Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

Gah, so would I ! Thanks for the info.

 

You're correct ! It was indeed that function and must have been changing the Bios as Linux now charges fully as well. This is a new one to me, you learn something everyday.

The fan doesn't have the pitching or whining sound, it just never seems to turn off even when running at 1%. This is on an I5 btw, not an I7.

 

And if you put your hand in front of the exhaust grid, is the air hot with the CPU @ 1%?

If so, then the fan always running @ idle is understandable, at least on the i7-720QM. It's just a low pitch whir on my F, does not bother me but I will not be using it in a church during mass.

I do use a triangular ruler to lift the back of the notebook about 1.5cm to help natural convection cooling & keep the fan @ idle as much as possible.

 

Thanks. I saw some NVIDIA posts regarding the missing mapped function keys to control the brightness levels. .inf file syntax descriptions seem to be a closely guarded secret. Will have to check the Microsoft Partner and technet databases.

 

Well the F11 will fit in a briefcase, put it in a pouch in the case and it's thin enough that you'll still have room for (some) papers.

 

Hence the Nvidia Tech quote here:

Again: is there any performance gain with that driver? Does it pass some video card stability tests?

 

Well I'm a fan of Fallout 3, I should try Frapping that one myself. But there's just about nothing left for me to do in that game, unless I go back to an early save or start over, and that's depressing. Remember when "Oblivion" was the impossible game to run? now a bottom-end card will handle it.

 

The intake for that fan is under left palmrest, feel the cool air rush in when you put your hand next to it lol.

Speaking of that fan, I think I'm going to call sony tomorrow and see about onsite replacement of it. If they do, I'll go procure an airport card lol.

 

I was having the same problem but I found out that it was the laptop switching off the bluetooth to save power. I don't know if you've already tried it but if you go into device manager you can stop it in there.

Hope that helps

 

I got a Sony F11 at a local Best Buy over a month ago, and have been reading this forum with great interest ever since. I used to work as a copywriter for a major advertising agency, and I know that market research shows that people pay the most attention to advertisements for products just after they've made a major purchase than before. The psychology is to convince yourself you've made a good decision and overcome any latent buyer's remorse, I guess.

Anyway, my unit didn't have the dread clicking sound, squeaky keys or any other major flaws. The screen is a disappointment for a Sony product (the Asus 1005HA netbook I'm typing this on is easier to look at for prolonged periods of time, but an N270 Atom is not an i7, and you can't cram 1920x1080p on a 10" screen), but that is my only major criticism. Two major recurring complaints I've read are about the modest internal speakers and fan noise. I just went back to the same Best Buy I got the F11 at last night, and picked up a truly great product that I was surprised to see on their shelves, as Amazon only has it available for pre-order for June shipment. It's the Logitech N700 speaker lapdesk, and it is $80 very well spent for any F11 owner, IMHO. It is incredibly convenient and ergonomic, makes for a vast improvement in sound quality, and keeps the internal fan from kicking into high gear as often by blowing a quiet, steady stream of cool air under the machine. Check out the Logitech video http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1BVT09VOZ9GM0 for the sexy French chick demoing the product with what looks like a F-series VAIO perched on it. Maybe you can find one online or locally to give a try.

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i7-720, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 500-GB Samsung 5,400-rpm HD, 1920x1080p, Blu-Ray Reader, Win 7 Home Premium

 

Thank you for the reply. I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna pick up a liscense for AnyDVD HD right now. I've already done a clean install and don't plan on doing another one anytime soon.

Maybe I'll upgrade to WinDVD 10 pro...i'll look at the pricing difference.

 

Joe, the OP you quoted was asking about the .INF file descriptions and syntax. How is posting that NVidia tech quote for the 10th time helpful here?

I urge you to please stop trying to find fault with a simple driver upgrade. If you don't want to upgrade, that's fine, but I'll kindly ask in public that you simply ignore posts on the matter. We're all clear on your stance here, and I'd appreciate no further comment from you on this issue.

I'll have to roll back to the previous driver, benchmark, re-install the new driver, then benchmark again, and I'll likely won't take time to do that this week. However, just having the fixed-aspect-ratio scaling is benefit enough for me.

 

I assume Joe was responding to my post regarding sysntax. I have him on my ignore list for that reason and several more. 'Nuff said.

 

Oh yeah Oblivion was great. I'm not a big fan of games set in ancient fantasy-type worlds but boy were the graphics something. lol now that I think about it, that was 4 years ago. Technology moves fast doesn't it?

