Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

Actually something that you should probably be using anyway is Xmarks, which used to be called Foxmarks but is now a cross-browser add-on. So you can sync your Chomebookmarks to Firexox and to the cloud as well.
www.xmarks.com

 

Thank you, roweraay.

 

Cmon pls someone ... Joe ?

 

Go to Chrome, click on the tool icon on the top right, there's an option "Sync Bookmarks" (or something similar, mine now says "Bookmarks Synced..." instead). It syncs your bookmarks automatically to your gmail account.

 

Try reinstalling the nvidia drivers (you can get them from the support page if you're using the stock drivers).

 

"The Vaio F is noisy compared to most laptops" - Define "most laptops" please.

My post above contradicts this when comparing orange to orange.

 

That's funny. Start > search: restore > System Restore and it's reversible.

-----------

Thanks for the tip but I don't plan on using much Chrome anymore.

I get the sync & other backup methods but I don't get why so many users have all their bookmarks disappearing in a flash as shown in Goggle Chrome Help: lost bookmarks.

Besides, I've read 1984 a long while ago & Google infiltrating everything bothers me a lot.

It's a simple thing but you can easily get add-ons for Firefox to download videos from Youtube but not for Chrome for example.

 

Roweraay,

Thanks for the screen thoughts!

Joe,

nope, I did not expect double the brightness ir double the power consumption. My thought was that laptops are usually built to a thermal point. More power means more heat means bigger fans or special cooling. The F has an i7 and in the case of the GT330M, a fairly warm GPU also. I thought that perhaps Sony skimped on the screen to get power requirements down. All the power for the display probably runs through the motherboard in some way.

I thought that perhaps 5 additional watts might have been the reason for the lesser screen.

I did see a discontinued SonyStyle screen for a loaded F11 prebuilt that had a 150W power supply and power consumption of 140W +10%. I believe the spec is now 100W + 10% and a smaller power supply. Again, perhaps the dually lit screen was taken away in order to reduce a few watts.

Just speculation on my part...that is why I asked Roweraay the question.

Bill

 

Thank you , I'll try that. Has anyone else had this same problem ?

 

Joe, I was very clear in what I said.

The Vaio F is noisy compared to most laptops, since the fan is always on. In my years as a nerd I've used hundreds, if not thousands of computers - many laptops at that, and very few I've used that had a fan on all the time.

I believe I summed it up saying that while the Vaio F is noisier at idle, it's the same or quieter at full load. And the best part is, it runs cooler.

You can escape the fan noise at idle by using power saver mode, but then the fan turns on and off a lot lol.

 

By orange to orange, I meant compare i7 to i7. You don't compare a muscle car to a Camry, do you?

@ tausif: Try Restore first. If you re-install the video driver, you should:
- uninstall old driver
- re-start
- install new driver
- restart

@ Willscary: if a dual lamp display is set at the same level of brightness as a single CCFL screen & both LCD's have the same resolution then power consumption should be very close since we are talking about 2 made for_Sony displays of the same size. Anyway, with both model numbers, it should be easy to find the specs.

 

Based on the battery life that I saw with the new dual-CCFL screen, I believe the dual-lamp screen (in addition to the other properties that it has) provides more even lighting, the screen has FAR wider viewing angles and reflects very little to no light, unlike with a typical glossy-looking screen.

And for all we know, the dual-lamps may be consuming the same power as the single lamp in the F-series. Akin to placing a single 100W lamp in the corner of a large room to light it up, versus placing 2 50W lamps in either end of the same room to light it up.....of course the dual-50W lamps will provide "evener" lighting throughout the room than the single 100W blasting away from a corner. Just my assumption, of course.

 

A few of the specs of my new screen are as follows:

Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Lighting: 2-CCFL
Contrast: 700
Brightness: 375 cd/m2
Viewing Angle: (up/down/left/right) (70/70/50/60).
Pixel Pitch: 0.189 x 0.189
Dimensions: 375 x 221.1 x 7.0
Pins: 30 pin
Manufacturer: SHARP
Manufacturer Part#: LQ164M1LA4A

Don't know what some of the above specs mean, however.

 

Yes, it blinked green every 5 seconds after trying to power on from an almost empty battery, but not in the same way as normally happens when running Windows at low battery level. Instead of smoothly fading on and off, it sort of jumps on (not smooth) and then fades out normally.

