Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

My "whistling" or "whining" fan noise is NOT related to the high pitch sound associated with the mic.



EDIT: I was watching a HULU video, and suddenly the machine died emitting a loud obnoxious BUZZING through the speakers. I had to do a hard shutdown, but was able to successfully reboot and it works O.K. Really WIERD.

 

Just received mine this morning (ordered it last Sunday), so it arrived quicker than I expected. I have to say, I have no fan noise issues, or keyboard rattles that have been previously mentioned (I love this keyboard!) There is some flex around the enter key, but I probably would not even have really noticed this if I wasn't looking for it. Overall, very pleased.

Now for the bad news. I have some pretty severe backlight bleeding happening, which means this unit has to be returned, so that is a bit disappointing.

 

I guess they ran out. On sonystyle.com site, it is all on notfy me button

 

Yes I got that, it was not addressed to you.

BTW, why do you add that speedtest image in your signature, just curious.

 

sorry i forgot to specify. whats the voltage on the American chargers? cheers

 

Sounds like the same reason I returned mine for repair. Mine was perfect otherwise, not even the whining noise. See Posts 1098 and 1200.

 

First of all there was no charge to me to return the unit. It was shipped to Sony under "Bill the Receiver."

Your problem is memory, either bad or dislodged. You might have been able to pay less to a local technician to push the memory back in rather than pay for shipping.

If I had that machine I would have removed each ram chip one at a time to see if that solved it. It would be too bad to lose the machine over such an easy-to-fix problem.

 

Hi guys. I have been eyeing this laptop for a while now, and I feel I don't need the processing power of the i7. However, I can't drag myself away from the 1920 x 1080 res screen. I am waiting in the wings for the i5 to be offered with the 330 and premium screen. I think all this speculation of a technical problem is premature. It seems to me that they are either out of parts/laptops, or are in the process of expanding the options available. The majority of people on this site seem to really love this laptop. I just checked the sonystyle US site and they are all listed as notify me. However, if you look closely at the picture of the processor sticker at the top of the page, it lists it as having an i5 processor. My point in all this is don't get your panties in a bunch. Let it play out and don't assume that there is a problem with the product. It seems to me it is a phenomenal laptop and personally, I can't wait to get my i5 version with bluray and a premium screen!

(and hopefully with no throttling and much better battery life!)

 

Does anyone have an idea what would possibly be causing this? Black screen, loud buzzing through the speakers, 1 option only was to hard shutdown.

 

Yes that's a crash, the "Buzzing" is a loop, a bad function call. It happens to me sometimes on the Q9450 system when playing a bluray. Not uncommon at all. You may want to update the DVD/Bluray playing software.

 

Does anybody know why when I adjust the colour settings, with the NVIDIA control panel, after restarting sometimes or opening some programs the option goes back to "other applications controlling the colour settings"?

Hence the colours change back to the ugly, default way they were before disabling automatic brightness with Vaio Control Center. I checked and the automatic brightness is disabled. I don't know why it doesn't just stay with my custom NVIDIA colour settings...thanks!

 

Here is an interesting article.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/22/sonys-secret-kill-switch-myth-rumor-or-hearsay/

 

Sounds more like "planting mischief". There are several gullible people around, who would believe such nonsense, especially when it comes to Sony.

 

It's interesting that my Sony-Ericsson cellphone failed a month after the warranty expired (wouldnt charge) and the XBR failed two months after the factory warranty would have ended - but we had the Futureshop extended warranty and got a new improved set.

And the Cellphone was replaced at no charge by Rogers anyway; they didn't have to do that since they're always promoting the latest and greatest.

 

Thanks. Although I wasn't actually watching a Blue Ray movie at the time, I had one present in the drive.

 

Well, my Sony 34" XBR CRT HDTV (weighs close to 200lbs) simply refuses to die, and it has been several years since the warranty expired. The sheer deepness of its blacks and the depth and accuracy of its colors are not matched by even the 65" plasma that I have, and thus I don't have the heart to get rid of it (currently takes pride of place in our basement).

Maybe, luck of the draw ? Or maybe a failure of the "kill switch" ?

