Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

I second that. When I called in the first time to get my keyboard fixed, I called in late at night and (I'm pretty sure) I got connected to the Philippines (there was an ever-so-slight accent). Anyhow, the service person was really nice and basically told me "I'm pretty sure the keyboard issue comes from a hardware fault, but just to be sure we'll try some software fixes." Good stuff - not at all like when I called the next morning and the lady who answered refused to acknowledge that I had confirmed the night before that the problem was not software-related and she made me walk through the whole process of re-installing the keyboard drivers again (I'm also fairly certain that she had no idea what she was having me do and simply reading off of a document).

 

I might be naive or perhaps don't have any prior experience in laptop screens but I have the 1600x900 display and I can't find anything wrong with it. I actually want to be able to find a problem with the display so I can say I know what you are talking about but it looks fine to me. Maybe if I played some hi-res games or looked at my screen beside a 1920x1080 one I would notice the difference? Either way, it's correct to say it is all relative.

On another note, I bought my computer in Canada and have been following this thread since I bought it. I am living in Japan now, on the outskirts of Tokyo, and I went to a big electronics store here and found the Sony F series. I couldn't believe how expensive it is here in Japan. The F11 series with what seem to be identical specs to most of the users here (I will snap a pic of it later!) sells for 236,000 YEN, which is approximately $2300 USD. I will be back with a picture of the Japanese F11 on display soon..

 

That's a very good find To No End, I can just imagine all the different steps combinations you tried before achieving success.

Maybe you could add to that post the recipe for getting the F's fan stuck @ 100% which was according to previous posts:

1- Run F on battery with Critical battery low state action set to Hibernation (default).

2- When the F's green power button LED is flashing showing near battery exhaustion & entering the process of hibernating: interrupt normal process completion by connecting to AC or pressing power button or remove battery.

Et voilà! Fan stuck @ 100%!

To prevent this: allow hibernation to be completed by waiting for the green power button LED to turn off. Plug, wait about 15 seconds then turn on normally (not necessary but that's me liking the safe side).

Note: If the laptop goes into hibernation because the battery reached a critical low state then one may expect that it will not turn back on while still on battery power. That's normal.

Both the recipe & fix show that it's not only a BIOS question. ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is present in BIOS, in Device Manager > System Devices and in user power plans settings. They are all linked.



I did not find any docs specific to the F & Win 7 @ the present but my guess is that the fan stuck @ 100% could be fixed either by:

- Resetting the BIOS as described by MelodyMaster here or a specific method for the F not posted yet in the this thread.

- Selecting the Balanced power plan & resetting it to default and removing/reinstalling ACPI & Microsoft-ACPI stuff. See this Sony_support doc for example, note that it's for Windows ME, not our F's! And that there is a big red Warning. This is just a clue for people who want to do some digging.

I would not attempt anything before creating a System Image which contains a copy of Windows and copies of your added programs, customized system settings, and files with Windows Backup or an other backup utility. But that's just me erring on the safe side.

*****

Again: Vaio_VPCF LED Indicators

From > Start > Help & Support > Indicator Light:

Since To No End managed to get an orange flashing power button LED when trying to force the F to resume from hibernation while still on critical low battery state, he may have found and other LED code not described in the Help doc quoted above.

 

That's because there IS nothing wrong with it, thus there's nothing to look for since you got a good one.

It would be great if we could get a side by side picture of a good screen and a bad screen, same camera and angle.

 

Been experimenting with this laptop and I've noticed that FOR ME, not doing the morse code fix silences my fan up to 50% whilst doing non cpu intensive tasks such as browsing and writing this post.

 

I am looking at the VPCF115FM/B at Bestbuy. My question is: Does it support hardware virtualization (VT) in bios? I've tried searching for answer but came up with nothing. Thanks.

 

Yes. ....,,,

 

Yes it does on my VPCF115FM/B but I disabled it again after a while as I did not really need it & it was slowing down the system a tad.

 

Thank you for your answer.

 

The battery charge LED also lights up when you push the power button.

Anyway, I've noticed you guys talking about a morse code fix a lot. Way back in the day, I had something similar that I used on my MacBook to silence something similar, all you're hearing is the power management system work its way on the GPU and north bridge (mostly). It appears there may even be some power cutting going on with the memory (not sure on that one, but in cpu-z it noted that there were multiple states, or was that SIW).

Anyway, that power management stuff causes quite a bit of noise. The reason why the "morse code fix" eats up battery and causes the fans to run higher is, that it usually ends up keeping the power saving features from happening.

 

Here's a quick comparison of my brother's 4 year old Dell Inspiron and my F11. Both have a similar high resolution and glossy surface. Sony should be ashamed of themselves.