Remember that the F was in a state of error, so even the power button LED may not behave as officially documented.

 

But before you tried to start on an empty battery, since you said it was in sleep state: was it solid orange or flashing orange or off? Or fuchsia?

 

Maybe it's a corrupted CMOS memory problem? More or less like the full-speed fan at all times? You could try the same fix I used to fix my fan problem, it's described some pages back... I don't know if it has something to do with that, though.

 

Have you run boottime Memtest 86 to make sure ram hasn't gone bad? Right now, as in the early 2000's on desktops, there is an industry-wide higher than usual memory failure rate on Laptop DDR3.

 

Cold cathode flourescent light is VERY low power and energy-efficient in the first place. Nearly all of the input is converted to visible light, have you ever felt a warm CCFL? Plus the light can be dimmed. I suspect the two lamps are running at less power consumption EACH to provide the same light ouptut as in the single-lamp display.

 

I didn't even look at the state of the LEDs before I turned it on. Do you?
However, if it were fuchsia I probably would have noticed, so we can rule that out.

So I don't know whether it actually was or had been in sleep state, I said that sleep was the action I had set for critical battery and lid closing.

 

"I didn't even look at the state of the LEDs before I turned it on. Do you? " - Since I read about that 100% thing here: yes. If it's flashin' green with the battery charge LED off: let it do it's thing. If both are flashing: plug first & wait a few seconds before turning on the F.

 

@andremaul

Briliiant Find!!!! I did not even know the CMOS battery was located there.

I still think Sony should look into this. but in the meantime, I think it's safe to say that this issue is now owned with an easy fix!

 

Well, actually it was Joe Bleau find, I just tried what he suggested.

 

@Roweraay

Congratulations on getting your F11 working again and thanks for the info. I will do the screen switch myself.

 

@andremaul
Ah ok.. in any case, thanks for the step by step instruction and doesn't it feel great to have a quiet computer ?!


@Joe Bleau
GREAT JOB JOE!! +++10 this would include your photo post locating the CMOS battery http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...=1#post6158353
(one of the photos courtesy of jacksjw.) It is very evident that you put in a lot of time on your posts and they just make things a lot easier for us. I still need to pass on other rep. I'll keep you in mind.

 

First CTO - F11, The first week it launched in January at Sony Style USA. Second CTO - F11, In early February as a replacement for the first.
Yeah, I guess i'm a guinea pig twice around...

 

During the fan issue, once the notebook entered the hibernation process, the green LED would blink until the unit shuts off.

The reason why I recommended to leave the unit alone for a while was to let it drain further. If I had pressed the power button on after the unit shut off, then there is still some adequate charge left on the battery to remove itself from the battery state. (though it would quickly resume hibernation)

In my experience, coming back after a few hours (2-4 hrs) and pressing the power button, the green led will blink every 4 seconds or so for maybe up to a minute or two. Then, it will start to blink orange every 4 seconds or so up to a minute and then stop. Pressing the power button after that results in no LED action.

I just realised that to get to this state, you can't leave the unit alone for too long and that you can't start this process right after hibernation as well. I think there has to be a bare minimum charge left. The reason why i'm saying this is that i've tried coming back to it after 7 hours (the next morning) in my previous tries and the result I got was that pressing the power button did nothing.

 

Interesting!!

Can you post photos of your protected screen from a sitting position looking directly at the screen but at screen angles pushing down to the limit of how the screen can go.
I'm curious where the picture inversion begins from a user point of view. I can achieve the same coherent picture quality on my non-film screen with the camera angles that you posted.

Thanks

 

Hello!

Does anyone fix the battery problem? I'm from Portugal and no one fix it yet...

Where can i find some info about the screen color profile? Someone tell me that here i can find something that makes the color & the brightness looking better...

(Sorry about my english...)

 

@andremaul: Thanks for trying in the field the trouble shooting suggestion for fixing the fan stuck @ 100% by resetting the CMOS and peeking in the memory bay to find the connector instead of removing the bottom of the unit as I originally suggested.

I took a photo last night & here it goes:





The male plug is really small & there is not much space for the fingers. I needed to use fine tweezers to grab it & pull it straight back out of that loving female part. There is no lock tabs to depress but it's a tight fit so I would not try to pull on the wires. Just make sure you don't touch the motherboard circuits with the twezers nor unsettle the memory sticks.

