Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

it is a bit confusing isnt it? the keys are black, shell outside is black, inside is a gunmetal (ish) grey

im going to assume yes as i see the screen dim and go bright based on the light in the room. it also seems to control the backlighting on the keys. which can be kind of annoying as i usually keep my office / gaming room dim.

 

Super! Thanks!

 

This is the US black version...which is a gunmetal/graphite case.
The grey version is silver/ish? at least I hope so, since I ordered the grey. Still in Fedex though.

 

Hey, was that the grey or the black model? It actulally looks like a dark grey...

 

The noise that I heard (that others have complained about) has gone away. However, imo, if you are used to working in a quiet space you should be aware that, at least in my experience, the machine can get very loud. I don't know what it is but, for for example, when I loaded Spybot, (the CPU usuage went up to 27%, memory usage up to 2.16), the machine was howling. Literally that loud. Then it'll abate for reasons I don't understand.

Every machine has drawbacks. I researched most of them. But again, if you value silence, based on my experience, right now with this laptop, you may want to look elsewhere.

Also, and maybe someone can help me with this, video is hit or miss. Video (on msnbc) that loads quickly and easily with my Sony SR with a 2.53ghz, freezes on this F11. Any ideas what to do about this? Or what I can do to fix it?

No Additional Video Editing Software
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-820QM processor (1.73GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
Component: 16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) with NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU (1GB VRAM)
Component: Fresh Start
Component: No additional Office Software
Component: No additional Photo Editing Software
Component: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ player/burner
Component: No additional AntiVirus Software
Component: Keyboard Backlight
Component: Large Capacity Battery
Component: Black
Component: No Engraving
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit
Component: 500GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)

 

Can you hear the noise people are talking about? Please, please make a video of it running with the camera next to it.

 

That is the black version. Mine is the exact same color. As I mentioned in my post# 263 in this thread (my preliminary thoughts when I got my F-series in hand):

--------------------
Mine is supposed to be a black but I consider this "black" as more of a really dark-gray (only the top and the bottom) and the keyboard area is a lighter shade of gray. The keys are black. The backlighting works really well but need to test it a bit further.
--------------------

 

I will be using the F-series for RAW photo editing/processing too (40MB per RAW file) and for sheer processing power, I will probably not look at the FW-series any longer, if I were you. For photoprocessing type of applications, the new Quad-core 8-threaded i7 processors are FAR more efficient/faster than the older Core 2 Duo processors.

I have not done any color accuracy tests yet - mine is the full HD 'premium' glossy screen (US version) - preliminary reports from the EU indicates that it is supposed to cover the entire Adobe RGB color gamut. But there seems to be quite a few versions of the HD screen floating around and I am not dead certain that the screen here is the same screen that is available in the EU. To be quite certain, I was not expecting a glossy screen and was expecting/wanting a matte-type screen.

 

I have no clue what you're talking about in most of your post. Even though it says I'm a guru...trust me I'm not. What is DMA and I/O? Where do I find the video driver? Is that Nvidia? There is no trojan detected.

Thanks.

 

You know if also the i5 has that feature? And how you enable/use it it's not clear to me, once you have it please report on this matter.

 

Things like "Sata hard drive access is DMA, not controlled I/O. it can drop to I/O DUE to a resource conflict, resulting in slow drive access and jerky video" etc are all pure IT talk.

DMA : Direct Memory Access
I/O : Input/Output

If you are not familiar with some of these terminologies, and unless you have a real knack for it, it may just be a bit too thick.

 

LOL. Well, removing Logitech seems to have fixed the problem but now I don't have my shortcut keys on my M-Wave Pro which is a wonderful keyboard by the way. And, yes, I have the laptop hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard for work. Thanks for the help all. Now I gotta figure out if I can ever sue the logitech software.

 

I am new here and just bought this Sony laptop. I bought mine from the BestBuy in Dallas, TX and have not noticed any sounds at all.

I made a video showing the backlit keys and I wanted to post it so people could tell me if they hear anything or not. I don't think I am hard of hearing but you never know...

Anyway, it was recorded with my iphone so the whole recorder/noise cancellation thing shouldn't apply.

Please let me know if you can hear anything, as it sounds silent to me. Just want to give some people hope who are waiting for it to arrive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4nJodAhTg

I am 22 years old.