 

I had a 27inch Sony tube TV that finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. It was so old that the plastic case around it started to crack. When I tried to move it to my new residence, the whole outer case started to crumble and it fell to the ground. It probably still worked, but there was no case, just the tube. The capacitor was exposed and could easily kill someone it handled improperly. I had it for nearly 16 years. It was a great TV. It will be sadly missed. :>

 

This thread is growing quite long and the important bits have become buried. Perhaps we should make a few key posts sticky, so everyone can easily see the important discoveries that have been made here? My top four choices would be Maxie HQ's work-around for the whine (post#546), Uzun's confirmation of the throttling on battery power (post #724), mpetrader's suggestion to turn off screen's "auto brightness" feature in Vaio Control center (post # 42) and JLGMIAM's fix to keep the backlit keyboard always on by covering the light sensor (post # 313). I don't know how to make posts sticky, but I know it can be done as I've seen it in other "Owners' Lounges" here. What do people think?

 

I've followed this thread from beginning with great interest. Specs of this machine, keyboard layout, overall size, etc. are near my ideal laptop. That almost no one produces what I want either makes me a niche market or just picky. Today I went to a Sony store in Vancouver to see the F11 and luckily they had one.

Specs were i7-720QM, 4 Gig Ram, 320 Gig - 7200, 1600x900 with GeForce 310M or 330 (can’t remember, sorry), backlit keyboard. I forgot to look at the Optical drive, I think it was just the DVD. Price was @1200 CAD.

Keyboard: Very good but with some noticeable flex around the "quote / enter" key area. They key layout is actually useful! Keys are normal sized with a number pad that includes normal things without having to "shift" or "fn" to access key assignments. If you're from Canada you will be familiar with the horrible keyboards many laptops here in the north have, they are littered with extra keys, small keys, and ridiculous lettering that makes most of them simply aggravating. This one is good. Backlighting works as described in other posts here, when I covered the sensor, the keys lit up. There does not appear to be a brightness setting for the keyboard backlight, it's on or off.

Screen: I disabled the screen sensor, turned it to max (within the Vaio applet) and for me the screen is just bright enough. Horizontal viewing angles are close to excellent. Vertical angles are typically average (most laptops these days force us to find the vertical sweet spot). I prefer this 1600x900 resolution (I am over 50) because text is readable etc. I’ve never played a game on any of my computers so don’t ask me for comment on that. Screen is quite reflective, I couldn’t notice any anti-glare coating. There was no similar F11 with a 1920x1080 screen to compare or comment on.

To me the screen seemed just a bit washed out but as others have posted that is probably tweakable. I would prefer a screen that knocks me out with clarity, brightness, not much glare and wide viewing sweet spot. I’m sure we all do, but I’ve yet to find one and this one is pretty good.

Performance: I think the Win Experience index was 4.9 which is the same as my I7 desktop (it has a relatively slow passive cooled video card). The lowest score was due to Graphics and most scores except processor are very close to my desktop. I opened some apps and it seemed fast, what can you tell in a store?!

Quality: I didn’t notice any whine or buzz as noted by others but I was in a noisy store. Plastic parts seemed to fit together well. Keyboard did not squeak or stick on any keys.

I guess I should have tried to crash it / mess with it to see what happened but I did not have much time. I did not look at all the bloatware installed but Norton notification came up so I’m sure there are the usual suspects.

After reading the other posts here I was leaning toward finding other candidates but having seen this in person and with my preferred screen resolution I still consider this one of the few choices available. Others are the new Tecra A11 it’s 15.6” and 1600x900, and a new LG 590 that I think is also 15.6” and 1600x900. Probably not gaming machines but they rock in their own solid way.

I really appreciate all the time others have spent posting info so I hope this helps someone make a choice. I apologize for being long winded.

 

Wait a minute? Wasn't the CEO of Sony called Damien?

In any case, the kill switch malfunctioned on my old Vaio and it still working. Should I return it now to have it fixed? Oh no, it's out of warranty! Just have to keep using it then until my F arrives.

 

+1

And I reported your post asking the moderator to follow up your suggestion. With all the traffic on this thread it is easy to overlook an excellent idea like this.

 

The Vaio F is not available on SonyStyle.com now, anyone knows why?

 

Thank you for taking the time to post this great write-up! Too bad there was not also a 1080p so you could tell us the differences to your eyes side-by-side with the 900p.

About )): "If you're from Canada you will be familiar with the horrible keyboards many laptops here in the north have, they are littered with extra keys, small keys, and ridiculous lettering that makes most of them simply aggravating" - OTOH we pesky French-Canadians appreciate these extra keys when typing in french our world famous love letters. Can't be all good being Canadian, just think about )) these poor Americans with their senate where the minority rules...

 

Yes, just send me $10 and I'll tell you.

 

You're so funny, guys

I think Sony is fixing small issues that have been mentioning here.

