Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

i think you have a decent screen. little light gradient at the bottom, but no inversion, no distortion. if you look around, other users have posted pictures that makes your screen seem quite nice.

and yea, i'm kinda sad at how my idea got completely blown over. i really think getting a standardized set of pictures of screens would be a great idea. too bad when i came back on to check if there was any progress in it, all i saw was a massive hate-storm.

 

Only you can tell us if the photo is representative of what your screen looks in real life.

Is it?

You wrote in an other post:

Too bad your photo is so grainy (high ISO).

*****

The recurring display posts by waitwaitwait, Triton77, aaronjb and a few others about their perceived or real subpar LCD's proves my point about unhappy users being more vocal than happy ones who generally post only one time their feedback and that's why the Sony_F_Series Owners Display Poll is a good thing as everything is relative.

Again: Guys, I'm sure you don't want to read this opinion but maybe Sony_is right & your displays are within the expected specs for a laptop @ the price point as the F considering all the features (CPU, GPU, etc).

You can't buy a Toyota & expect a Mercedes.

Now yes, some may have a defective screen:

- Ask for a refund, buy an other brand.

- Exchange for an other F or Z or whatever.

- Send for repair. If_Sony says it's within specs limits, it probably is.

If all the above fails:

- Buy a quality external monitor with the savings made with the F.

- Accept it for what it is, enjoy life.

- Vote subpar in the Poll.

- Sell it for a loss, never buy a_Sony again.

- Please do not post 20 times about the same subject, there is so many other interesting stuff we can talk about.

*****

I've never seen a notebook review so far where the brightness distribution was perfectly even. Here are for example some screen captures from reviews by notebookcheck made with pro grade luminance measurement tools: Vaio_F EU vs. Dell Studio 1747 and the pricey MacBook Pro 17":



Note that I measured a higher maximum luminosity of 248.4 cd/m2 with a contrast ration of only 128.833 to 1 (248.4 / 1.8) for the exact same LCD model: SHARP LQ164M1LD4C as Notebookcheck noted in their VAIO_F11M1E/H review. See more details about this & EU vs. US in part #2 of the Vaio_F_Series Monitor Profiles Roundup & US glossy vs. EU Premium Displays post.

 

Yes, there were generic dual-lamp inverter options available too, at less than $20, but I decided to go with the super-elusive Sony part#.

 

could this mean that they are getting ready for an updated F series?

Does anyone know when the next update is coming??

 

Sorry, I kind of nicked your idea (not that anyone besides waitwaitwait listened):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6157787&postcount=3290

Some recommended test images:

Volunteers: In a completely dark room, take pictures of your screen (with the below images at fullscreen), with the edges parallel to the ends of the image from approximately two feet away from the screen (this is about the length of an 8.5x11" sheet of paper from the edge of the notebook chassis). Then take pictures with a screen angle of about 130 degrees and 85 degrees, from the same distance.

Reference Images:

Viewing angle test (for fullscreen, hit F11 in Firefox or Chrome)
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php#angleGrey

Image 1:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/tiger.jpg

Image 2:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/Mountains.jpg

Black screen:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/black.jpg

 

Thanks for posting the pic. Doesn't look too bad - the backlight bleed seems a little bit on the strong side. Would you be willing to try it with the images in my post above?

Also, Does anybody have an F that has an EXTREMELY limited viewing angle? Basically, part of the screen has inverted colors, no matter what angle you have the screen relative to you?

 

Thanks melody, rep given!

So there's no control over the backlit kb other than covering the ambient sensor? Or are there settings somewhere to turn it on/off ?

 

S1 > Vaio_Control Center > Keyboard & Mouse > Backlit KB.

 

Rep given!

So you can't manually turn it on/off...it's dependent on the ambient lighting. hmm. Is it sensitive enough or does it have to be pitch black for it to turn on?

 

boring, false alarm

 

Check the box, cover tiny sensor above the F9 key with a piece of tape or happy face sticker: Et voilà! Always on.

Or check the box & let the sensor decide.

Uncheck the box, Et voilà! Always off which is my setting. It's a gadget really, EU users should be glad they have the Premium matte LCD option & not whine about missing that thing.

 

lol, fair enough.

Can I get more feedback on heat/fan noise? That's really my last concern...

Thanks a lot.

 

Nobody reported overheating. Please Search this Thread with: fan. Hours of fun read.

Check U.P. link in my sig.

You seem pretty generous with Rep points, not the case for the cheapos around here. That post took me about 3 hours to make, no comments nor rep on it so far: Vaio_F_Series Monitor Profiles Roundup & US glossy vs. EU Premium Displays.