 

Anyone here with the the European Vaio F (with Full-HD Premium screen)?

 

I purchased a sony vaio FW 1 month ago and I really do love the notebook. It's the 2.55ghz model, 4gigs, 4560, with the eco bright screen. I swapped in a intel 80gig ssd and it performs wonderfully. Here is the question, should I sell it and upgrade to the new F model. I travel quite a bit, so battery life is important. I think the increased wattage of the processor and graphics card may suck up a lot more juice than the FW model. Has anyone had both models and noticed that much of a difference? In addition, how does the keyboard layout compare.. seems to me the new F model has a squished keyboard given the additional numberic layout.
I also like to play games and work with photoshop. Seems to me that the 3dmark scores weren't dramatically different between the FW 4650 core 2 duo and the F GT330m i7.. Not sure if that fully correlates into the in-game fps, but since I haven't seen much comparison between the FW and F in reviews, it's very hard to tell how much faster it truely is.

 

Seems someone has found a solution to the issue of the buzzing noise! Apparently if you click on the recording tab under windows sounds, it stops!

For me this suggests a driver or microphone issue. Could anyone who has the issue test this please? Also could you right click and disable the mike and see if the issue returns on reboot with it disabled?

Video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI2P8roNN1E

 

Could anybody, please, comment on the cooling system quality?
How often/for how long is the fan on under some moderate load (1-2 cores)?
Does the palm rest gets warmer than you would call comfortable?
Thanks.

 

I fired my new US model up this morning. It does indeed make that noise. Sometimes soft, sometimes not so soft.
I will have to consider returning this. I have not had this noise with any Apple or Dell I've used in the past years.

 

Ya know I sometimes think either people skim threads, or I am invisible! Have ya read my post, it may have a possible solution to the buzzing.

 

Intel VT is supported on i5. See http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei5/specifications.htm

Also, the user manual of the F (Sony USA site) explicitly mentions how to enable intel VT in the BIOS. I am now assuming it is there.

Can any F series owner check the BIOS to see if there is an option there for enabling intel VT?

 

Ask me again end of this week....

 

I ran a couple benchmarks cinebench and hd tune. On cinebench multicpu rendering you can see 8 cores all maxed out and the cpu speed is shown with cpuz.

 

Yes, it is available. Mine was set to "disabled", which I reset to "enabled".

 

I just installed XP mode after enabling VT in the bios-- works great.

 

Yes. I read your post. And it was a great one. However, there is some type of flaw here. Your method may work but it is not a solution. In the event there may not be one at all, I hesitate to have the system recording for the next 4 years.

 

I'm about to pick this model up from BB and am wondering if it can play the following games at native resolution:

Left 4 Dead 2
Call of Duty: World at War

Thanks!

 

Hi, if you are disabling the mic, it will not be recording? I was hoping someone could test the theory, as the noise issue is putting me off buying it! I will only need the mic when I am using the webcam, which I use about once every six months!

 

Two options:

1. Not everyone has time to read through 60 pages of posts.
2. This is more of a work-around than a solution. You still need to open the recording tab and keep it open at all times. There is also no way to minimize the sound options window.

So, this is a temporary fix that is still inconvenient. If Sony has an actual solution soon then it isn't a big deal, but if I had to deal with this issue for the next couple years I would not be happy.

Relax. Everyone appreciates your help but don't think that you stand out more than anyone else in this long thread. I posted a review about 20 pages back and nobody had anything to say about it-- it doesn't hurt my feelings. I'm sure somebody found it useful.

 

I disabled the microphone and rebooted and the buzzing noise is still there. Once I enabled the mic again and had that recording tab open under sound then the buzzing stopped. Weird stuff.

 

yes, it can

 

Great, thanks.

Someone here reported the BB models are not LED and are dual-lamp. Can anyone confirm this, and if it is dual-lamp would the screen brightness suffer?

 

Oh I realize that, it was just I did not want it to get lost in a posting frenzy. Anyway, a little bit of encouragement seems to have worked!

Thanks for trying and rep added! So it seems it is defo to do with the mic. However physically disabling and rebooting does not fix it, only having the tab open all the time does, is that correct?

Actually try one more thing for me if you will please! See if you can mute the mic under volume options on the taskbar ( right click the sound icon, volume options ) Does it still make a noise then?