 

I wanna ask a few questions about your install of 196.86 drivers:
1. Does the FN + F5/F6 for brightness work in this version?
2. Does the screen start to flicker after you turn down the brightness to 1-3 bars? It happened to me w/ 19x.xx series.
3. Does the screen have uneven brightness after sleep/restart/shutdown? It happened to me w/ 19x.xx series.

 

I can *almost* run Crysis in DX10 mode at "Very High" settings on my desktop at native 1920x1200 (AA off, of course!). There's an engine that's future-proof.

 

Thanks for taking to time to install the new drivers. I was wondering what fixed aspect ratio scaling was? I thought it was when an image was scaled with its aspect ratio fixed, so if you wanted to run a fullscreen app at 1280x1024 on a widescreen monitor, it would have black bars at the sides and not a distorted image?

This type of scaling works for me already on my F11 (gt 330m), and I was wondering if I was missing something?

 

Hehe that's gotta be so nice. Sadly, my F runs Crysis better than my desktop does . I doubt there will be a game as demanding as Crysis for quite some time now . Even Crysis 2 will have more manageable system reqs . Which, btw, I am really looking forward to testing on the F. Just gotta wait until Q4 of this year

 

WOW, i would love the play crysis on medium settings on the f11 at least.

 

1) Yes - works fine. It's my understanding that this is more a function of the VAIO-specific control drivers and not related to the NVidia drivers at all. Strange that it didn't work for some after an upgrade.

2) No screen flicker here, even when gaming full-screen.

3) I just brought my F11 up from an automatic sleep, and brightness appears to be correct.

The above issues may be related to odd bits of the old driver still hanging around after an uninstall. Did you run DriverCleaner or a similar program after uninstalling old drivers and before installing new drivers?

 

I haven't installed Crysis on my F11, but given the specs of the 330M, I'd be surprised if it can give 30FPS on medium at native 1920x1080. It may be possible without AA.

 

I'll try DriverCleaner. Thanks for the reply.

 

Yes, fixed aspect ratio will preserve the aspect ratio of the source, even when fullscreen. Your 1280x1024 example perfectly illustrates this.

I couldn't get that to work on my F11 with the stock drivers. In fact, the setting would revert to the default ("Use my display's built-in scaling") as soon as I would click "Apply. Works fine, however, with the new drivers.

There's a great Crysis 2 article in the latest Edge.

 

@ aaronjb

Did you use the INF file from the site or you edited the original INF by Dell and added the device ID?

 

maybe it will run smoother and still look great on a lesser resolution.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9DUabcVlNM&feature=response_watch
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8_z1ci52Bs

With overclock, it is indeed playable with the settings listed in the vids. Very pretty game, Crysis. Very fun at lan parties too. Especially because you can walk over and smack camping cloaked snipers on the head when they keep killing you

 

looks really good, mango the settings you play the game, how does it look

 

Hmmm... That's very strange. For the longest time I wanted for the aspect ratio scaling to stop, and I had to figure out how to turn it off. I tried to turn it on again just now, and like you said, it reverts back to the "built-in scaling." I swear it used to work. Oh well, it doesn't anymore...

 

man games on this laptop seem to be really good. Crysis demands to of a high settings. But still looks very good on the f11. Cant wait to get this game

Cant wait to get this laptop, speakers might not be great, but i herd for movies it really good, hope someone can clarify that. For music its good. I spoke to sony and they are going to ring me about the speakers. Might just use headphones or external speakers or something to make the sound brilliant.

 

Never thoughta that, T'anks.

 

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I used the .INF from the site.

 

Yep, with the Vaio_F 900p, the OS UI is easier to read for older eyes on a 16.4" screen with 112 DPI vs. 134 DPI for the F 1080p.

The XPS 1080p with a smaller 15.4" LCD has an even smaller UI representation with 143 DPI while the same 1080p on a 18.4" LCD will have 119 DPI.

Luckily, there are more & better tools available to fix this in Windows 7 vs. XP, for example. Ctrl +/- still works in many programs.

Try scaling up the OS UI with this method.

From Control Panel > Display, try also > ClearType Text Tuner (worked great for me) or Custom DPI Setting to fine tune between 125 & 150% (I don't use that).







