Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge *PART 2*

Thanks guys, I'll try and keep it simple ..confident that our 3 month old will easily drown out any whine or morse code or loud fans G'night.

 

Well I ordered the Sony F series from Amazon. I have some questions

Is the screen really that dim on full settings?

Is that fan noise that I heard about still there?

 

well i do hear a really quiet sound of a " eeeeee " but its not constant and im not really bothered by it and i dont really notice it at all even in a quiet enviroment.

 

nothing to be really bothered by , in my opinion, but not sure about amazon as i got it from Sony Style customized.

 

People appear to be forgetting that someone in Europe who had an F with the Adobe Premium screen returned that model and got another one labeled premium but there was pretty clear internal driver and setting evidence that it was not Adobe RGB.

My suggestion is that you search RGB and Premium in this thread to find that person and then discuss via PM what the situation is/was between the two. I do not recall whether or not both of the screens this person had were matte. I think the settings changes -- the fact that the new F's screen did NOT have Adobe RGB settings to play with when the first F did -- were what tipped the forum member off to the change.

Again, I have documented ad nauseam that the European ads have NOT always stated that the premium screen was Adobe compatible -- only some of the ads have. And usually, there was a choice of more than one model and one said premium Adobe RGB and the second said just premium.

And in the U.S. there is NO evidence that the word premium has any relationship whatsoever to the screens labeled premium in the EU.

Sorry -- if I were you I'd try to get Sony to tell you the answer to that question in writing.

Good luck.

 

There is only 3 ways of knowing the color space coverage of an LCD display:

- Read the marketing material or call Sony_& ask before ordering.

- Check brand & model number of the LCD & the manufacturer's specs.

- Use a colorimeter like I did on my F & measure the damn thing.

All the drivers & other stuff "clues" are speculations at best.

90% of all users could not spot the difference between a monitor with sRGB coverage vs. the slightly larger Adobe one.

sRGB vs. Adobe RGB by Ken Rockwell, photographer:

Test from his article, which one is the Adobe?





The sRGB color space is what is used on the web.

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What's wrong with you guys and all the hand wringing before getting your laptops?

 

oh, ok. Thanks!

 

There's a huge difference between the top and bottom ones *shakes head*

 

Yea...I noticed the different,look at the gradient and the color..I would say the top one is Adobe, its a lot better (the color is more to natural color and it doesnt wash out).

 

key being

Anyone who read the first few lines would know the bottom one was Adobe RGB.

 

Since all extended colour is reduced to basic sRGB on the web, therefore colours outside the sRGB gamut are desaturated - that is underrepresented or reduced to grey; thus it's obvious that the bottom one is sourced from ADOBE full-gamut. Since Adobe's extra range is mostly in the greens and cyans the extended greens can not be be represented here, that's why they're greyish. Also the negative cyans, or purple and royal red, are stronger in Adobe, thus the red-purple transition in the bottom picture is erroneous.

(edit) software can BOOST the reds and greens to make them LOOK stronger, but the pixels on the screen do not have the actual pigmentation to show the colours to the eye as they should be, Royal Red, Blood-crimson, and Racing Green simply don't exist. THUS non-premium screens require software to attempt to display Adobe RGB Colorspace, a TRUE Adobe screen does not require colorspace conversion software.

 

"1.) Adobe RGB requires special software and painstaking workflow not to screw it up. Make one mistake anyplace and you get dull colors, or worse. You cannot use Adobe RGB on the internet or for email or conventional photo lab printing. If you do, the colors are duller." (Ken Rockwell cited by Joe Bleau)

Therefore, I repeat: As the fellow forum member attested, his first F's Adobe RGB screen had the special software for Adobe RGB; his second laptop with a premium screen did not. I suggested that this forum member check for that as well.

I repeat the suggestion.

I also suggested that Sony be contacted in writing for clarification.

I repeat that suggestion, too.

Good luck.

 

There is 2 things false in this statement.

 

What you mean is this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=46013&d=1267306017

More members, including me have this problem. I got used to this more or less and it even seems to 'whistle' less in my case, but that could just be me accepting the noise now I guess.

 

If my paraphrase bothers you, go back to Ken Rockwell's statement and the statement of the forum member who had two premium F screens with different color adjustment capabilities from Sony in the software.

