Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

thanks for the info haxor... good to hear it writes blueray as well...

any chance you can find out the disc drives actual model name? perhaps i could find out my answer that way

 

Has that worked widely for people? Also, is it still $1249 in stores? Because Best Buy seems to have realized that it's a great bargain and accordingly moved the price up to $1349 online.

 

I have not yet but I will tonight. The buzzing noise has been addressed fyi as a work-around from folks in this forum.

 

o. seems on my current toshiba laptop. running win 7 RC.

if i go to device manager. and double click on my dvd drive. it shows what region it is there and allows me to change that region up to 4 times...

@haxor can you do this on your pc and see what region it is and if it allows you to change it? thanks in advanced

 

Sorry, I'm not in front of my Sony right now.

 

Correction, the Best Buy F11 is a Blu-Ray player and DVD writer, not a Blu-Ray writer.

 

You are correct. Sorry for the confusion.

 

I keep reading how certain manufactures include gpu's that are downclocked. Does anyone know if this is the case here and if so can we overclock to stock?

 

I'm kind of like rend2688 as in i'm in australia and i wanna get this laptop. But since there has been so much discussion about noise issues, I dont know whether i should get it. I'm gonna be using it for autocad and alot of autodesk programs for engineering in uni and i'm worried that its a tad bit loud.

So really, is it worth getting cause i only have one shot at buying a laptop and i havent really been impressed by the Dell Sudio XPS, Toshiba Qosmio and the Hp's just looked bad

 

I've only had a few days with it but here's my initial observations with fan noise:

While gaming, the laptop sounds like it's going to take off. However, after monitoring temps they remain very low and therefore I can live with that. Also, I wear headphones so the point is moot for me.

Last night I did a simple test of working the machine without gaming to see how the fan reacted. I had several applications open:
-Steam
-Visual Studio 2008
-SQL Server 2008
-Firefox with three tabs open: one was this site, another a youtube video playing and the third an episode of family guy from hulu playing.

The fan was not nearly as loud as it was while gaming and in my opinion was quite low. I played around with the applications for about 10 minutes and didn't feel the sound of the fan during that time was anything to be concerned with.

 

Have you ever run those apps on battery power?

 

To add to the above, a Blu-ray burner, will also read/write DVDs and CDs, in addition to reading/writing Blu-ray discs. A point we just need to emphasize a bit.

Of course, having the capacity to create Blu-ray disc backups, with each disc having the capacity to contain upto 250GB (those are Gigabytes !) of data, is just icing on the cake. Hell, I can periodically take a backup of the entire data in my whole computer, into ONE single disc ! Of course, the ability to author High-Definition content of my home movies and burn it to Blu-ray and watch it in High-defintion on my 65" Plasma screen is just icing on the cake.

 

I know that the Dell keyboards on the Studio models were renowned for flex. And that was on both the 15" and 17" models -- I tried them myself last summer.

Also, even the keyboards on the FW series varied a bit in terms of the "feel" of the keyboard with later models being stiffer than the earlier ones. Again, I tried the FW190 and the FW390 -- noticeable difference.

 

There's always the remaining FWs which are quiet as a mouse.

 

About fan noise : I tried a Toshiba Satellite A 500 recently and didn't keep it because of fan noise. The fan was going on strongly, every 30" ,even with no applications running !
that's why I'm so suspicious now with fan noise, expecting that VaioF behavior is different from this Toshiba's

 

hmmm, so hopefully sony will fix the whining noise but i'll have headphones in my ear nearly all the time so i most likely wont notice much of the sound. How does it do with battery life btw? I'd probably want to do some CAD on the train ride to uni that takes about 45 minutes so it should probably last that long and not produce alot of heat?

 

Again a small correction roweraay, for the Best Buy unit, it is a Blu-Ray player and DVD/CD writer, not a Blu-Ray writer.

 

Yes, and generally, the glossy Sonys are less reflective than the competition. It is striking how whites look white on Sony screens and often bluish on Dells, for example -- with Sony blacks being extremely impressive. It's noticeable right away on the FullHD and HiColor screens.

