Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

Ok, so finally I was able to play with this new unit - can somebody say AWESOME!! I luv it! Especially the numeric 10-key! I have my own tax preparation small business and this will SURELY come in EXTREMELY handy! Not to mention I'm an Excel Guru

Anyways, onward to this "noise"... yes, I hear it! But it goes away every now and then... not too bad though as I can sometimes not even hear it. Oh yeah, I just turned 30, if that matters.

Since I'm on the topic... I did select the Fresh Start option... so am I missing out on anything? Also, I did my recovery discs without a problem and now I'm not sure what to do next...

any suggestions as to what customizations/settings should be made to this AWESOME laptop?

~maria

 

Sounds good . I figure the noise on the laptop is quieter than the growing noises coming out of my dying laptop fan. I can't wait until mine gets here (hopefully sometime next week). You should install some good antivirus software like AVG or Avira. Other than that, just make sure to defragment your harddrive after you install/remove programs. Congrats on getting your F

 

Yeah... see like right now... I don't hear it anymore... it's gone

Anywho, thanks! I was looking to see which antivirus to install and was debating about Kaspersky Internet Security - I heard it's pretty good. What do you think of that one? Heard anything on it?

 

Guys, post some photos... i think that a lot of us whant to see some real life pics with the laptop,especialy in silver...

 

So how do I run this "virtualization mode"?

I have to install some professional tax software and the older year's 2006/2007 apparently will not run properly in Win7.

 

After playing around with mine today I learned that the light sensor is pretty worthless as some people already noticed. The light from the screen is bright enough usually so that the keyboard light won't come on most of the time even when I need it b/c the sonsor is right below it. I cover the sensor up and it works better so maybe I will just put some tape over it maybe even frosted tape would block enough of the screen light so that it will come on when needed.

I tried to make Recovery discs and couldn't get it to work at all it woud get to the point where it was about to start burning and then it would error and say try another disc. I finally got it to work after I uninstalled Anydvd and rebooted and then the recovery discs burned. I guess there is some conflict here, but it was an easy solution to uninstall anydvd, make my recovery disc, then reinstall anydvd after.

I really dislike the automatic brightness setting being on and it initially took me a whie to figure out why I couldn't get my screen colors and brightness setup to look even half way decent and the screen produced dull images etc. I finally dug around and found within the Vaio control center that once I turned off adjust brightness automatically that the colors were vibrant and I could make my adjustments myself using Nvidia's color adjustment along with windows own adjustments. So I give the light sensor two thumbs down and I have no use for it and I recommend turning it off unless you like dull displays that make it hard to read anything.

 

Kaspersky is great, probably the best protection you can get from an anti virus program. If you don't want to pay the $60 a year though (for instance, for students like me ) AVG is really lightweight and provides good protection from viruses.

 

I bought it from Sonystyle.com and ti wines. Sony's reply is below:

Thank you for contacting Sony Support.

I'm sorry that the Computer is making a buzzing noise. At this point of time, there are no updates available to address the issue that you have described. However, it may be available in future. Once the resolution is published, you may view the information on model specific News & Alerts page or Driver download page. Please click on the URL link below to view the model specific Driver download page:

 

Again, which country are you in? I assume the US, since you mentioned BestBuy; but I thought the North American models didn't HAVE the brightness sensor.. or maybe those available from BestBuy are fundamentally different from those from SonyStyle..

 

Sounds exactly like a prepared statement, so they know...

 

It sounds like the US models have a light sensor directly above the keyboard/underneath the screen. Or maybe the models with a backlit keyboard come with the light sensor?

 

I had no problem at all making my recovery discs. It was a total of 2 and I chose the option to verify my image (slower speed). Maybe that makes a difference?

Also, I have to agree on the automatic brightness setting! I just turned mine off and WOW! Even better display! I'm loving my F more and more...

 

I'm so tempted by this having now cancelled my order for the SXPS16, I just want to see one in the flesh before I make my decision, and being in the UK; they are few and far between at the moment (usually at the other end of long lead times).

 

I'll take some pics of it and load 'em up tomorrow. Gives me a chance to test out the built-in SD card reader at the same time

 

I am in the US, bought from Best Buy in NY. I have the buzzing noise which is cured by opening either the windows sound recorder or going to recording under sound in control panel. I think that the only reason I had the problem creating my recovery discs was that anydvd installs a driver that for the dvd/bd rom and maybe the vaio recovery software couldn't recognize the drive properly or something to that effect.

