Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

melody is that the f11 in your pics, also is it as gd as the UK model, does the uk model have no noise and is the fan quiet like yours in the uk model

 

Yeah it is! When I leave it idling for awhile and Norton performs a scan that includes whatever DVD I have in the drive, my wife asks, "What is that thing doing over there?"

 

I just got a small bluetooth keyboard with touchpad for use when I connect my laptop to my TV. It is nice to be able to run everything on my laptop from a distance and with such a light weight device. I set it up so I can close the lid on the laptop and just use the 40" TV as the screen. I am using the HDMI connection and it sends video and sound out and it looks and sounds great after some tweaking. I have a Sony TV and a Sony AV receiver with 5.1 and it all works great together. I watched some blu-rays and they look nice on the TV.

I also have a wireless Xbox 360 controller for PC coming soon so that I can play some games on the TV with my laptop too and not have to deal with wires.

 

What's the sticker above the F1 key?

 

It's a Blu-Ray Disc sticker.

 

Nice man! Looks like mine. Mine was also Rev 2, but I couldn't deal with the screen for my photographs. Otherwise it was a nice laptop.

 

Will you be putting it up for auction? My F11 lacks that priceless accessory.

 

Oh, man - where did you get that keyboard? I've been looking for exactly the same thing!

 

You can find them it on amazon. Solid tek is the maker.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001B8K6T0/ref=oss_product

 

No way, without the blu-ray sticker that laptop is worthless. Well maybe I might be willing to trade it for that little pig in the pictures you posted.

 

Seriously guys, it's a sticker...

And if you don't have blu-ray, wha'ts the value of having it stuck on your laptop?

 

Has anyone seen their 720qm turbo boost to anything above 2.53GHz? Even when torturing a single core, I can't get it higher than that and have never seen it do so...

 

Are you saying you are lucky enough have both i5 & i7 F versions? Could you elaborate on the differences like battery life, fan work, multi-tasking, "snappiness", etc? It would be quite helpful for people trying to decide between the two CPU's & curious individuals like me.
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About Sony_Vegas Movie Studio HDD setup optimization:

Have you seen the USB vs, eSATA benchmarks I posted in the Sony_VAIO_F Power Over eSATA Port & ext Enclosures Benchmarks post?

OPTIMIZING SONY_VEGAS: "4. It is recommended that Vegas’ temp folder remains on the C:\ drive, but the footage itself on another drive. This way the hard drive don’t have to spin back and forth between locations, as the job will be shared within two drives. I can’t recommend USB/Firewire external drives as on some systems the media become “offline” and never wake up (seems to be a Vegas bug). Your mileage may vary."

In the Temp Files - Place And Space (Vegas_Pro - sonycreativesoftware.com/forums), check this post by: johnmeyer Date: 1/7/2010 1:36:54 PM (he did some testing): "... 1. The write speed of the drive to which you render makes a big difference. If you render to a USB drive, a slow drive, or a network drive, it will make your render slower.

2. Rendering to the same drive on which your source video resides slows down the render. The most dramatic illustration of this was when I used really fast drives for both the source video and the render. Rendering to the same drive took fifteen seconds, but rendering to a second drive took three seconds."

But john_dennis Date: 1/8/2010 12:40:44 PM wrote in the bottom of that thread: "After reading this thread, I did a benchmark on my newly-built system with AVCHD video from a Sony camcorder rendered to AVI (which would produce more disk writes). I wrote from physical disk to physical disk, partition to partition on the same disk and folder to folder on the same disk and measured the results. I was surprised to find a disparity of speed based on the speed of two of the drives.

Surprisingly, physical disk to physical disk was profoundly slower than any other scenario. I have since determined that the speed of the two slow drives represents all of the difference in time."

The 2ND HARD DRIVE NEEDED FOR RENDERING? thread in the same forum is a good read, some recommend 3 drives, some 2: "...The main point is to have your media files on a separate drive.".

On my desktop, the setup is D: for Sony_Vegas Temp, E: drive for footage (SATA) but after reading more on the subject, I plan Temp folder & program on C: & footage on eSATA enclosure or SATA HDD caddy in the ODD bay.

I will report back in a few days when I have the chance to benchmark the various HDD's setting for Vegas scenarios on the F.
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"... I am going to have to send my computer for repair..." - I would suggest: preserve your current customized & added software software state: create a system image, which contains a copy of Windows and copies of your programs, system settings, and files with Windows Backup or an other backup utility. I used Acronis before but with 7, Windows Backup is fine.
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Thanks Joe, i planned to do the system image next. My wife has the new E series with the i5 processor. I have not had much of a hands on with it, and am not likely to as I barely have time to do what I need to do on my own F ! Even if i had the time, I am not techiiee enough to say anything meaningful, at least not yet. Once again, thanks for providing those references, i shall peruse in due course.

EDIT: re Vegas rendering times, would it be possible/beneficial to capture video to an external drive like the one you showed power over USB ? is the captured video what you refer to as the 'footage' ? Are the 'temporary' files the "pre-rendered" files ?