 

I pretty much agree with what you said especially the last part, which was one of the main reasons why I went for the F11. But I returned the notebook yesterday for the reasons you mentioned (screen & noise) plus it had dead/stuck pixels and the flimsy DVD tray is sometimes unresponsive. I'm thinking of waiting for the next refresh, or just might consider the Z11.

 

I'd like to hear from you since you seem very knowledgeable... how's the fan noise and heat?

And the one bought at Best Buy, is it black or grey? I know it says black but in the pics it looks grey. Seems like the only "true" black is the euro premium black version? I'm really not sure, I'd just like to know for sure what color the Best Buy version is.... thanks!

 

I Have a problem:

--- A sound appeared under touchpad, surely hdd. the sound always existing. it somestimes become loud like motor working. ı dont want to hear this. it becomes me insane. is anybody here could fix my problem? I dont mention fan noise or microphone noise.

 

sounds like your HDD is dying then. backup now before you lose everything. then send it in for repair.

 

Backup your system ASAP.

ASSIST > Vaio_Care > Troubleshooting > Hardware Test > Hard Drive:

 

so you totally ignored my reply? I'm the one that said cover the ambient sensor!

 

Ok so it looks like at work I have it displaying to the external monitor and so even when it is not connected the laptop was saying I was displaying to external monitor! I had to change the settings when connected to the external to say display to the internal and then it finally let me change the color mode setting!

Also Joe, the calibration does not appear to have fixed the battery drain issue. I SHUTDOWN my laptop last night after verifying 100% charged and this morning when I booted it up with only my Ethernet cable plugged in, it was at 85%!


I'll try again later, maybe I messed up some part of it

 

Someone has replaced the hdd by a SSD !? (like Crucial RealSSD C300 256 Go for example)

 

Unknown...no man I didn't. I'm pretty sure I gave you rep, I tried now but says that I gave too much, so I'll give you some tomorrow.

Can people comment about heat/fan noise and the actual color of the system. Is it black or grey? Thanks.

 

My GPU temps (with overclock) never go much above 70C, CPU temps hover around 60C under load. Both CPU and GPU hover around 45C or so under idle.

The fan is almost constantly turning. Right now, I have about 9 tabs open in chrome, and about 9 other windows open in various applications. The fan speed is low, and sounds pretty similar to someone blowing a little bit of air. The fan really does get quite loud when gaming or encoding (less so when playing movies, although 1080p movies in VLC after a while ramps up the fan a bit).

As for the color, the outside of the machine is solid black (top lid is a smooth matte finish). the inside is more "gunmetal grey" - its a very dark grey, but a bit lighter than the outer black. It looks quite nice.

 

I posted a few pages back about screen testing link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6157787&postcount=3290

(this is also a few pages back, but so you don't have to navigate all the way there).

If you would like to volunteer - please PM me even if you post a screen in this thread! This way I can compile all of the images into bad/good and get them up in one post (don't worry - credit and rep will be given to those who volunteer).

For those of you who want to volunteer, when you PM me, please include with what type of camera the image was captured (dSLR or point-and-shoot, etc) and the make/megapixels. A focal length of 35mm is apparently close to the human eye and will help eliminate bezel curvature (people with point-and-shoot cameras, zoom in/out to adjust the focal length. Also, thanks to Joe Bleau for the info )

Some recommended test images:

Volunteers: In a completely dark room, take pictures of your screen (with the below images at fullscreen), with the edges parallel to the ends of the image from approximately two feet away from the screen (this is about the length of an 8.5x11" sheet of paper from the edge of the notebook chassis). Then take pictures with a screen angle of about 130 degrees and 85 degrees, from the same distance.

Reference Images:

Viewing angle test (for fullscreen, hit F11 in Firefox or Chrome)
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php#angleGrey

Image 1:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/tiger.jpg

Image 2:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/Mountains.jpg

Black screen:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/black.jpg

 

Image 1 and 2 are broken links. Might be a problem with the site not allowing hotlinking. Would probably be better for you to just download them and host them somewhere like photobucket.

but just to check, these were the download links i got when i looked them up:
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/Dfc55d98/02213_jenneroutlook_1920x1080.jpg
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/Dfc55d98/02212_thestare_1920x1080.jpg

 

Oh - thanks so much for the heads-up! Here are the new links (also updated in my posts above):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/tiger.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/126056/Mountains.jpg

 

ı made this, but no change on the noise, it is still makes me insane please help me

 

doing the HDD check was quite a long shot as it was and was almost definitely not going to fix your problem from the start. unless you can confirm that the problem is not from your hard drive, then you really should send it in for repairs because your hard drive will probably be dying soon.