 

All Burning programs install predatory drivers that can break window's access to the drives, sometimes even the hard drives can be lost. AnyDVD is one of the worst offenders. Some Audio programs can also damage disc I/O, such as Mosaic and Wavelab 5, the latter having completely destroyed many Windows XP installs. Finish the Windows install and basic programs before loading a burning program and writing the backup discs. Or, from Vista onwards, Windows itself has perfectly good DVD writing software. I guess Nero is ok, since it can use Windows own SPTI driver.

 

Okay. I've been in this stuff since the XT myself. I think you and I have been around the block here a few times. However, AnyDVD is pretty solid, and I don't think think this is as dire as you may communicate to those that may not be as advanced in usage. Simply a right click in the tray to shut down AnyDVD momentarily will suffice. But saying hard drives can be lost here is a bit extreme, yes? And Windows burning software will never replace AnyDVD.

 

LOL....yes, that may very well be the case.

 

I think it sound like a standard statement that they send out, every time they receive any email from a customer about problems they are facing. They will move it up the priority list to fix, if they find a lot of customers complaining and if it starts to impact the product's image.

 

No, I have lost the hard drives, where the IDE driver is completely replaced by something else in Control Panel (before reboot..) ALL Windows could see during attempted booting would be the CDrom. and install to the drive would fail, even in bios. It happens. The culprits were installs of Wavelab, an early Daemon-tools, and Nero 7-something. You may have to see it to believe it, but it's been far too frequent an occurrence in the hundreds of systems I've built, repaired, or troubleshot for clients.

AnyDVD is not so bad, but it has caused the EXACT issue under discussion, where installs of other programs couldn't continue. And as you say disabling it is the quick cure.

But my point is not to install any programs, including audio and other authoring software that grabs direct access to the drives, until Windows is running and stable, and with basic support programs installed - so that it is in the preferred Restore condition in other words.

 

unbelievable! still no actual laptop picture

 

Yah, If I'd had mine by now I would have posted a 30 picture spread plus performance indexes and game and video editing screenshots. Oh well..

 

Other than the noise (which is more irritating than anything else) I agree - GREAT LAPTOP! You didn't miss too much with Fresh Start. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised they didn't bloatware the unit - just some SONY apps that you can pick up off their web site. You remind me, I still gotta do my recovery discs. Tomorrow for sure!

 

I agree. There is a serious lack of reviews and actual user photos for this computer on the internet. I'll post pics and a review as soon as mine gets here

 

This is actually quite positive. Apparently they are acknowledging the problem. Otherwise, they would have asked you to send it back.

 

A small Advice.

This is my actual configuration:

Intel® CoreTM i5
Windows® 7 Home Premium
500 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
6 GB 1066MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Masterizzatore Blu-ray Disc (read/write)
Screen 1920x1080
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M 1GB

if I invest something like 200$ I can have it with the 128 ssd ultra sata, worth it or keep mine?

and much more, again for 200$ I can throw my configuration out of the window and get this:

Intel® Core(TM) i7
Windows® 7 Home Premium
500 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
8 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Masterizzatore Blu-ray Disc
Screen 1920x1080
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M 1GB

I'm really tempted by this second chance, the only doubts are, will I notice a performance gap worth 200$? will I miss the faster hd?

I assume but I'm not sure if the last one is with the 'premium' screen, if it's so it will be a keeper, ain't it?

The only concern is about changing the cpu, I was tempted by the i5 for the integrated gpu that can provide less consumption in battery mode, but now I'm not so many times unplugged as I used to. Regarding power it should easily have enough since now I'm with a Turion 64 ml37 and 1 gb ram

I think that either monday or tuesday I'll decide since then they'll be likely to ship mine (I hope).

 

It depends of course on your usage. If it is regular desktop usage such as mail, web, office, and watching a movie, you will probably not notice a difference in performance.

Of course, the SSD will definitely provide a performance boost that you will notice.

From earlier posts, it turns out the i7 probably has a slightly better screen.

And you can also get the i7 with 4GB of memory and 128GB SSD. Then the i7 version will be cheaper. You don't need all that memory for regular usage. Also, you can still upgrade the memory later. Not sure if the CPU is upgradable (probably not).

In my case, I definitely wanted more disk space because I needed that for gaming, and I want dual boot with at least 100GB for linux and at least 200GB for windows. In that case SSD would be getting too expensive and I compensated that (partially) with a lot of memory. I also need the memory for heavy software development tasks. For these reasons, I have decided on the midlife upgrade to SSD in a couple of years. But if your usage is different and 128GB is enough for you then SSD is a good choice.

Edit: Yet another strategy is to put in a regular HDD and then get a good quality SSD from somewhere else (e.g. X25-M). There are huge differences in SSDs so then you can put in whatever you want. The HDD on the F also appears to be easily accessible (just 2 screws as mentioned earlier on this thread).