Use NoSquint add-on in Firefox, scale up the UI in programs that can do it like Lightroom for example, and try Win 7 Magnifier for programs that are impossible to scale like Skype, for example. I pinned it to my Taskbar for quick access.



You are right, the easiest way to see everything bigger all the time on a 1080p 16.4" is to change the display's resolution but while it works well for a CRT, it's bad with a LCD to use anything but it's native resolution, you loose sharpness.

I did not find a way within Illustrator to scale the UI yet, but in that case you could try:

- Display > Scale Text & Other Items to 150%, return to 125% after finishing your task but it's annoying to have to log off/on to apply the settings

- Use Magnifier

- or my preferred low tech workaround: cheap 2x reading glasses.

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For notebook shoppers:

See this interesting DPI (Fineness) of Displays table with images showing the difference between more small windows on a high resolution display vs. larger UI with lower resolution.

The Comment at the bottom of this article: "Starting from approximately 110 DPI a display is for most users (with operating systems, which make the representation size dependent on the resolution, like Windows XP) too finely resolved (representation too small).

High DPI values especially are an advantage for the handling with images and tasks of programming (much place at the screen). In addition it must be considered with laptops, that the user sits usually much nearer at the screen (because of the close, fixed keyboard)".

So it really depends on your eyes & your needs. I would like to see a test with some F's 1080p side-by-side with a 900p. I wonder if the average user would see any sharpness differences?

Don't get sucked in by the 1080p hype, choose according to your needs.

If you are shopping between different screen sizes & resolutions, use this PPI Calculator / DPI Calculator to determine the "fineness" (PPI =commonly called DPI). The XPS 1080p with a smaller 15.4" LCD has an even smaller UI representation with 143 DPI while the same 1080p on a 18.4" LCD will have 119 DPI.

Before buying, the best is to look at some monitors with different DPI's to see how you like the OS UI appearance. Desktop > right click > Properties > Settings > Advanced.

In my case, I'm glad I chose the F 1080p for photo editing & sharpness of high resolution, I just use the tools described above to make the OS UI comfortable for my old eyes or use... reading glasses.

 

@Joe: And now they're offering the Z11, which has a 13" screen with 1920x1080 resolution (for the small price of $5000 )

 

Oh yeah but the thing about Oblivion was its modability. I still have fond memories of finishing off miniquests riding my character through Leyawin on her Elephant wearing frilly Roots shirt and dress (the character, not the elephant) with blunderbuss over her shoulder and male companion on his unicorn by her side (forget his name.) That's something Mass Effect simply can't recreate. There are some good Sandbox games coming up though, that may be equally modable.

 

When on battery (standard battery), I get around 2 hours 15 minutes or so, doing wireless internet browsing, youtube videos etc with the screen on max brightness.....with the indicator showing around 12-17% remaining. I never tried to get to the point when the charge was used up, but 3 hours could probably be eked out with such usage and especially so if you dim the screen a bit.

If I were you, I would seriously also look at a product like the new Vaio Z-series - desktop replacement type power in a 3lbs 13.1" form-factor (1920x1080 Full-HD resolution is also available) and also comes with upto a Blu-ray burner built-in. I was seriously looking at a Z-series with the i7-620M, 512GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Full-HD screen with 330M GPU and 1GB VRAM, built-in blu-ray burner, GPS built-in etc and the whole thing weighing in at 3lbs !

Of course with the Z-series, when equipped with the standard battery, you could get around 6-7 hours and could go well over 10 hours with the extended battery. So this could be an option where you get desktop replacement type power, including pretty much everything that comes on the desktop including an optical drive, while having a size that can effectively function like a netbook.

I specifically needed the capability of the Quad-core chips that only the F-series gets and hence went for it (the F-series being significantly cheaper too), while the Z-series comes with a Dual-Core version of the i7 (with a higher 3.33GHz clock-speed, being a Dual-Core), since the chassis is probably too small for the Quad-cores.

 

It is a Toshiba 43nm model, originally released by Toshiba for retail sales in August 2009. Of course at the time of its release, there was no TRIM support (since TRIM came with Windows 7) and hence we don't know for certain if the SSD in the Sony has TRIM support.

Another option is to go with the lowest-end HDD and then replace it with a higher capacity SSD via the aftermarket. Should prove to be cheaper and additionally you can pick the specific SSD model you want, among a ton of aftermarket options.