 

And, since I have been following this thread since it started and also the previous thread that triggered this one, I know of another solution that was mentioned in this thread. The solution was to disable the graphics driver.

If you're not playing games that is probably ok. Perhaps there are more solutions and perhaps configuring the graphics driver differently also solves the problem. Unfortunately I cannot test any of this since I don't have my F yet.

Edit: The first solutions that were attempted were to disable the C4 power state of the processor but unfornately tools such as RMClock don't support core i7 (yet). Also, there appeared to be no BIOS option to disable this power state. Perhaps someone can check again. Disabling the C4 power state is a known solution to solve whining problems for core 2 duo.

Another solution was to try to undervolt the processor but as far as I can recall that was also not possible using BIOS and RMClock. At least, no one did this yet and wrote about it in this thread.

 

Is there a way of checking whether an LED vs dual-lamp ? I see that my full-HD screen is evenly bright throughout.

 

I think there was a link very far back in this forum that had some material about how the new core i7's voltages could not be controlled by software (in Windows) and was managed on a hardware-level. I think the link also stated that the only way to change the power management was through a firmware or bios update. This probably means that people will have to stick to temporary fixes until Sony or intel decides to release a fix

 

Muting the microphone does not stop the buzzing either. Any other ideas? I'll keep fiddling around too.

 

I am on it! If you go to the microphone properties, there should be an option to disable microphone boost? Similar to this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81770

Also under power plan in power options, there is a little arrow you can click that allows you to choose high performance. Does that work if the mic thing doesn't?

 

Not sure, but I think that the screen is dual-lamp. Dual lamp technology doesn't necessarily have poor image quality/uneven brightness. The main benefits of an LED-back-lit screen are battery life and eco-friendliness.

 

Actually, the ease of the workarounds basically says to me that Sony would fix this very, very quickly via a firmware patch. Their engineers will do a deeper analysis and find out the root cause and send across a fix. I doubt we will have to be dealing with this issue for years.

Having said that, I need to point out that even though I heard the whine on the first day, I no longer hear it. Maybe I got used to it or maybe the sound just went away by itself, after the computer ran for a day.

Anybody with the core i7-820QM processor *NOT* having the sound ? Just curious.

 

this sounds good

this sounds great

flumbo ain't the xp mode a win 7 pro option rather than the intel vt erik is talking about? or have I again lost something?

 

You can't install XP mode without VT enabled in the BIOS. It won't let you install.

 

Okay, got you. I thought maybe it would result in some kind of a screen brightness degradation or uneven lighting. Either way, I would be curious to know how one could find out, whether it is an LED or not.

As far as battery life (with my core i7-820QM etc), a couple of days earlier I did a check and the battery lasted for 2 hours and 10 minutes and the indicator showed 21% remaining, which is significantly longer than what my work HP provides. I was continually doing wireless Internet browsing (playing youtube videos etc) during that time. Par for the course, I guess.

 

I checked and mic boost was already off or on zero rather. I tried changing the power plan and it seems that selecting high performance lessens the noise to some degree still it is present though just less constant. I usuallty have it on balanced.

 

Indeed, Windows 7 runs Windows XP in a virtual machine using Intel VT. Clever ain't it?

Edit: forget the remark about clever, no way I am giving compliments to Microsoft!

 

I think I found something else that stops it. will post right back

 

Ok if if go into microphone properties and select the listen tab put a check mark where it says listen to this device and also mute the mic the buzzing stays off for good even exiting the mic tabs. Let me see if it stays this way. Mute the mic first before you check that box or it will squeal out of the speakers like a banshee.

 

Thanks for being persistent! I have another idea, in the recording options is Stereo Mix and option? If so disable this, as it record what you hear and passes it through the mic ( long shot I know, but hey it might work! )

 

I have been in there changing all the options one by one and then testing then setting them back and trying another and so far the only way that I got it to stop the buzzing noise is to mute the mic and check listen to this device. As of now I have no buzzing and I don't have to have any windows open like sound recorder.

 

ok, so this runs xp in win7pro that is not my case

but what I've asked you before like running 7 in ubuntu it's still valid?

I mean not a 'normal' virtualization with a new 7 but my 7 on the HD?

that is what I've understood earlier today

 

maxie and risco thank you very much for your efforts!!