 

I picked mine up from the FedEx depot yesterday. Got it out of the box and charged the battery. Have not even opened the clamshell yet. I need to dig out my Acronis and do an "out of box" backup image. Then I will fire it up and play with it. Not sure what photos are wanted. The reviews/previews have pretty good photos. If anyone wants anything specific, let me know. I will try and post it today.

 

I can't since this would be no CTO (same spec CTO cost 200$ more) but from a retailer, available at the end of the month, and that is also why also if i think so I'm not 100% sure about the screen.

So it's one or the other, I can't mix them up

Disk space is never enough, I use RAW for my pics... I'm now on a 100% linux machine so I'm also going to have a dual boot, or maybe more, curious to try BSD.

Thus memory will be well used by linux and may be useful to use a virtual win that may be enough for my win usage, just itunes.

Oh well, gaming it's a good idea, that could be my only use for the win7 I'll have on the machine, sorry for the stupid question (beiing on linux I don't have game at all now) why you need plenty of space for games, they run all instelled on the hd? That would be good to know when partitioning.

By the way, how's the partition You got from sony?

That was my first idea with the machine I'm suppose to receive

 

I think 128GB is the bare minimum. It is possible to run games on windows with that but it will soon require an additional external hdd.

I am planning to run the windows 7 installation that is on the laptop already from linux using intel VT. It should work! Perhaps games will not work but I also have some other software that only runs on windows. At least with enough disk space I can easily backup the windows partition on the same drive, just in case I screw something up.

What do you mean with "how's the partition"?

Right now I use an external HDD for gaming, but having enough disk space in the laptop to eliminate this external HDD is a lot easier.

I didn't get my laptop yet. Shipment date is between 15-20th January, so this week will be exciting.

By the way, I also experimented a bit with how to limit C state usage on linux. Just in case I get the whining noise. Hopefully, that would fix it.

 

Given your choices, I would probably go with option 2. The harddisk can be switched later on with an SSD (with maybe 512GB or so) - maybe a year or so later - much more cheaply than the current prices.

For RAW editing/processing, the Quad-core i7 chips will come in handy. That is one specific role that the multi-core multi-threaded processors are custom made for. Every single one of those 8 virtual cores (4 physical cores with 8 threads) will pitch in and make swift mincemeat of the tasks - cutting down the processing time significantly.

Not all applications (that are available currently) can take advantage of the Quad-cores but RAW/Photo processing and Video Editing are all applications that can fully leverage the power of the Quad-core/hyper-threading.

 

Does anyone know if the number of cores used for a program can be set manually? or will it kick in automatically?
I'm quite new to multiple core technology and I was wondering if software was not optimized to use all 4 cores then it would bottleneck at 1 core or maybe 2 cores? if so then, can I override that? (i'm not sure if this even makes sense...

 

Lots of rep for the first to post some decent photos/videos/screenshots...

 

I believe the whole point of the "Turbo" technology is to function based on the load the CPU sees. It will automatically shut down cores and increase the clock speed of the core/thread in use ("Turbo" mode) for an application that is not optimized around using multiple cores, but will need the speed. The old quad-cores, without Turbo, did not have this ability, as far as I know, and thus could normally not function above its rated clock speed.

In other cases, where there is little to no CPU load, it will shut down all of the un-used cores and go into a low-power mode where the power consumption (and heat generation) is reduced even further for longer battery life.

At other times, when all 4 cores (along with the 8 threads) can be employed - like when editing video files or RAW editing - it will go full-bore and gets a tremendous amount of SIMULTANEOUS work done, in every CPU clock cycle.

You could also have multiple applications running at the same time in the same machine (excel spreadsheets, word documents, internel browsing, Youtube video playing etc) and these multiple cores/threads will kick in and function as discrete processors that will tackle all of these separate tasks with discreet processors SIMULTANEOUSLY, than having one or two processors constantly switching between these various tasks to get these job done, SEQUENTIALLY.

Or at least that is how I understand it.

 

The operating system schedules the tasks required by the application over multiple cores. For the operating system to be able to do that the application must be designed with multi-core in mind, i.e. execute tasks in parallel. One way to do that is for the application to split up compute intensive work (such as encoding or transforming video) into smaller independent tasks that can be executed in parallel. If the application is purely single-threaded, i.e. does everthing sequentially, then you will not be able to use multiple cores.

I am actually exploiting this on a dual core server I am running which is using mythtv to record television in MPEG2 and then encoding it to MPEG4 in a single thread. That approach makes sure that only a single core is used for the encoding so the other one is fully available for handling other work. That keeps the server always responsive.