*****

How to reset the BIOS only:
- Press F2 when booting > reset the BIOS.

If it fails, try:

*****

@N3wton: Check the Unification Post #2 for answers to your questions & much more.

 

Yep mine is CTO, January build.

 

Looks nice - I may do this . I think I may second To No End's request for photos of the screen at more extreme angles.

 

I got mine in January CTO as well. The week after it came out, I believe (so the 2nd week it was available).

 

I got mine the second week it came out also, and returned it because the screen was so, so bad.. It had no noises.

 

Thanks to Joe and Melody Master too.

The next time I started it was after 1.5hrs after the little one was in bed.

Without me having to do anything it seemed to start as normal and appeared to be operating normally. I hope this does not recur, it looked really terrible. As well as looking rudimentary, everything was enlarged by about 200% and looked pixelated, not HD at all.

 

Perhaps you can get the i5 model.
I have it and it is not that noisy, less heat = less fan action.
But I have no reference coming from a loud desktop

 

I would say that the fan is not that loud. The only problem is that it changes its pitch often creating a drone sound. I hope that someone will find a solution to keep it stable, or to be able to manually control it.

 

Do you have the power management settings at balanced? That helps for me in regards to the fan changing speed often. The fan will still run, but it won't change speed as often and helps me block the sound out.

Also, not doing the mic fix helps during times when I'm doing nothing but browsing. The fan would then only be audible if I put my ear to the computer in a quiet room. During normal use though, it will vary from 10-minute periods being as quiet as I mentioned above to the normal idle speed of the fan.

 

Mine is the i7 , granted that my F11 whines. My wife has the E series with i5 processor and it is whisper quiet when browsing the internet compared to mine even when mine isn't whining. I am a little envious ! But I only in reality notice the fan on mine when I power off and the silence really does seem golden.

And I am even more envious of you that you have the f series with i5, as I suspect thats what i should have got. BTW have you ever heard your F series make a whine/whistle/droning sound ?

 

Tonight I will do a short movie so you can see the angles. Don't get me wrong, matte film improve overall experience with the screen but it doesn't change the fact that the screen still suck.

 

I have no whine/whistle/droning sound, but sometimes a kind of metallic sound.
I hope that is of the hard-drive, because I'm planning to buy a SSD someday.

BTW the choice for i5 was budget related...

 

Yes, it is on ballanced or power saver, but the fan is pulsing a coupe of RPMs every one second or so.

My CPU stays at 52C during browsing. What temps are you guys getting?

 

... interesting. Could you please post a sound clip file recording of it ? I used my iPhone voice memo function to do it.

 

I don't think I can do that, because the sound comes and goes unexceptionally and is not that loud.

 

I'm sorry but it's no to both.

Variable heat generation & variable cooling needs is the nature of the beast. Prospective F buyers should be aware of that.

Previous generations of CPU were working with all the cores active @ a constant clock frequency speed.

What's special about the i7 is that it can use 1 to 4 cores & up to 8 threads & activate Turbo Boost Mode & vary the core clocks & park some of them according to the tasks you throw at it. Naturally the heat produced varies wildly & let's not forget that there is a single fan to cool the entire system including the quite powerful GPU.

Is that fan working for no reasons @ times? I don't think so: put your hand in front of the exhaust grid and start/stop some CPU or GPU benchmark utility. All that heat must be evacuated & at not times the air coming out of there is cool. Meaning that the fan is slowed down when the temperature is within specs, not working overtime to make it cooler than the normal operating range.

That's why they removed user intervention in controlling the fan speed as the thermal management is complex & ever changing. Others & I tried a ton of utilities & it's not possible to see nor control the fan speed on the Vaio_F Series. I don't mind no control but can't understand why a simply desktop gadget cannot be permitted to report fan speed.

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..."

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

*LFM: Lowest Frequency Mode: the power saving CPU clocking mode used by the Vaio_VPCF11 when running on battery which has a power output too low (54W) to be able to feed an F working @ full speed which needs up to 100W + 10% according to_Sony's power requirement specs. That's why the VAIO_VPCF11 comes with a 120W A/C power adapter.