 

Comparing the Full-HD screen of my F-series, side-by-side with the 1920x1200 screen of my HP/Compaq 8710W, clearly shows the brilliance of the F-series screen. The HP is a matte-type screen and extremely high quality (specifically developed for graphics type applications) but the F-series screen looks a notch better.

 

Oh, I thought it was a blu-ray burner. To be quite honest, Sony is one of the rare players who even offers a blu-ray burner and I personally would not get a laptop in 2010 that does not contain a blu-ray burner.....even if I have to pay more and go with a slightly higher specced model for the privilege.

 

Has anyone received the European version yet with the matte screen?

[thread]450919[/thread]

 

With headphones on you won't hear anything.

This is a desktop replacement so battery life is pretty average. From my experience I can probably get around 2 hours surfing the net, so I would guess a cut in half for anything more intense than that.

 

I have not, sorry. And my usage pattern on battery is strictly browsing the web

 

probably not the best question but black or silver?

 

Because my work is almost outside, I intend to bring my laptop to school and learn programming with my classmates so I really want to know if the laptop can run some IDEs smoothly on battery power.

Could you please test it and give me your experience?

 

I can tell you right now -- this is not the laptop for you.

1.) It's a desktop replacement so it's on the heavy side.
2.) The screen is glossy and therefore not suitable for outdoors.
3.) Because of #1 the battery life is naturally going to be poor.

You're going to need something with a matte screen, which means a business-class notebook most likely. I would recommend posting in the 'what notebook should I buy?' forum for more help.

 

With that being said, then this isn't a laptop you'd want sitting on your lap very long? I mean most of the time i wont have a desk near me. Not going to be sitting in the grass in a park doing work but yer...

 

It looks good in both colors. There are pictures of both in the forum somewhere between pages 70 and 90.

 

wasn't that 25 now and 54gb soon?

 

And another small correction, a single-layer single-sided bluray disc will 'only' hold 25gb, unless they've created a new 10-layer one while I wasn't looking.

 

If you need a Vaio, and if price is a big factor, then I would go with the CW series, which is a lot cheaper and smaller than the F-series. If you want even more portability, then go with the S-series which is ultra-light and ultra-portable.

Now, if cost is no bar, then I would go with the new Z-series, all maxed out.....$4500, based on some estimates and in turn will get you a Full-HD 1920x1080 13" screen, 512GB Raided Quad-SSD, 330GPU with 1GB VRAM, 8GB DDR3 RAM, i7-620M processor, Blu-ray Burner....all in a 3 lbs laptop.

 

So why backup to Blu-ray instead of an external HDD which is easily re-writeable and therefore useful for quick incremental backups and significantly cheaper in £/GB?

 

Yes, the single layer Blu-ray (now you are talking about ancient products in the bluray range ) is 25GB....the latest ones go upto 250GB (10 layers), even though the commoner ones are in the 50GB range (dual layer).

 

I backup my critical files into at least 2 different backup modes....magnetic (HDD type) and Optical (DVD, BD etc) and rarely rely on one single mode.

 

I've had it on my lap for an hour or so...I didn't notice any heat.

 

That's good... I'm just trying to justify to myself that an extra £50 wasn't worth getting a bluray writer as I don't make home movie discs or have a need for a second mode of backup...

 

As mentioned above, 50GB Blu-ray discs are as common as grass in the Kenyan Masai-mara. 200GB discs are less common but are available for purchase. 250GB discs have already been demonstrated a while back but have not become readily available commercially.

You need to keep up with the times.

PS: Out of the dozens of Blu-ray film discs I have, over 50% are in the 50GB capacity.

 

I would really like to know how much noise this laptop does when you surfing with a couple of tabs, is it totaly quiet or does it make some noise? I would also like to know how much noise it does when you watch HD-movies, can you hear it throughout the movie?

 

From the user manual of the F:
Supports writing data to BD-R part1 version 1.1/1.2'1.3 discs (single layer discs with capacity of 25GB, dual-layer discs with the capacity of 50GB), and BD-RE Part1 versin 2.1 discs (single layer discs with the capacity of 25GB, dual-layer discs with the capacity of 50GB).

