eyes. browsing (firefox) is fine. sure, contrast could be better and the screen likes to be tipped back a bit further but it’s definitely reasonable to use. I also fired up my slingplayer TV app and the video quality is fine. sound (after the dolby enable) is just ok. usable but not at all as good as my MBpro (as expected with its larger speakers). It’s comfortable, ie watching TV, and no need to bring out the headphones.
I’d say my shipped version screen is better than the SB I saw twice at the sony store.
That screen was a big part of my desire to cancel as slight moves vertically caused big changes, ie washing out of colors, etc. I don’t see that in mine so much.
wobble is not a problem in my purely ‘laptop’ usage. It will vibrate if you give it a bit of a shake but ‘normal’ lap usage is not a problem. now outside on a windy day or in a moving vehicle could be a problem though. The resolution is fine for this user.
Very nice looking (once you remove the obnoxious stickers), light and well built machine. Access to the main components is great! I upgraded to 8G in a couple minutes. The trackpad takes some ‘settings’ experimentation and getting used to, but I’ve become pretty comfortable already and do like (can tolerate) the edge and circular scrolling setup. The ‘precision’ (ie, positioning the pointer and checking a box for example) is pretty poor compared to my ‘mid 07’ santa rosa MBPro 15” matte.
I find it pretty remarkable that my 4 year old mac trackpad is far better (precision and 2 finger scrolling that I use) than this new-fangled one. It is ok and I’ll continue to get used to it but holy why should apple be able to do this years back and no-one else since?
The WD 500G drive is very quiet. I didn’t update the BIOS initially just to see what the fan usage would be like. yep it fired up pretty loudly, sometimes even when just browsing in stamina mode. BTW, sony mfg is pretty pathetic for not even getting this BIOS update into the latest CTO builds. we shouldn’t have to do this!

Also, a question for fellow owners: Are there any other driver updates on the Vaio site or elsewhere (my model 190S isn’t even listed so 190X must be used!) that are useful?
I’m very pleased with my new SB after only 2 days and would highly recommend it. I’m now glad I wasn’t able to cancel!

and a big thanks to benny and the other posters who put their time into some very valuable posts. I’ve upgraded my memory to 8G (for $38 a no-brainer) and will be upgrading to an Intel series 320, 160G ssd shortly. I chose this one for its reliability and good IO numbers and thought $300 for 160G was a fair price. system should be very snappy with this and eek out some better battery life.
cheers

 

For the best bang for the buck hard drive, I would definitely recommend the Momentus XT. It's a hybrid hard drive with 4GB of SLC NAND. Your basically getting the fastest (lone) hard drive and your getting it with 500GB of space on it. Heres a link: Amazon UK Momentus XT Hybrid HDD
I actually had one before I switched to my SSD, liked it a lot.

If you don't need all the extra speed though, then yes, the Momentus is a very good hard drive.

That is the only test that I have seen that mentions anything about downclocking. Every other test I have seen and run myself pulls the correct speeds. Look at the other thin and lights for comparison.

 

dumb question that's probably been posted.
prior to swapping my SB hd out with my new ssd do I need to put it in a usb enclosure and format/partition it for windows 7?
I plan to use the 4 vaio dvd recovery disks I made to xfer the system....
I'm coming from a mac so win7vaio is new to me....

 

Nope, the discs will do all that for you.

 

I think it was the most "extreme" test I have been reading of.

Could you run the same test (prime + unigine) for some time while monitoring the state of the cores with hwinfo, and post a screen here?

Maybe the pre-production unit that notebookcheck reviewed was defective, I don't know. But I really hope so.

 

it's so odd
I just picked up a sony vaio SC from BB today.
The fan is constantly on with latest BIOS. It wasn't on( my returned Sony SC.)

Same configuration, same OS ( I swap my SSD into SC again ), same BIOS.

So I checked the temp of my sc, it's 52-55 C from start up.
if I remember right, my SB was only 40-45 with same room temp. (about 13-17 C)

Would someone post your temp w/o any applications on?

 

Yea, the only time the Core i 2011 procs, just like any other procs, are downclocked is when there is too much heat and it downclocks it self. Sony didn't add any downclocking software, everything is stock Intel.

Looking at the Notebookcheck I see a ton of discrepancies between their machice and the ones available and especially the one I have, including the screen. More than likely their's is either a pre-production model, or a very early build. A lot of the laptops in Sony Style stores are some of the same, which is why you will see a lot of comments about some differences between what people saw at the store and what they got. Again, the cr@ppy screen in the store models shows this as well as the slightly worse build.

 

Hey, anyone run into problems updating firmware on crucial C300? freaken thing does not recognize the drive and Sony's bios does not have any options to fiddle with...

 

Have you checked if it's using AHCI?

 

i would if bios was a little more flexible, there are absolutely no options to control HD. also for some reason intel SATA registry patch keeps popping up even though i've already installed it. however i dont see how that would cause the firmware update not to see the drive...

i'm pretty sure i'm running the latest bios version, so i'm guessing there should be a bunch of people who got C300s when they went on sale for their SBs with the same config

 

The SATA patch doesn't install, but that shouldn't be the issue. Your C300 might be DOA or a dud. I've installed 4 different HDD with two of them being SSD's and have had no issues what so ever with them being found and installed. I agree that the BIOS sucks though, doesn't give squat for options. Actually, my first Corsair SSD was a DOA and wasn't found at all, the replacement works perfect.

Can you install the C300 in another computer to see if it is even working? Either that or if you have a USB SATA cable you can reinstall your original HDD and see if the SSD is actually working.

 

Has anybody been able to make the "quick web access" feature work?

This feature allows quick web access to the internet without Windows being engaged and is initiated by pressing the "web" button located to the left of the power button while powered off.

In my case every attempt fails with a message to the effect that quick web access software is missing or not fully installed.

I've contacted Sony support who logged on to my system and uploaded and installed the required software - but to no avail. Still same problem.

They suggested putting back the original drive which I had replaced with an SSD drive and reinstalled Windows using the 4 recovery DVD's created from the original disc.

I haven't done that yet but will when I have a chance. (It's a bit of a pain to swap drives, with 6 screws to replace and delicate ribbon cables to manipulate). And if it does work with the original disk, I'm still puzzled as to why it doesn't with the SSD. And if it doesn't work, I'm no further ahead.

 

i guess i should have mentioned this before: SSD is already installed and I run OS on it w/o any issues (incredibly fast even for my standards), however i am not able to update the firmware on the drive when booting up the loader from CD on the start-up as it does not see the drive... i'm pretty sure its something with the way SB bios is set up, however was not able to find a fix.