 

The F Series might just be my next investment, but I think I'll wait a month or two after reading some of the issues on here.

 

My first Vaio was a pcv-j100 budget desktop with a 600mhz celeron (lol!!) since the beginning of time.. I used that to learn 3ds max 4. It was still going and going and going till i just had to put it to rest a few months ago. It's done it's part I've also had two Clie pda's, a 27" tube tv, a huge XBR flat, an cybershots, 60gbPS3, various Mp3 players which are really just toys. They have never died on me or needed servicing. Sony does make high quality products.

Now if i just don't get suckered into buying a lot of their fad items all the time like the Clie I wouldn't have so much gadget junk in my apartment.

 

i think its not available on Sony's websites to purchase because the demand has been so high. not due to faults... though i could very well be wrong....

 

Can anyone recommend a good desktop? The F was supposed to be my DTR and my AL macbook can't perform well in CAD. now that I returned the unit and can't get another at the moment, i'll need
a desktop again since i wasn't expecting this downtime.

Thanks

Edit:
sorry should have moved this to a different thread.

 

Sony now beginning to advertise F Series as having a core2 duo processor: http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vn-f-series/tab/models

Could be a mistake but I can't possibly see how someone could have made that error...

 

Yikes! Agreed. Can't see someone making that error.

 

Someone may argue that it may just be a lazy copy/paste error from, say, the fw series, but the other specs have been changed. This is worrying...! My order better come soon and it had better work! I'm not staying with C2D if I can help it.

 

if you go into detailed section of each model core i7 processor is still available: http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vn-f-series/vpcf11z1e-bi

Maybe cto's are only affected?

They really should get their message right, this inconsistency in communication is thorougly disappointing.

 

Hah it seems the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, the specs for the VPCF11Z1E/BI still says it has the i7 720.

edit - beat me, fltlvn

 

On the Dutch Sonystyle-website, the possible processors for the new F series have also been replaced yesterday from i5/i7 to core 2 duo. This is really strange..but it doesn't seem to be some kind of mistake.

 

I bought VPCF115FM/B from Best Buy yesterday and can confirm the noise issue. Thought it's not as loud as being mentioned here by some users.

 

How are you liking the machine?

 

That is bizarre, since the pre-configured ones are still Core i7...!? Anyway, I got a JSP error when clicking on the 'customise now' button..!?

It looks to me like some web developer is working on the page and has made the CTO bit live before he/she meant to... There was no CTO option available this morning...

 

Is their website a testing environment or official webstore then?

 

It's great! My first Full HD and first 1 GB gpu laptop so I am blown away by the graphics. Keyboard is slightly on the left to accomodate number pad on the right which I thought would be an issue but doesn't bother me at all.

I had configured a Dell XPS 16 but even with about the same price Dell specs were lower in many important categories so I decided to go with Sony. I was kind of hesitant to buy because of the noise issue being reported here but pulled the trigger anyway.

There is a lot of crapware on the machine though...I removed some and planning on removing a lot more. I wish there was a way to have just Windows 7 and nothing else.

By the way, there is a 5% Bing cashback for Best Buy so you will get about $67 cashback from microsoft if you sign up and login to bestbuy from bing.com/cashback Also, you will get $25 in Best Buy reward zone certificate...sign up for free online.

 

I'm out I'm afraid. I am going to return it. The constant fan and the whine noise *which I had disabled with the mic trick, was too much. Plus it is a little heavier and bulky than my current Macbook Pro. And I can't adjust to the offset trackpad and selectors. I will wait and see if the NW series I think it is, switches to an i5. Maybe get some more battery life and a little less fan with that setup. I don't really do gaming, just surfing and some home video editing. I think the F11 was a bit of overkill for me. I wanted the larger screen, but next to the Macbook Pro, it really isn't much larger. Thanks to all for your input on this system.

 

Has anyone tried playing cod mw2 with the new f model yet? I wonder how much fps you get on highest settings. Especially since there seems to some confusion (by myself aswell as others) about the power of the gpu compared to the ati hd4650.

 

I just noticed that if you click on the picture of the F series on the US SonyStyle site a window opens with information on the i5 processor. I found this article http://blog.laptopmag.com/dell-issu...7-with-core-i7-core-i5-now-default-cpu-choice about Dell changing to the i5 processor. It looks like Sony may be heading that direction at least in the US.