 

Yeah, but for archival purposes (longer term storage), I would not rely on Magnetic media completely. I think 50 pounds is a very cheap price to pay for a company that actually offers a blu-ray burner in their laptop range.

Plus, bluray media prices are dropping by the day and in another year or so, will be as cheap as the current DVD prices.

 

OK, so If my needs change in say 2 years time, will it be possible to swap in a writeable drive do you think?

 

I believe with firmware upgrades, they will continue to upgrade the capability to write to discs with larger capacities. Having said that, I think even 50GB of capacity on a single disc, is a god-send.

PS: My old Sony DSC-R1 camera was only rated to write to CF-cards with 4GB capacity. Of course as higher capacity CF-cards (like 8GB and 16GB etc) became available, and when deployed on the DSC-R1, the camera merrily wrote to them with absolutely no problems.

 

If you go into the Sony prices for a laptop built-in blu-ray burner (to my knowledge nobody other than Sony even offers it), you will be shocked to find that it will cost you over $1000 to have it added, after the fact.

But you may be able to get an external blu-ray burner added for around $500 or so, connectable to the laptop via one of the ports. $50 is a cheap price to pay for the upgrade, IMHO.

 

Argh... too late! It's about to be shipped!

 

For surfing, to me the fan is barely distinguishible. It will make some noise, but you have to either be listening very closely or have ears like a wolf. I haven't wathced movies through it yet so I can't comment.

 

I'm sure will be able to find a burner drive for cheaper than $1000 and install it yourself (on ebay somewhere...). You'll probably have to wait a while though. If you really want the option from Sony, you should just refuse the package and re-order...

 

I use backup on harddisk for huge amounts of data that are coherent in some way. For instance, I use 1TB hard disks to create backups of my server. I use two such disks. One for the old backup (stored in a different location) and one at home for recent backups.

Storage on a hard disk is less robust because it has electronics (so sensitive to moist), damages easily while dropping, and is sensative to high temperatures. An application of blueray disk for me are more for long term storage. I wouldn't expect a hard disk that is stored for 10 years to still be readable but would expect that to be the case for BDs. Also reading a BD would be easier than reading a hard disk in 10 years time since by then the hard disk interface will have (no doubt changed again) whereas there is more compatibility with the optical disk standards.

 

You can buy a 5-1/4 desktop Bluray burner for $200 or so and put it in a $50 AC-powered Esata or firewire external case. But yah, $100 extra (over the Bluray reader)for a mobile Bluray burner to be included in the Sony is an incredible deal, as is the 256 gig SSD.

My Agent told me the Bluray burner is added at quite a loss to Sony, not even covered by bundling cost efficiencies, just to promote the format and increase general Bluray hardware sales.

HOWEVER, Bluray readers for the F-series are available for $150 from Ebay (if you trust them) and aftermarket Bluray burners will probably show up soon enough.

 

Ok, my 1190 was shipped yesterday,and is currently in Winnipeg, which means I'll have it tomorrow, one day ahead of schedule. That's six business days from ordering, (and it was on backorder) to delivery, which is not bad - though it feels a lot longer...

One thing for sure is that - barring an actual defect - I'd have to hate it for some reason to return it for another configuration.. prices have gone up, and I doubt I'd have the goodwill discount or free express shipping for a reorder, so a replacement of exactly the same thing (with a different colour maybe) would be almost $300 more. I'd have to have decided to get a laptop from another brand.

So wish me well as I get my first new laptop since 2001..

 

So to everyone with the F, how is the screen? It looked washed out at Best Buy. I turned off the auto dim in the Sony menus and it still didn't look as bright as other laptops. It could be the lights inside of Best Buy, but the FW590 screen looked more brighter and it was the eco version (not hd). Since BB increased the price, I'm not for sure this would be a good purchase by having a washed out screen. Maybe the screen needs to be calibrated.

My old MacBook Pro screen was just awesome. I guess I'm trying to find a PC with the quality of a MacBook Pro screen without the cost of a MacBook Pro.