 

... and has successfully recovered." Just had a black screen shortly and got this error when closing my mediaplayer. Installed the updated Nvidia Driver recommended on the sony vaio site a month ago. No problems until now.

Reinstall or? Things seem to be running fine again so far.

 

Just leave it alone, maybe some glitch from another program...if that happen again, then you might consider reinstall the driver.

 

Hello again Friends,
I posted earlier on pg.308 about a high pitch sound I was having. Well, I am now on my fourth F series laptop (first three from Best Buy and fourth from Sony Style) and I am still getting this annoying sound. I posted an audio sample clip with an accompanying read me found here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=3623865dbbee80c0a0f2f20c509059d9da3e84e9572ad8edd9ecd7d091ba63d2

Most of the sound is the fan but you'll hear a high pitch feedback tone in there as well.

If people could please tell me if this is what they are hearing as well or their opinions that would be great.

Thanks for your time,
E

 

Rockwell is talking about the entire process from taking a photo to the end result: printing or publishing on the web.

Are you saying that it takes a special software to be able to connect an external wide gamut monitor to the F?

What is your point? That Sony_is doing bait & switch & after launching the F in EU & elsewhere with the Premium matte & touting the 100% Adobe color space coverage, they changed horse in the middle of the race & downgraded the display?

Are trying to freak out Premium matte F owners? Why don't you use Skype & call EU or UK or_Sony_Japan?

Try this: open you Windows Explorer & paste this in the navigation bar: C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color

Well I have a US F 1080p which covers the sRGB color space only & I can see in that folder: AdobeRGB1998.icc. Does that prove that my LCD covers 100% of the Adobe color space?

For people just dropping in, check these posts for more info about all that:

Vaio_F_Series Monitor Profiles Roundup & US glossy vs. EU Premium Displays

Vaio_F Series: 1080p Premium is LED & Color Spaces Clarifications: Adobe RGB color space "... encompasses roughly 50% of the visible colors specified by the Lab color space ...It was designed to encompass most of the colors achievable on CMYK color printers".



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@ e-roq: Please use the Search this Thread feature with: fan. To find posts talking about the fan noise & similar recordings though with less dominant normal noise fan.

 

I just got my VPCF115FM from Best Buy.

When I ran the recovery disc creation process, I noticed I suddenly had an H: drive. And it looked like all the original sotware was on that drive.

When I rebooted, the H: drive disappeared.

I assume this is just a partition of the C: drive.

Since Best Buy did a pre-setup install on the machine, I was paranoid about what Best Buy did and I wanted to just repartition the drive and install everything from scratch. But that would mean losing the H: drive.

Yes, I did create the recovery dvds and I suppose I could just restore from those. But I wonder if anyone has any insight into any implications of losing the H: drive.

And does anyone know what the Best Buy pre-setup does to the machine? I couldn't get a decent answer out of them and they didn't charge me anything for it.

If I re-partition the drive and install Windows 7 Home from a DVD that I have, will I lose any important Sony software? I assume I can download all the drivers from Sony's web site.

Thanks!

 

The "H: drive" is the hidden partition. It is only assigned a drive letter when being accessed by special software for recovery. It otherwise remains hidden so that it can not be accessed or deleted during regular computer use.

Enter "hard disks" in "search programs" and go to "create and format hard disks" to find details of the boot drive.

Look up "fresh install" for your other question, and check the unification post. This has been discussed SO many times. You're best off just using the computer for now, THEN removing the bloatware once you decide what you don't need.

 

I also have a BB VPCF115FM.

On the OEM HDD, there is 3 partitions, 2 hidden: System Reserved (MBR) & Recovery Partition and C: drive.



Start > search: disk management, to see yours.

When I installed a blank replacement HDD (see here and here with photos) I used the recovery discs and still have a hidden recovery partition.

BB did nothing to your F but Sony_included for them a "run once" option to install the BB cr@pware marketing thing. Just don't install it unless you want to be nagged with these juicy offers.

 

I have a F series F1190x i7 820 6 gb 500gb drive 7200rpm listened to your audio mine has a very very slight sound like yours. loaded alot of things fan got a little louder but the high pitch sound remained not to bad..hope mine dont get any badder and i will be happy... my computer is 3 days old.