As far as I know, no operating system supports a feature whereby you can limit the number of cores used for a particular application. If you are interested in limiting resource usage of certain applications to a max number of cores then it is possible using virtualization by running these processes inside a VM. I know for instance that using Xen it is possible to limit the number of CPUs assigned to one VM to a certain number.

 

Unless you are running multiple applications simultaneously, right ?

Like say an intensive Macro processing job in an Excel spreadsheet in the background, while a youtube video is playing, and say a photo-processing batch-job is also running simultaneously in the background. Every single one of the cores/threads will be working discreetly under such a scenario, I guess, even though individual applications may only be using a single core for itself ?

 

I think that typical interactive applications multi-core is not such a big improvement. In most cases, these interactive applications only do work if the user is interacting with them. Even when interacting with them, the CPU load is minimal. When the user is not interacting with these applications, they hardly cause any CPU load at all so I wouldn't expect this to benefit that much from multiple cores.

As for watching videos, that is of course slightly more intensive, but today's processors (Including my current single core Pentium M 1.6GHz) are more than fast enough to handle that. At least they are fast enough to make sure you don't notice any delays as a user when working with another application while watching youtube. Of course, YMMV depending on the OS and applications you are using.

 

Did anybody have a chance to compare the Premium Black Display of the F series with the x-black full HD display of the FW series as for brightness, contrast and overall appearance ? At least here in Europe, the Sony F seems to have a display somewhat inbetween the glossy FW and matte display. BTW, I'm considering the laptop for photo editing not for gaming and have been torn between the F, FW or Dell studio XPS 16.
Thank you for your comments

 

Now that's interesting!!

You mean that instead of the normal virtual machine that I can run in ubuntu with a "new" windows session I can use an Intel VT that emulates (or run or whatever it does) my actual windows on the system while runnung ubuntu??

So with all my programs already there and everythine else?

I mean out of the box it comes with 2 primaries, or 1 primary and some logicals... was just curiosity, nothing important.


By the way the ones that already have it, do you suggest to format it and redo a clean installation to get rid of 'scrap'ware or it's not full with that and it would not be necessary?



Thank's roweraay for your opinion, You also know if also gimp and better to know also linux software in general uses all the cores?

 

Now you're talking!!!!
Of course, another consequence of multi-core is that the behavior of the user will change. Instead of doing some CPU intensive work and having to do something else because it makes your computer slow to a crawl, you can simply continue and do some more stuff at the same time.

 

@Roweraay
@ErikEngerd

Thanks to the both of you! I believe I have a good start for further research.
My reason for asking was a worst-case scenario if i'm offsite on a business trip and there was a last minute autoCAD of 3ds Max file rendering that we need to revise. Especially for our 3d renderings that go over a day of continuous rendering, I would like to be able to run another lesser application in conjunction while keeping the rendering at capacity. Well that, and we're on borrowed time on a trip so i'd like to minimize downtime as much as possible.

Btw, i'll be using the i7-820QM on the F soon!

 

going back to your first answer, won't be that multithreading capacity be more noticeable than the ssd in the i5 configuration, or maybe already running 4 virtual cores in the i5 may be just enough?

 

That's exactly what I mean. Intel VT supports full virtualization so that the host domain can run an unmodified guest. That effectively decouples the guest OS (and version) from the host.

Windows 7 uses this as well to run XP programs in XP mode (you need at least the Professional version for that).

I will certainly have a look before I even startup windows for the first time. Also intend to backup the master boot record including partition table and the recovery partition, just in case.

I don't know if gimp would use multiple cores. More important for me would be to know if kdenlive (videoediting) would use multiple cores (especially for the encoding part).

 

It all depends on how much work you throw at it. If you really are doing intensive work such as video encoding then it will certainly help to have an i7. Also, imagine that more and more applications will be adapted to effectively use multiple cores. That was also a reason for me to go for i7 instead of i5. And I want to use this laptop for the next 4-5 years which is another reason to go for i7.

Also, I think that, in particular on linux, a large memory can compensate to a very large extent for a slower hard disk so not having an SSD is probably not such a big problem then.

 

I would like to know this too, although i am up for the option of getting a seperate screen for photoediting.

Grtz Jan

 

first post =p

i did an unboxing vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2U0qcDOi5U

 

Thanks man, nice vid!

 

Excellent first post.

Thank you very much!

 

I guess this is the grey version? I got confused when seeing the outside, which is black right?

 

Does the screen have an ambient light sensor?

Thanks.