 

@triton

is that the screen you ended up with even after sending it in? or did you not send it in in the end? don't quite remembered what happened in your case, but that screen is pretty horrible.

 

Wow, that's hella bad.. For comparison:

 

Could you post 2 separate photos taken centered from the sweet spot for each laptops, similiar to mongosango's seen in this post?



One may see some 1080p glossy display shot at extreme angles in the notebookcheck review: http://www.notebookcheck.pl/Recenzja-Sony-Vaio-F11M1E-H.27412.0.html

We can see that you voted subpar in the Sony_F_Series Owners Display Poll but twice as much voted awesome. I guess you were unlucky.

 

That's a skewed photo, the Apple_is centered & the Sony_is @ an angle in relation to the camera's sensor plane.





Also the brightness should be the same (cmd/m2) as much as possible & the camera set to manual. The Sony_keyboard seems more lit by the LCD and the lid angles do not look the same.

 

To be fair to the F, those are great observations.

 

Anyone have a possible solution? I've checked that no programs are blocking my internet access. Is this the same problem that I read about here a while ago where an older router was to blame? For if so, my laptop must only really like the newest N routers.

 

"my laptop must only really like the newest N routers" - Why? You said that Skype worked.

 

have anyone solved the high pitch frequency noise when plugging any usb device?
I already have "fixed" driver from sony, i already tried to flag the "listen the device" option, i already tried to mute microphone.
No one solved
My only solution is to not use any usb.. this noise is making my head explode!

 

My official Sony F series battery rating: Good for 3-4 episodes of king of the hill (in flash). XD

Jam! Jelly! Jam! Jelly!

 

can you explain your situation a bit more? is it a constant noise after you've plugged in the USB device? is the noise coming from the speakers? what sort of device are you trying to plug in?

can't say i've ever heard of a noise resulting from plugging in something via USB before. maybe others here have, but i think more information would probably be useful either way.

 

I've the same problem. I sended it in but it didn't solve the problem but I don't remember what they replaced and I don't have the paper anymore.
Witch driver are you talking about?

 

It's a sound coming from the upper left side off the keyboard (area of the fan) and from the moment you plug any usb-device in any of the three usbsslots the laptop starts making a hign pitch noise and from the moment you remove the usb-device from the slot, the sounds stops.
The noise is constant when the CPU is in idle but from the moment you step it on its tail the sound stops, but restarts almost instantly when the cpu isn't working anymore.

 

Hmmm. You said that skype works, but your browsers don't??? Try this:

Open up the start menu, and type cmd in the search box and hit enter. Then type:

or something like (pings your router - 192.168.0.1 is usually the ip address of your router)

or even (an ip owned by G.E. corp)

You should get a series of lines afterwards. if it says something like:

Then your computer is able to communicate with whatever ip address you typed in. If you get something like:

(I think windows 7 says something else, but anyhow it's something shorter than the line that prints if you do get a reply back from the ip address).

See what happens, and to exit, just type exit into the console (don't use the "x" button)

 

thats pretty interesting. so the sound isn't coming from the fan probably or else you'd hear a change in fan speed. in general, no other parts should be capable of making noise. maybe the piezo speaker? but to emit a sound like that might mean that something is shorting.

in result, my best guess would be a faulty motherboard.

 

That was my thought also but Sony replaced another part, but i forgot the name. For the moment I need this laptop so I'm not sending it in again.

 

(Sigh) I meant a comparison between an F11 that has the shading, as on the right, and an F11 that DOESN'T have the shading! We already know that the standard spec for the screen doesn't allow for good viewing angles. We need a comparison showiing that the defect is variable on the F11's NA screen. Your pictures don't prove that point.

The NA F11 has BAD (defective) screens and GOOD (non-defective) screens, what you have may not be what I have...

(Edit) and that F11 screen looks about the same as mine, my first F11 that was returned would have shown light at the top also with inverted colours while having the same amount of light at the bottom.

There`s no doubt whatsoever that I`m going to change the screen on my unit, I wish some hardy, brave, pioneering world-saving Gentleman or Lady of superior calibre would accomplish the heroic task of getting the number of the EU screen (LED or Matte..) ..barring that I`ll put in a two-lamp...

 

i do believe his pictures help. we're probably not going to get a picture of 2 F11's side by side with one bad screen and one good screen. that in itself would require someone with 2 F11's making it highly unlikely already. now we DO have a picture of one with horrible shading and many have posted pictures other their F11's, some with good screens.