 

A lot of people that getting a recent F still have the high pitch sound, I guess that SONY cant fix that issue. They might need to redesign and changed some components to fix it. How about your screen? Does it have limited viewing angle/light bleed issue?

 

Hey Guys... Thank for checking out my audio sample and your responses.

new_vaio_F,
In regards to my screen I have not tested it yet. I will look into it.

So in regards to the high pitch sound, it cannot be fixed via software, driver? It will have to be a hardware fix?

Ugh... This has taken too much of my time.

 

ALL North American F11s have the limited angle/"bleed"problem. THOSE are the GOOD screens. For the bad screens one doesn't even get that far when considering the image.

 

Yes,I do realize that...however I was wondering if SONY changed the screen for the recent F or at least fix the morse code issue, but apparently SONY didn't do anything. We'll see for the next refresh of F, if they still not fixed...I will definitely go with the Y series or other brand.

 

"...I was wondering if SONY _changed the screen for the recent F or at least fix the morse code issue" - Nope, they keep on mass producing defective units that Joe public inexplicably keeps on buying.

 

The Morse code issue has already been fixed in my Rev 2 F11, made late February. Those who are still getting machines with the ticking are probably buying older stock from BestBuy etc.

It also does not whine, there is no high frequency noise of any sort except occasionally while the fan changes speed, and that's totally normal for any variable-pulse-controlled fan. (and I recorded and narrow-pass filtered the fan noise to check, plus I took the F11 to work to have a couple of Golden Ears listen to it - they LOVED the laptop by the way.. ) I can't say why the whistle/whine seems irreparable for those laptops experiencing it, the answer for avoiding the noise seems to be to have the machine be quiet when it leaves the factory.

My VPCF11GS is also not subject to BIOS corruption when hibernating on a flat battery, something I've tested for on three occasions. It DID fail completely to boot once after a software crash that corrupted the display, but that was cleared by punching insert several times until the system showed BIOS. And the same failure to boot has happened on my oldest desktop system many times - which also uses an Nvidia card, AND occasionally on the Q9450 desktop with crossfired 4850s. It just does happen, the trick is to recover BIOS and to realize it's not the F11's "fault."

The refresh will have the same narrow viewing angles, I'm sure, but otherwise the one-lamp HD screen is a perfectly capable display, as Mangosango and Joe Bleau will tell you. There WON'T be any more of the bad screens like mine, with shading and inversion, I'm betting. Those have done way too much damage to Sony's reputation and F11 sales to be allowed anywhere near further production. And I'm sure they're working feverishly to avoid any repeat of the fan whistle thing regardless of manufacturing tolerances.

 

Heheh, good answer. Yup, when I go out to buy stuff I always make sure they're things that have problems that the manufacturer doesn't acknowledge or fix. I MUST get myself a Corvair for my next car. Or maybe I'll settle for a Toyota..

 

yes yes, this noise make me insane. Any solution for this problem???

 

Guys, my optical drive is beginning to drive me insane. Every time I use the laptop on my lap, and happen to adjust my position the damn thing squeaks.

If you open it, in fact, and push the tray up/down it makes a ton of creaking noises.. this is kinda like that. Any little bump against the edge where the optical drive is? CREEEAAAAKKK

CREEEAAAK! *pulsl machine toward him* *ererererererkkk!*

ARGH I WANNA PULL IT OUT! :|

 

I've tried method above; Turn off F11, remove battery for 5 minutes, turn on again, immediately press and holding INSERT key for 3-5sec to avoid system booting, but the system keep starting windows.
Also, i tried immediately press and holding INSERT key for 3sec then press F2 key once, it show me and run BIOS with usual interface without any changing nor went to default settings.
Any advise?
The fan really driving me nut..
Thanks..

 

After playing around for a couple of days with my Vaio here comes a small review:

1) Noise: the fan blows when it has to, but generally is a quite machine (at least comparing to my 5 yrs old HP pavillion). There is a whistle, like a bird singing(?) from outside, but is not constant and got used to it (some say that is related to Intel multi-core processors)

2) Screen: I have the European model full HD, don't know if premium or not. Is very bright but corners are darker (especially bottom left corner). I believe though that screen resolution is too high for a 16.4 and downscaling doesn't work well.