 

No, nobody ever did that in this thread. That's why it's useless to Search this thread with: SSD.

 

The Polish notebookcheckreview which Joe Bleau found (thank you!) and which I also posted with the Google translator for an English version last week or so has pictures of the angles, if I'm not mistaken. (search our posts)

BTW I agree that Sony needed to strategize the marketing of the F and decided it needed to be cheaper in the North American market. No problem. Cutting on the screen? An option to achieve the price point.

Calling the European screen RGB LED the same thing as the North American screen: Premium Full HD? BIG PROBLEM.

It's called "bait and switch".....

 

No, that's not correct. Willy or Billy (?) got three Fs for himself and his church and bought SSDs for them. He posted about the fact that the controller was changed on the SSD brand he bought (after rejecting MelodyMaster's suggestion that he get the Sony-installed Toshiba SSD option), because the other brand did a "bait and switch" -- so he returned them and is getting a different brand -- all influenced by anandtech.com reviews.

None of us can remember this whole thread all of the time!

 

An example of what inversion looks like (you have a bad screen if your screen looks like this when looking at it dead-on).



(Thanks Derrida )

 

haha. looks like sarcasm really is a lot harder to get across online eh joe?

But I do remember others having changed from HDD to SSD without having to purchase an extra controller. May depends on the SSD? I'm not actually too sure about this part.

 

Sorry, no, I wasn't clear. A separate controller was never necessary. The contoller in the SSD provided by the manufacturer was downgraded to an earlier version, leading Willy/Billy (sorry, no time to search the post) to return the SSDs and order different ones.

MelodyMaster made the excellent point that the Toshiba offered by Sony as a CTO option was cheaper than anything out there, just about (and the Toshiba has decent reviews and the 256GB may now support TRIM and RAID 0). But the forum member preferred to pay several hundred more per unit to have the current technology up to anandtech.com snuff.

Gotta run....

 

Or look at the remaining FWs around. In the SonyStyle Outlet Sony just dumped a few dozen FW490 refurbs, many with the superb FullHD screen that got 1:454 contrast ratios, incredible viewing angles and better lumination than the F. You can find some with higher end Centrino2s. And all at around $1000, some of them are considerably less, some a bit more.

Okay, I'm outta here! Till later....

 

Thanks for the tip! There's also an additional 20% coupon (OUTLETVAIO20X) good until the 20th.

 

WOW Joe, that's a big post.

Well, thanks for all this information, I'll try every step you described and post the results as soon as I can. And about that local notebook repair shop, they did nothing to the F, not even opened it, so it has nothing to do with them. I took the F to the local authorized Sony repair shop here, and they didn't even know how to fix the fan problem, they don't know the F yet (even thought it is sold here officially, the European version), so they can't help me for now.

And the battery is charging normally, by the way.

 

Can somebody please tell me what page the information about the screen profile helper. i heard that there was a screen profile which improved the colour. I haven't got he time to look though all 700 pages of posts, maybe somebody remembers which page its on?

Would be really helpful.

 

I'm looking for the same information. Maybe someone could make this a sticky topic.

 

Seven posts above there a link in somebody's signature to this unification post. This is a sticky post about every fix that has been found.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5992644#post5992644

 

thanks! would have taken eons to find that.

 

I have indeed replaced the factory hard drive with SSDs. I did not base my SSD purchase on Anandtech. My SSDs have not been reviewed on that site. Also, what I ended up with was an "option that was $41 less than the Sony Toshiba option and offers a 5 year warranty.

thanks for the love though Derry or Dairy or whatever the name was...(I forget also!)

Replacing the hard drive with an SSD involves a small screwdriver and a few minutes of time. Getting the SSD to function, however, requires reinstalling the operating system, all drivers and whatever utilities, programs, files and folders that you have accumulated.

If you are looking to perform a clean install and would like an SSD, go for it! In my opinion, this is the best performance upgrade you can give to your computer! Of course, others will disagree.

OWC did not revert to an earlier controller. The Sandforce 1500 controller is perhaps the best out there right now and I bought their SSDs based on them being based on this controller. Instead, after all testing and reviews were completed, they began shipping with the new 1200 controller, which is, apparently a slightly stripped down version of the 1500. Performance would be very close to equal and the warranty is the same. However, it is NOT the same. the 1500 is an enterprise class controller costing $100-150 more than the consumer class 1200 controller. If I knew that the controller was the 1200 version before my purchase, I would have STILL bought it. However, when they tell me I am getting one thing, then ship a lesser product, I felt cheated. Even if the performance was the same, I did not get what I paid for.