What we should do is designate a standard picture like the one he had on his screen showing the color gradients. Then have people who have good screens take of picture of their laptop with that image up to show the difference. preferably in the same environment. (dark or lit room). picture should be taken from perspective of the sweet spot as we all know viewing angle sucks.

that would give us a good comparison of the different F11 screens. maybe even throw in more of a mix, get the bad, good, EU, US. That way everyone would have a standardized reference point.

 

That chart is not a good reference for the display, since it doesn`t allow for showing differences in colorimetry and contrast between the bottom, middle, and top of the display. We need to design a three-point chart specifically to display this issue.

And the shading on that F11 isn`t so bad, it doesn`t display the Flashlight effect, which is really dramatic.

 

haha. well that is getting a bit further into the details. but i think you know the general idea of what i'm getting at. a standardized frame of reference put together with the help of the other F11 users to help others determine how their screen is performing.

 

This is a little off topic, but is covering the sensor with a piece of tape the only way to get the back light keyboard to come on more often? For me it almost never comes on; it has to be really DARK. Is there not an update for it or anything yet?


Also, what screens are you guys talking about being bad? The 1600x900? Or both? Because I think my screen is great...

 

100% correct, same problem in the same ways :\
that's not the noise of a fan and it's not coming from speakers

 

i think the tape over the sensor is the best method at the moment. not ideal, but it works. maybe others have found alternative methods via software and if so, please share.

and for the most part, we've been talking about the 1920x1080 screens. tho i'm sure it wouldn't hurt to get a reference point for the 1600x900 screens either. i think melodymaster may have something in mind in terms of a reference picture so if he posts something, would you mind helping us along with a picture? single picture, dark room, sweet spot would be about all we need

 

Yeah I can post a similar picture after he posts his.

 

We can atleast try to set a standard for "screen pics" and place the images side-by-side to show people what a "bad" screen and "good" screen are.

I say something like:

Things that are relatively easy to control

• Camera is placed two feet away from the screen
• As little ambient light as possible (preferably in a pitch-black room)
• Screen edges parallel on the image (i.e. don't take the photo at an angle. Use your camera's "show grid" function if it has one and try to line up the edges).
• Screen brightness at 100%, automatic brightness off.
• No screen calibration profiles in use.
• Display (several) standardized image(s). Maybe a few test patterns, photographs and a plain black image.

Things that are harder to control

• Camera type? - I know my point-and-shoot isn't anywhere near as good as an DSLR or something.

Then someone (I could do it) should compile all of the images and put them in one post so that people can compare their screens to the images and see if their screens are defective.

Again, not as good as having two F11s side by side, but it'll be better than nothing. Any volunteers to take pics? I can do some of my "good" screen.

 

those guidelines sound good. i don't know much about color calibration and all that fun stuff so if someone could find some good images for this purpose, that would be great.

camera type won't be much of an issue. but maybe a little standardizing of camera settings would be useful. ex) some one using night mode vs day mode and the like would probably create problems. maybe just best if everyone left it at auto? i think that would produce the most similar results given everyone has different cameras.

 

First, on the good and bad screens...

I purchased a 1600 X 900 F11 that is perfectly OK, but nothing that makes me say "WOW!!!" I noticed no bleeding or other problems, but the viewing angle was not very good. Even my 8 yr old dell 17" stand-alone monitor looks better.

On this same note, I have 3 more ordered, one with the 1920 X 1080 screen. If I still have all 3 at the same time, I will take pics using good geometry and a Sony Alpha a700 with a Sony Zeiss ZA 24-70 f/2.8 lens in a controlled environment.

On a different note, Melody asked why I went with the OWC SSD instead of the cheaper Toshiba option from Sony. Well, OWC changed the internals of its drives from the very expensive Sandforce 1500 controller to the much less expensive Sandforce 1200 controller and failed to tell me. They tried to pocket the cash for their lesser and less expensive product. I have returned the drives and instead will be outfitting the new drives with Crucial M225 SSDs, which have been working fine for us so far. The two 1600 X 900 machines will get 128GB SSDs (used as server based mobile workstations) but my personal F11 will get the 256GB SSD, which I paid $579 for. I believe that this may be about the cheapest $/GB ratio for any SSD at the moment...about $2.26 per GB. While expensive compared to HDDs, this is still Very inexpensive for SSDs.

I bought from Newegg.

Bill

 

Hey guys!

A new F11S1E-B owner here!

I have purchased it a few days ago and so far I can't say I have any major complaints, apart form the criminal 5400rpm hard drive.
For my previous laptop (Sony VAIO AR71M), I bought an Intel SSD 80GB, while I had another 300GB 7200rpm disk inside (it had place for two drives).
However, since F series laptops have room for 1 disk only, I have to buy a new, larger SSD (my music library alone would take up the most of the 80GB disk, so that's not a really good option).