 

Awesome - thanks! Picking one up now. My trusty Gateway P7811-FX now serves duty as my media center PC, and this will go nicely with Boxee.

 

Quick ? friends, I have a US Vaio and am trying to figure out how to type the Euro Symbol (€ ....I copy and pasted that so don't say I already know how to do it

Every guide I read says hit ctrl-0128 on a numberpad, but it's not working. I need to use this symbol like a 1000x a day and it's pissing me off to copy and paste it every time.... any help?

 

In the words of Morpheus: "Welcome to the Real!" (In reference to getting your new Vaio F11).

Congrats!

 

hey congrats MM L) it looks good!

 

ALT! Press and hold Alt, then type 0128 on the keypad, then release Alt. It doesn't matter if the numlock is on or off.

 

I believe you can change the keyboard layout to US international and use key AltGr + 5 key combination as in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_US-International.svg

Using Linux, there is keyboard layout variant of US standard layout with euro sign on 5 key

 

Nice pictures melody, why does no one get the gray model??? haha

 

€

bamcis...I dunno why i kept reading alt-0128 but my mind kept reading ctrl-0128...lol Thanks MM and antaka

 

@MelodyMaster

Finally!!! great! how's you're impression of the new screen?

 

Sorta acceptable.

 

Intel Core i7-720QM Processor product page:"Max Turbo Frequency 2.8 GHz ...refers to the maximum single-core frequency that can be achieved with Intel Turbo Boost Technology..."

By roweraay ( more in his post):
i7-720QM:
Max Turbo Boost Frequency
4 Core: 1.73 GHz
3 Core: 1.73 GHz
2 Core: 2.40 GHz
1 Core: 2.80 GHz
Core Frequency: 1.60 GHz with DDR3-1333
LFM Frequency: 0.933 GHz
Shared L3 Cache: 6MB

Core i7 720QM vs Core i7 820QM - Benchmarks thread.



A graphical example of how Core i7 Mobile Turbo Boost works from hothardware.com's Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU (Clarksfield) Review.

Notebookcheck's i7-720QM Processor benchmarks & list of notebooks reviews with said CPU.

Intel i7-720qm overclocking?? thread.

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@ MelodyMaster: so you did take photos of "almost" everything but I did not see one with a cat sniffing your box.

I reserve my congrats until you report about your F as seen under your microscope, I don't want to jinx it.
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My clean install is now complete and tomorrow the laptop will be placed in service. Thanks to all of the helpful comments. I did eliminate most of the software and I still have 90GB available on the 128GB SSD (119GB actual space).

This machine has been a pleasure to use. It is screaming fast and is really quite quiet. I was able to get some sleep and I now realize that this thing is stunning for the cost. The fan is only noticable once in a while, and it is not terribly objectionable. 95% of the time it is whisper quiet. Yes, the optical drive is noisy.

In the end, I would love to have this same machine as my own and would not hesitate at all about buying another one for myself.

Bill

 

That doesn't sound too thrilling. And what happened to your avatar?

 

One more thing. I need to log in on boot. It takes me a second or so to type the password. From the time I press the "restart" button to the time that the last app (antivirus) has fully loaded on the restart is 44 seconds cosistantly, including my password typing! This is shut down to fully restart time! Cold restarts have been a little less consistant, running between 19 and 22 seconds to last application load.

Bill

 

Congrats ! Your computer looks exactly like mine (black !). Also, being a Canadian model, you seem to have snagged one of those rare and elusive 330M equipped birds.

I believe the yellow dot basically means that it is a unit that was probably not affected by the issue, and thus was inspected and passed, without any "fixing" needing to be done.

 

So, was the Sonyextractor tip useful for getting back WinDVD?

 

@JoeBleau

I tried the Furmark v.1.8.0 GPU stability test and it ran fine for about 20 mins until I got tired of staring at the furry rotating ring. ( doh! better to retest and leave it alone to complete before I go to sleep tonight).

Well, during the +/- 20 minutes it was testing these were the results:

Temp: Started at 48c minimum which quickly shot up and plateaued to 61c with intermittent spikes up to 62c max.

Window parameters: 1920x1080
MSAA samples: set at 16x in the control panel but during testing, the benchmark was showing 4x

FPS: 9fps minimum, 10fps average, 15fps maximum

I believe the test was to see if the display driver would fail during the test no? If so, the videocard stayed fine.

 

You know, that wasn't a surprising answer. Anyway, give it some time. Maybe it'll work out for you as well.

 

Yes, it was to test stability & also max temperature. That seems like good results.

Maybe somebody could suggest an other intensive video card testing utility?