3) Speakers: This is the only thing that really bothers me. They are very very tiny. Even external speakers don't sound very well. My old hp with the harman/kardon is not comparable.

That is for now!

 

Also, tried this method. Already applied default setting's power management.

On battery, leave the unit went to hibernate on low batt.

Then, leave unit for 2-3hours.

Then, press power button on, green led blink every 1sec, but did not happen shift to orange. Never shift to orange blink, never!

So, i press and hold power button for 10minutes when green led blink, it make unit to Sleep (refer to Power Management's default setting).

What should i do??

I'm getting insane with this full speed fan!!

 

Have you tried a full CMOS reset by removing its battery power?

Joe's picture explains how.

 

@sezid

Disconnect and reconnect the CMOS battery that is located next to the memory modules beneath your computer. Wait a few minutes before reconnecting. Joe Bleau posted a detailed how to a few posts back.

I believe this should fix your fan problems.

By the way, the green LED blink every second would mean that the laptop was still not left long enough to drain. It has to blink very slowly. Still at this point, The CMOS battery disconnect should be the preferred trick.

 

The European marketing never ever stated that every single model of the F would have the Premium RGB screen. As I have documented for this thread numerous times, the advertizing went out of its way to state RGB on only one of its models listing a premium screen -- from the beginning it appeared that there were two premium EU screens, with one of them having the RGB compatibility.

As for no need to use software to adjust a matte Adobe RGB screen, I suggest you have a look at the AW threads at NBR which discuss how Sony dropped the RGB screen for the AW3 series because too many people didn't know how to adjust the premium screens in the AW1 and AW2 series with the provided software from Adobe.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post some feedback on your F unit.

2) Screen:: What is your model #? Is it matte (Premium or Pro Grade on the UK Sonystyle) or glossy? Go to the Sony_esupport for your model & check specs. Reasonable brightness unevenness is expected in laptops as serious notebook reviews show for all models.











"...screen resolution is too high for a 16.4 and downscaling doesn't work well" - An LCD always works best @ it's native resolution. Changing the LCD's resolution is the worst method to get larger text, icons, etc.

The 1080p US Glossy display is really sharp and easy on my old eyes. While I'm blessed with above average color differentiation vision, I'm farsighted since a few years & was hesitating between the 900p & the 1080p. I'm really glad I chose the 1080p, for photo editing it's simply awesome to have a high DPI when zooming in for detail photo editing & tweaking. I did up scale the OS UI to 125% 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). Windows 7 has much better tools to upscale the OS representation compared to XP for example.





3) Speakers:: Sound quality of the onboard speakers is debatable but output to external speakers or headphones is simply great on the F. Did you check the Sony_esupport for your model to see if there is a Realtek HD Audio driver update or maybe something is wrong in your audio settings.

From the Speakers link found in the Unification Post (page 1, post #1):

Or are you using more than one equalizer simultaneously like in F's sound > Realtek + an other one in your media player? If so then disable one or both.

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Re: Adobe RGB software is a key?

Why are you spreading confusion?

"... with one of them having the RGB compatibility" - Again: read the Vaio_F Series: 1080p Premium is LED & Color Spaces Clarifications. All the F's LCD's use Red Green and Blue: RGB.



You are confusing color management software, monitor profiles & LCD color space coverage.

The Adobe RGB Color Management software can be used but is not necessary to manage sRGB or wide gamut monitors, including the ones with a color space representation near, equal or larger than the Adobe RGB color space space representation.

This recent series of back & forth posts started when you said looking at the installed software was a clue to determine what kind of LCD is in your F.

If you pretend that there is 2 kinds of Premium matte LCD's with one inferior to the other, prove it!

Again: Why don't you use Skype & call EU or UK or_Sonystyle_Japan or link to a page that says that in black & white?

 

What you mean is this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/atta...3&d=1267306017


yes yes, this noise make me insane. Any solution for this problem???