Like buying a V6 and getting the turbocharged 4. The performance may be the same but reliability and maintenance may be more, plus the manufacturer sold a car and substituted the $4,000 motor for the $5000 motor without telling me or giving me a discount.

Willy, or Billy. I forget.

 

Joe,

The Power Over eSATA portable cases that you reccommended showed up today from Computer Geeks.com (through Amazon).

Thanks! They are exactly what I was looking for and each box includes a power over eSATA cable.

 

But with the factory option SSD you have the install all ready to go, and with Fresh Start there is NO bloatware. Isn't the $41 worth the time?

And in Canada the 256 Gig SSD is only $225 over the 7200rpm base drive...(250 gig?)

My Toshiba doesn't seem to support Trim regardless, but the drive is filled and I don't notice a slowdown. And there are tools to re-optimize an SSD.

 

Excuse me, but the Unification post, including calibration and everything else on Earth you'd ever want to know about the F11, is linked on POST #1 of this thread, Page 1 Post 1, how can that be "hard to find??"

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=464372

 

maybe it's hard to find because people like you post useless things like this and take up space to make this topic hundreds of pages.

 

It was a joke, Search this Thread with SSD returned 127 results. Same with: monitor profile: 32 results.

We can't re-write all the posts every time a newbie shows up. Often after searching the thread & reading a few posts on the subject, new questions will arise or specifics may be needed, I welcome those.

And a search takes about 2 seconds.

That's uncalled for & MelodyMaster's posts are most of the time very good contributions or pertinent questions. Why is it useless to point out that post #1, like in many other threads, contains interesting links?

There is a lot of noise in the thread because of repetitive questions & statements. A lot of people use us as human search engines instead of using the Search this Thread feature first.

It also seems that nobody reads the signatures, a few of us constantly link to the Unification Post.

 

Glad you found some. Your link is broken BTW by notebookreview's keywords coupon link parsing. This works: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=HE-2521B&x=0&y=0 That's where crzytimes bought his, it's identical to mine including what's in the box. He used it for his OEM HDD which he replaced with an Intel SSD. Check his posts here (photos), here (SSD) & here.

As mentioned in the Power Over eSATA Port & ext Enclosures Benchmarks post, search Google products, Amazon_HE-2521B (added in fresh edit of that post), geeks.com HE-2521B or eBay (title & description) with the product number: HE-2521B.

 

Melody,

I paid $579 for a Crucial 256GB M225 (and $325 each for 128GB M225s for the workstation use F11s). I have multi-license copies of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit that I perform clean installs with. I eliminate all partitions and create recovery disks after all programs. These are used on a church/ school server network with VPN for home and other remote uses, such as conferences.

I need to do a clean install anyways, so yes, this is the easiest way to go.

Again, my new i7 820QM HD display 8 GB RAM unit will be here in 9 or 10 days. I will take pics of the screen and compare them with at least 1 or 2 of the 1600X900 displays. I know this is not ideal, but I only ordered one 1080p screen because the others are more of a workstation model and the resolution and better graphics card are absolutely not needed for these machines. Mine, however, is a different story

I am not ever going to be a gamer, but I wanted a machine that would not be terribly obsolete before I had it for 6 months. I honestly was sold on the Asus G73, but they are having incredible problems, so I decided that I liked the Sony well enough. I have ALWAYS been a desktop person and the F11 was the first laptop that I ever enjoyed typing on.

As far as the Toshiba SSD, I have no idea which SSD Sony installs in the F11, but the reviews I have seen put the Toshiba SSDs in the lower tier as far as write speeds. Who knows, perhaps the Crucials will end up being junk, but at least they have a 5 year warranty and I have NEVER had a problem with their memory or their USB drives. Lets hope (for my sake!) that they have a good handle on how to build an SSD. I would compare them to the OCZ Vertex Turbo...but just a touch faster overall and a better warranty. They utilize TRIM and I tweak them in other ways that slow them down a touch but make them run MUCH less, hopefully adding to their longevity.

Bill

 

Joe,

I didn't set up a link on that post. For some reason, this site just plain highlighted and underlined the word A----n and made it look like a link. I'm sorry if anyone clicked on it thinking it would take them to where I bought from. I just looked for a link, but apparently computergeeks.com is now sold out. I paid $13.75 each for 3 of them plus another $9.50 shipping for all 3 in total.

Bill