 

This is an example of what happned to mine, folks. It kept slowing down and I wasn't using it intensly -

"A number of users also posted on forums that their Dell Studio 1747s slowed down after intense use. For example, a French-speaking user posted this experiment, which claims that after running two CPU-intensive programs, Prime 95 and Furmark, the CPU speed dropped from 1.6 to 1.06-GHz. Notebookcheck.com, a professional review site, did not see a clock speed drop but did see their test notebook’s 3DMark06 scores drop significantly after 12 hours of intense use. We did not test our review unit for performance throttling before we had to return it to Dell."

 

I am starting to get really annoyed now. I have been looking into this laptop for a long time and the problems just seem to accumulate with each passing day. Does anyone have a recommendation for a powerful and reliable laptop (AKA the Vaio F but without all the issues)

 

As I am writing this I cannot even get to the F series details on the site. So, it does seem they are having a lot of technical difficulties with their site. If anything, they should be more professional in maintaining their sonystyle sites across the world.

They are definitely not replacing the i7 by the core 2 duo. For one thing, last minute hardware changes by replacing a processor by one from another architecture are basically impossible and extremely costly, and for another they would be slaughtered on the internet if they would announce an i7 laptop and a few weeks later put a core 2 duo in it.

Other errors that have been seen on the site

• advertizing the F with core 2 duo (weeks ago on other locations)
• wrong graphics cards (G211P in Canado instead of GT330M)
• listing a 7200RPM 500GB drive with a very high cost when in fact it is a 0RPM 500GB SSD
• Swedish text on some parts of the Dutch site
• Inaccessible pages (jsp errors)

And... confusing a Core 2 Duo with a Core i7 is not that unlikely, especially if you let a non-technical person write the texts and use an FW as a basis. "Oh, a Core processor, wait that must be incomplete. Ah, the FW says its Core 2 Duo, that sounds much better!"

 

I customized and ordered a model with a 500GB HDD @ 7200RPM last week. You are saying this is not correct?

 

Relax! The worst that can happen is that they put a 500GB SSD in it. I paid 70 EUR extra to get the 500GB 7200RPM but on some sites it was hundreds of euros more expensive.

How much did you pay extra for yours?

 

^^ Same here, but not 100% sure to be honest.

 

That would be exactly what may become an option: an F series with a souped-up Core2Duo Centrino2. Or get an FW off the clearance (not the refurb) section of the SonyStyle Outlet.

The percentage of software available for maximum usage of a quad core is minimal and not likely to affect much of the business world, for example, which still prefers to use Windows XP precisely because of the need for backward compatibility with earlier software. Likely few home users (i.e., non-professional engineers, etc. ) will miss not having a quad core for the next couple of years. Think about it: Win7 advertizes its XP capability widely -- it's the only way to get the majority of the business world to abandon their current XP configurations!

A couple of things:

When you click on the UK site link for the F with Core2Duo, the next screen is an error screen that is blank except for the sidebars. Might indicate that no Core2Duos are in the offing and that the Website is being worked on from the old FW software template.

Note that the F series does not have an Intel wireless card. This same thing happened with the early Core2Duos when Intel didn't have the CPU and its own wireless coordinated, so the early models using the CPU platform were not Centrinos because they had the Atheros card.

Much of what is going wrong could indeed be processor- (and also power-) related. After all, there are caveats of one sort or another about the i7 no matter which manufacturer has used it. In my opinion, the calls should be going in to Intel more than to Sony. What is Intel willing to say about these sorts of issues and its processor?

When you get pre-configured laptop models they are not individually tested -- so a computer from the same batch with a defective CPU or hard drive is likely to indicate the possibility that many others in the batch have the same issue. When Sony put together its test models for pre-production, you can be sure Intel (and the screen manufacturers, etc.) sent perfect units to ensure Sony would execute a contract. What those batches look like in actual production is another matter.

The whine issue is hard to detect in a noisy computer lab -- hence even the supposedly individually tested CTO's might have been missed. Missing major screen issues, of course, is quite another thing -- but if deteriorating power is the root issue, well, then screen, sound, speed will all be affected at a time that is well past the amount of time spent in testing a unit.

Conclusion: I would suggest that forum members with these laptops start to call Intel customer support. Let Intel tell you what the story is. I know that that approach was helpful for someone in identifying hard drive issues (what noise should or should not be heard). Intel would be hearing about its processors from all the computer manufacturers and is in a much better position to comment on whether the i7 is innocent or guilty of all of this mayhem. My guess is that Sony is probably not the culprit in all of this -- a supplier likely is.