 

Thanks Sheena!! So far it's working!! No cut out with the blue tooth connection yet.

and the same thanks to Joe Bleau. for your suggestion as well

 

Maybe you missed the reason why I quoted a small part of the Nvidia Tech post:

Hence the Nvidia Tech quote here:

Does you screen Power Management settings still work (on battery and plugged in)? Does the auto-dim still work? Just curious.: S1 > Power Management > Vaio_Power Mangement Viewer > Advanced > Display.

"...I'll have to roll back to the previous driver, benchmark, re-install the new driver, then benchmark again" - you don't have to, just benchmark with your new driver & tell me what you used, exact settings & I'll try to duplicate your benchmarks with the OEM certified video driver.

Do you have Dirt2?

"... I'd appreciate no further comment from you on this issue" - I'm sorry but I stopped having people dictating me what to do since I became self employed about 15 years ago. If you keep promoting your driver, why can't I reply & point out that for technically challenged F owners, it's safer to stick to Son_y's F certified drivers?

Just add me to your ignore list, it works great!

 

Ok, I've looked everywhre, WHERE is the power management options for bluetooth?

Ok found it, the "Bluetooth Radios" entry was actually missing from the device listuntil I "Scanned for hardware changes."

 

Solid advice, for a change.

<click>

 

Yes it helps! I don't understand why it's not in S1 > Power Management > Vaio_Power Mangement Viewer > Advanced, along with the other stuff like Display, Processor, USB settings, etc?

 

Yah that's why I didn't see it. that's where BT radio managment SHOULD be, not in the Geek list under Device manager. But it had the yellow mark as unidentified device in device manger until the refresh. The computer HAD just crashed while using Messenger, so maybe that's related.

 

Great! Does that mean you will stop attacking me in the thread & stop sending me insulting PM's?

 

Let's write to Sony_Support asking them to add the Bluetooth in their next Vaio_Control Center update, it's the obvious location.

"But it had the yellow mark as unidentified device..." - try running Vaio_Care, that's the kind of stuff it should report. Have you tried the Run System TuneUP in that program, the Registry reports & errors are interesting and it even includes a "Undo" option.



Note that these 613 problems were after uninstalling Norton, Works & the Office trial, even after re-booting after each uninstalled program.

 

You just never learn to be nice or helpful in this thread.

 

How about you try it instead of posting BS quotes from others. A few have tried it with good results.

 

Amen! I wouldn't worry about uninstalling it again. If it works, it works. No need to do it. Most of the time the latest nvidia drivers from NVIDIA is always better than the manufacture of the machine itself.

 

Hmm, first time I've looked at Win7 event viewer. Nice! Yah the Messenger crash and "failed to authenticate Bluetooth device" happened at the same instant. And there's a whole mess of different bluetooth errors. There's no hardware event nor power shutdown however, the Bluetooth radio had NOT been turned off today.

Nevertheless the BT mouse is still functioning after 35 minutes...

 

Arron, glad you were helpful for the rest here unlike someone I will not say names. We need helpful people like yourself trying different things instead of acting like a Sony REP, and reposting stuff 100x that has nothing to do with what we or everyone is discussing.

Sadly, this IS the ONLY topic this happens in, all the other topics on this site are very informative without the non-sense.

 

Hi everyone,

I am anxiously waiting for my F CTO to arrive in TWO days. Meanwhile, since I am planning to do the clean install I have a couple of questions on SONY downloads. I hate to install on my computers anything that I don't really need, hence,

1) Can I live without Original - Sony® Notebook Utilities, which includes,
* Battery Checker
* Setting Utility Series
* VAIO® Event Service
* VAIO Control Center
* VAIO Power Management

Does Win 7 already provide all of those utilities? I am planning to dual-boot Linux and since someone in this thread have already installed Linux on F laptop and SONY does not offer drivers/utilities for Linux I assume I can survive without the SONY utilities. What do you say?

For the following downloads SONY does not provide any meaningful description, so do you know what are those and if I need them?

2) Sony Applications (various) - Original - VAIO® Location Utility

3) System Components - Original - Sony® Firmware Extension Parser Device Driver

4) System Components - Original - Sony® Shared Library

5) VAIO Update - Original - VAIO® Update 5 Software

6) Wireless - Original - Sony® TransferJet™ Driver

7) Wireless - Original - SmartWi™ Connection Utility

8) System Software - VAIO® Peripherals Metadata Update - This utility updates the metadata pictures for VAIO hardware within the "Device and Printers" utility. ??

Thank you!