Have you checked in Windows 7 Event Viewer for errors when you had video problems as suggested in VAIO F GPU Problem?
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@Joe Bleau

In event viewer (twice): Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

The microsoft site lists it as Event ID 4101 and advises to check windows update for a new display driver
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349439(WS.10).aspx

EDIT: So far both Mass Effect 2 and Autocad 2010 have been running fine after the two incidents. SO, so far so good.
Checking windows update now

Edit 2: Nothing new in windows update

 

Ok, on my first F11 the Bluray drive was quiet. It was constructed of steel and felt solid. The bearing was probably tinctured brass. The drive on the new F11 is the flimsiest possible aluminum, you can actually twist the unit, and I think the bearing is just dry stainless steel in teflon or some such. Although they are both UJ240s there has been a dramatic drop in construction quality of the drive, that's why it's noisy. I've posted pictures of the old drive, I'll take pictures of the new one and post both side by side tomorrow.

Also one of the rails is missing, the drive is slightly skewed in the frame.

 

Ahh... Event Viewer errors & searching the web, that's fun! With this search: nvidia "gt 330m" nvlddmkm stopped responding, I stumbled upon this Geforce 330m Drivers 300m series, Where can I find latest drivers for 300m series on the Nvidia Forum.

This reply by ManuelG (NVIDIA Technical Support) is most interesting:

The rest of the thread is interesting too.

You should post in that forum describing what happened on your F & report here, naturally.

 

@MelodyMaster

Hmm...Since they had to source one for you with a GT 330m, they had to get a unit shipped from China?
I guess it doesn't make a difference since both my San Diego units are both tagged 'Made in USA with FOREIGN Components'. not that I care where it's made so much really but I seem to recall that Canadians also got theirs shipped from San Diego. Why not just get US stock?

 

Yes but that problem is a couple of years old and relates more to ATI cards. (atikmdag) I remember very well having to deal with it. The issue is not the video driver but rather a resource conflict or a missing or replaced dll caused by the install of certain programs. ALSO, the timeout can be caused by the GPU clocks changing during heavy gaming, that seems to disconnect the driver.

As a stress test I'm running Furmark constantly on the GT330 while it's overclocked, the GPU is reaching 80 Celsius, yet it's totally stable.

 

Yah, mine is tagged made in China, and has the model as F11G9X. The unit itself is a regular F119SO/GX. But these are the exact machines being shipped to Canadians in March.

 

@Melodymaster

The fashion choices are unique

 

Is anybody else thrilled with the North American screen? At least it's not actually defective.

I'll rotate pictures of beautiful Canadian ladies for my avatar (though Marion Davies is not Canadian.)

 

Completely off topic so apologies to anyone who reads this..

@MelodyMaster...I have no idea why in response to your last post about switching avatars that I thought about putting one up but for some bizzare reason looked for images of Lea & Perrins Worchestershire Sauce lol

 

Well I'm a Limey and used to dump that stuff on everything I ate. Maybe that came through.

 

Yeah - I even fiddled with the clocks on mine and the card stays relatively cool at 65C under load.

 

After living with my F11 for three weeks, adjusting this, loading this and that profile, tweaking some more etc. - I've grown accustomed to her face.

All I have to do is power up my three year old Dell Latitude 820 (with its 1050 vertical resolution screen and fading CFL light source - another reason for LEDs) and say to myself "What the hell was I complaining about".

I was hoping that I would not have to constantly adjust the screen everytime I move when the notebook is on my lap. Yes, I do a lot of development work away from my desk. I'll get over it! The semigloss - or is it semimatte - screen is definately a fingerprint magnet on the edges from the constant adjusting.

MM - Did you do the colorization of the Marion Davies Avatar? I Googled her and only the B&W version of that iamge showed up in the first few pages.

 

On a whim, I purchased the Belkin cooling pad (plugs into USB port for power). It's louder than I thought it would be. It's about 50% of the sound (to me) of the F115 when the F115 is under full load in a graphics intensive game. As I use it more, I'll post a review of whether I think this was worthwhile. If the sound is always this loud, it kind of defeats the purpose. In fact, I can make a cooling pad that will be more quiet...

More to follow later.

 

Hi everybody,
i just bought an amazing laptop
the VAIO F11J1E
everything is great, i just made a clean install with 7 ultimate x64.

i just have one question: i installed every driver and also the vaio utilities, but i just can't see the control COLOR setting in the vaio control center

 

Check Step 3 in Sony_Support Clean Install Instructions for Windows 7 and here: http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-support/3860-sony-vaio-fn-keys.html

 

Hey guys would you be willing to do me a favor and run geekbench on your machines? Once plugged in, once on battery would make me a happy guy. very very happy

http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/

http://blog.mhackintosh.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/blog-geekbench-core2.jpg

Basically, I'm curious how the F series on battery stacks up against MBPs on battery. Odd, I know.

Sorry to be an again, just like.. damn. the local best buy has them and they stare me in the face, and I could really use a new laptop. bad. XD

 

@ooTLink

I got a score of 5622 and uploaded the benchmarks into Primelabs
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/225501

The free/trial utility is only 32-bit though. My system is native on 64-bit. I would expect to see better results than what I got on 32-bit

EDIT: Ran a second one and gave me 5706
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/225510

I guess the difference is close?

I'd like to see what kind of benchmarks we can get with similar specs to mine but with SSD and 64-bit testing. (if they have the full version application)

EDIT 2: Benchmark of battery is 3353
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/225538