 

HELP! I’m new to the whole forum thing! I recently purchased two Sony Vaio FW laptops which came pre-installed with Windows 7 Home. As soon as I got the laptops I did a complete re-install of Windows 7 Ultimate. Unfortunately now I have lost the drivers for the graphics (not as crisp picture as before – all pictures and icons have jiggered edges). Also my CD/DVD player is not playing any BlueRay Disks – which is one of the big reasons I brought it! Needless to say I have been through Sony website as well as telephone conversation and they have basically told me that I have to recover laptop to how they gave it to me! I have ordered the disk (£45 later), but I would really rather not have to re-install there operating system. Is there anything I can do regarding drivers for graphics and CD/DVD player or any other suggestions? Thanking you in advance 

 

Sony to stop manufacturing Floppy discs after 30 years.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/26/sony-to-stop-manufacturing-floppy-discs-after-30-years/

 

Informative article on color.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/04/how-to-calibrate-color-for-the-web/

 

This is a forum for the F Series. Go here & search with: FW_+ some relevant keywords for your user created problems.

Good luck!

 

I'm not confusing anything; I have simply reported what the European advertizing has said and what someone on this forum said about having the impression that his first F had Adobe RGB and the second did not -- and that the exclusion of Adobe color management software was part of his suspicions.

If you want black and white statements of the differences between screens, I have provided multiple links to European advertizing sites. Just search my name with a few of the same keywords you would recommend to anyone else.

 

I'm not talking about marketing literature mentioning or not the "100% Adobe RGB coverage" but proof of the existence of 2 different Premium matte 1080p LCD models. Until proven it's only speculations & confusing prospective F buyers & Premium matte F LCD owners IMO.

For example: the Sonystyle UK VPCF11Z1E/BI product page does not mention the "100% Adobe RGB coverage" but this press release mentions it for said VPCF11Z1E/BI.

Does that mean that Sony_downgraded the display for that model in UK because it's not mentioned on the page? Nope.

Sony_pages mentioning the "100% Adobe RGB coverage" thing:

http://hd.sony-asia.com/products.php#/products

http://www.sony-asia.com/product/vpcf117hg

http://www.sony.co.in/product/vpcf117hg

http://www.sony.co.id/product/vpcf117hg

http://www.sony-mea.com/product/vpcf117hg

http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/vaio/products/F11/feature_4.html

http://www.sony.com.au/product/vpcf117hg

http://corp.sony.com.my/vaio/vaio_f.html

https://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/vaio/vpcf117hg_e.jsp

http://presscentre.sony.eu/Content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=5460&NewsAreaID=2&ClientID=1

 

Sony's Canada site now has the Black F11 in stock if anyone's interested in ordering.

Edit: They included shipping costs at the end.

 

Really nice custom handmade wooden external 2.5" hard drive cases.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BPCustomWoodworks

 

I took the drive out of the F11 and replaced it with a 7200RPM drive. Wiped the F11 drive when I installed it in another laptop (in haste, apparently). Good advice on always retaining the partition (or at least imaging it for later).

I understand what you're saying, and you're absolutely correct. I wasn't clear, though: I was saying that the Core i7 xxxQM has a significantly lower TDP than the previous generation of quad-core (mobile or otherwise) processors (in particular, those manufactured with a 65nm process). A TDP of 48-50W is significantly lower than a TDP of 60-105W, and I would expect a cooling solution designed for the 720QM to be on par with a cooling solution for the previous generation of Core2Duo processors with regards to sound output. In my experience, this has not been the case. I think it's less about actual noise output and more about the frequency of the sound.

You are correct, though: I would expect heat output of a quad-core versus dual-core to be greater (same process size, and all other things being equal).

 

@aaronjb: Let's both agree to stop the sniping, it annoys all other thread users & shortens our life's with elevated stress levels.

Are you sure that the hidden partition is really wiped out on the F OEM HDD you used on an other laptop? It could not do it with the limited Win 7 Disk Management utility when said OEM HDD was in my external HDD enclosure.

I used the Diskpart CMD & the "delete volume override" command. See "Method Two" in this How to Delete a Partition or Volume in Windows 7 tutorial. With the "list volume" operator you can see exactly what is on the drive.

You can also create a recovery partition on both laptops and even create one with all your customizations & added software instead of only the OEM factory state:

Search: "WINDOWS 7" HOW TO CREATE BACKUP PARTITION

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Wood HDD Enclosures?

It's cute but I would never use such an enclosure simply because wood has good insulation properties & would cause elevated HDD operating temperatures thus shortening it's life.