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

*****

Now what could be argued is that instead of modulating the fan speed in direct relation to the heat produced along a curve that runs through the entire gamut of fan speed from idle to maximum rpm, Sony_could have designed a thermal management that would work by steps with a limited amount of fixed fan speeds that would look like a stairway. For example (arbitrary numbers for illustration):

System temperature > Fan speed
- 22 to 38c > 2000 rpm
- 39 to 45c > 4000 rpm > returns to lower speed @ 35c
- 46 to 55c > 6000 rpm > returns to lower speed @ 40c
- 56 to 70c > 7000 rpm > returns to lower speed @ 50c
- 71 to 95c > max rpm > returns to lower speed @ 50c
- 96 to 100c > throttles CPU & GPU down or system shutdown as the max operating temperature for both CPU & GPU is 100c.

This step scale would mean less gradual variations in fan noise but obviously the fan would start to work only after a slight overheating & would keep on working a little longer until the lower temp trigger is attained.

That means also that it would use more power than exactly what is needed & consequently shorten the battery life.

Personally, I prefer a gradual speed change & would notice more steps changes. This said Sony_could have chosen more flexible temperature range triggers to reduce the fan speed variations. Maybe they will address that in a future BIOS or Power Management update?

That constant fan speed variation is the single "defect" that notebookcheck.net found in their VPC-F11Z1/E review and why they gave it "only" a 86% rating:

Check this XPS_throttling issue thread & others and you will see that CPU & GPU thermal throttling is a big problem for these i7 models even when plugged.

To conclude: if you can't mentally block the fan speed variations & don't need the horsepower of an i7 & GT 330M GPU then get a lesser laptop that may serve more your needs with quieter operation & more battery life.

Personally, I want & use the crunching power of the F & accept it's soundscape as one of it's characteristic. When the fan speed goes up, I know that the Vaio_F11 is working hard for me. My 1100cc motorcycle is much noisier and consumes a lot more fuel than my 350cc but then it has 150HP & a top speed of 283 km/h (175 miles/h). ZX-11 video & noise variations

 

Thanks for the comprehensive reply!

I also have an OC i7 as my desktop and I've been building silent rigs for many years. My only complain was that the fan rpm speed works like a sinus curve with a frequency of ~60HZ. I would've preferred a higher and more constant RPM for example, because that's easier for the brain to adjust.

I'll try to see what's the behavior of the fan if I cap the CPU at a constant frequency. I'm only interested to do this for casual use.

Anyway, it's a beautiful piece of hardware and I'm very happy with it.

 

A desktop has a lot more space inside for natural convection cooling and several fans for the CPU, GPU, power supply & often a case fan.

You can reduce considerably the fan work by propping up the back of the F with any object to help cooling the underside & get at the same time a more comfortable typing angle. Try it: run the same task with the notebook flat on a desk then feel the temperature of the underside vs. w/ the back jacked up after 15 minutes or so.



Photo from How to install a secondary hard drive in the optical drive bay of a VAIO_VPCF Series.

 

QUESTION TO ALL : what´s the maximum External monitor resolution using HDMI ?

Using the HDMI,can i connect to an external 24" LCD Monitor with 1900x1200 resolution ? Has anyone tried this ?

I do not want to use the VGA port because it´s not digital.


I´m planning to buy the F11 Z1 for Graphic/Photographic work.

But in my opinion, one of the biggest setbacks is the absence of a DisplayPort connection.


Hoping you can help me with this!!!

 

Thank you gentlemen. I have been sort of trying to keep track of who has the Fan Whistle (Note: This is not the high pitch morse code, there is already a temp fix for that)

If anybody else has confirmed they have this same Fan Whistle, by listening to Tausif's clip. Feel free to PM with your F11 info so I can add it to the spreadsheet. Please listen to the file on page 528, post # 5273

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=448894&page=528

http://imgur.com/XafrU.png


(Sorry to anybody in advance if I have mis-represented any facts, PM if you want anything removed)

 

EDIT: lol so apparently you can do that:

It's a shame that Sony didn't include a display port or dvi. IMO, just in general, using 16:9 ratios on computer screens is BS. The next thing you know, screens are going to be in 2.39:1 and we're going to have even less screen space.

 

Ofcourse 1920x1200 should work, some info of HDMI;

The maximum pixel clock rate for HDMI 1.0 was 165 MHz, which was sufficient for supporting 1080p and WUXGA (1920×1200) at 60 Hz. HDMI 1.3 increased that to 340 MHz, which allows for higher resolution (such as WQXGA, 2560×1600) across a single digital link