I'm thinking of buying the Crucial 256GB RealSSD (SATA3 6GB/s interface), but before I buy it, I'd like to know whether I could use its full potential, or not.
So my question would be, what SATA interface do VAIO F-Series comps feature? 3GB/s or 6GB/s?

Cheers!

 

Yep, I wasted over two months sending it in for repair. The second time was to the Sony Factory Service Center in Toronto, and even the technician there wrote "There is nothing wrong with LCD - every LCD will have this effect". After this, customer support considers the matter closed - no repair, no exchange, no refund. I've been to the Sony Store and Best Buy and I have to say that none of the Sony screens look "awesome" to me (at least relative to a 4 year old Dell since everything's relative). By the way, I tried to match the brightness as well as I could in the photos and the the surface of my F11 is metallic. I also took a straight-on photo a while back. I'm very interested to see the 1600x900.

 

Hi guys,

I know this has been covered, just thought I would chime in with my experience with VMware Player.

I followed this guide:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11287/how-to-run-ubuntu-in-windows-7-with-vmware-player/

I now have Ubuntu 9.10 running as a virtual machine when I want it...and it is pretty fast and responsive (I have the i7-820). Unity mode is really cool.

I took the defaults on everything for installation and it was a breeze. The install included VMware Tools installed automatically in Ubuntu. I selected a 10Gb installation, because I won't add much data to the Virtual Machine. Just be sure and enable VT in the bios. (You can do this when you install VMplayer.exe -- it needs a restart.)

Now I'm looking for more Operating Systems to install...

Gary

 

3GB/sec. I looked long and hard at the RealSSD after the OWC fiasco. It is a very fast drive, but has the same small read and write bottlenecks that other SSDs have. The Sandforce controlled SSDs are best at this, folloed by the slow writing Intels. As stated above, Iwent back to the Crucial M225 series 256GB drive due to its great low price at Newegg last night.

I hope this helps.

Bill

 

Thanks!

This helps.

I guess I'm going to buy this disk, just because it is 6GB/s drive and when SATA3 becomes the standard, I'll be ready

 

Hi,
I was wondering if any tried these games on the laptop to see if they are working in MED or HIGH..

Command & Conquer 4
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Modern Warfare 2
World in Conflict: Soviet Assault
Assassin's Creed 2

thanks in advance..

 

Click on any of the links in my sig

 

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCF115FMB&upd_id=5448&os_id=45

This utility updates the Realtek High Definition Audio driver to version 6.0.1.5992 to resolve the following issues:
A high frequency noise may occur when connecting and disconnecting a USB flash drive
A noise may occur for two seconds after finishing playing video or music files

 

already tried.. it doesn't work

edit: 59mb? :O i just tried the european version and it occupies 111mb.. ok i'll try the us version of this "fixed driver"

 

My FW490 arrived a few minutes ago.

Unfortunately I don't have a camera. (I gave all of them to my dad). I'll have to get one in a few days.
Anyway, here is an oblique shot from the iphone.

Notice how the top and corners of the screen of the F11 already shows picture degradation whereas the FW still has a coherent image. (I know...I know, not the best picture quality....Take it up with apple )

FW screen is much better. It is brighter, has stronger contrast, and has a wider vertical viewing angle. From a sitting position, picture inversion really only begins at very and I mean very extreme angles. this includes the lid pushed all the way back. Watching movies with dark backgrounds is still acceptable when the lid is pushed all the way back although to the expense of detail within very dark/black images which starts to just read black around 65 degrees? and more.

hmmm....no competition at all... I am also sure I have the 'good' F11 screen the second time around.
Hope Roweraay's LCD replacement is successful!!! I believe his Sharp screen is identical to the FW490.

I still like my F11 by the way I will however replace the screen

 

No, no, no; you don't understand: The F11 US screen is absolutely gorgeous, and this is proven by the empirical, double-blinded study Joe conducted in his F11 screen poll. Any issues you have with the F11 screen are pure fiction and solely due to your fundamental misunderstanding of LCD technology.

How's that for being facetious, Joe?

 

One thing I think we`d all like to know..is the FW490 screen one lamp or two? And what is the display model number?

 

I voted positively for the F series screen, because there are far worse laptop LCDs out there. Far, far worse.

However some of you guys have it REALLY bad. And I'm still saying, compared to a good IPS LCD, these things are pieces of junk.

Of course, only 2-3 laptops ever made have IPS LCDs, and the 1080p LCD in the F is still a 7/10 screen overall, I'd say.

Granted, I wouldn't even touch a screen below 5/10, barely a 6/10 one.