Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

I currently have a FW series with the blueray burner. I just picked up the new F series but it just has the BD reader. Just wondering if the drives are interchangable? as I would like to swap them.

Thanks.

 

Not sure if they'll have one. I would guess that not in the 1st gen for sure. The same goes with F in Japan...if you want backlit keyboard, you have to order F with US keyboard. What an irony, Sony is Japanese company, why they give this feature to US customers and not the Japanese ones?

 

Yeah I'd quite like to know that too in case I suddenly decide I need more than just a writer!

 

Why not, here is a photo of the F's BD burner:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5767105&postcount=1093

 

I dont know but I dont think mine is seeing my AP that is 5Ghz....... i am trying to research it but no luck

 

Unplug the power, REMOVE THE BATTERY, undo the two screws underneath in the area of the DVDrom, turn the computer over so the screws fall into your hand, and slide the burners out. Compare side by side. They should be identical, if not the rails and tab can be swapped.

The connectors are standard Sata, there MAY be an incompatibility if the units are a different thickness - which is unlikely.

 

How do the screens compare side by side, after being properly set up?

 

In case anyone is wondering ....... like I was..... according to the online manual it only supports 2.4Ghz..... now i need to find a tear down to see where the wlan module is hiding and if i can replace it

 

Sorry, I asked this question a while back but maybe it got lost in the shuffle.....and so let me ask it again, since you are one of the rare people here with the SSD...

How is the performance of your 256GB SSD drive ? How are the access times ? Cold boot-up times ? Is it in Raid 0, like with some other Sony SSD options ? Thanks.

 

Please note that even though Sony may be using a Toshiba SSD, it probably is not the version that Toshiba sells retail. Which means the read/write speeds of the retail unit might not mean anything, when it comes to the unit in the Sony laptop.

As seen in the past, Sony used a Samsung SSD in their laptops but the version of the Samsung SSD that Sony used, was not available via the retail channels and was in RAID 0. Makes a huge difference.

 

I know every screen is different. But is there any chance you could let us know what the settings were for your screen? Even $79 seems a lot to me after buying a new PC. At least your settings shold be a lot closer to ideal than out-of-the-box.

 

Hi guys,

Just a note to those waiting for their F Series in the UK:

I have spoken to Sony today and laptops will not be dispatched from Tilburg until Friday (29th January). This is due to the i7's not being released in the UK until then.
Personally, mine has been in Tilburg since last week.

 

Bit of a strange decision from Intel I would have thought...

Oh well. Thanks for that! +1

 

Not sure they got their reason right. The I7's have been out in the Uk since last year. The HP DV and Envy series have had them for a while, as has the Dell Studio XPS.

Oh well. I just put in my pre-order for a F11S1E off of Play.com. Their expected release date is listed as 1st Feb which puts it pretty much in-line with what Sony has told you. Shipped from Netherlands on the 29th, Play gets it on the 1st, i get it hopefully by the 3rd

 

I need more USB ports. Does anyone have a successful USB hub working with the F? Even better, does anyone have an Express Card with USB ports working on the F? That would put them on the left and not tie up the eSATA port. None of the devices of either type that I have found say that they will work with Win 7 64 bit. Thanks.

 

Vista drivers wll work.

 

Oh, boy --- FWs seem to have the same whining, buzzing problem:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=443121

Only, get this: The forum members at that thread report that the sound alters based on screen brightness and motion on the screen.

This is getting very interesting.

(My hunch -- since I dare not "spec"-ulate -- has been that it is a power issue.)

 

That would be a valuable information, please report your discoveries on that matter

ehm, did sony or intel forgot that i7 was released in q4'09?
i5 might have been, but talking 'bout i7 seem organic fertilizer to me

 

I just talked to SonyStyle and was told that they will begin shipping the laptop on wednesday 27/1 I live in Denmark Europa

I bought
VPCF11Z1E/BI
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM-processor
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU
8Gb 1333 DDR3
500Gb 5400rpm HD
Blueray burner
VAIO Display Premium with anti reflection and 100% Adobe RGB

I preorder it the 7/1 so the wait will soon be over

 

Same for me, although I am living a bit closer to the distribution center (just 25kms). The laptop should arrive on thursday or friday then. It is a bit frustrating that this is an artificial delay because of some legal issues.

 

Thanks so much! Sony generally makes notebooks that are quite thought through when it comes to these technical details important for the professionally creative. They seem to be runner ups to Macbook Pros.

The FW-series painted the same basic picture regarding DPC latency. It seems safe to assume that the driver for the wifi card has a poorly written poll function of sorts that kicks in at the interval indicated by the spikes. I was only worried that the notoriously catastrophic NVIDIA drivers would ruin the machine's ability for real-time audio - most notebooks with NVIDIA that I've tested had a near-constant latency of ~1000 ms - but I guess this has been dealt with somewhere by some of the very rare people with true moral responsibility.

Now my only concern - but a big one! - is fan noise. I wonder if it is at all possible to change the processor to an i5 after the purchase (CTO doesn't seem to be an option in Scandinavia)...... Probably something that could mess up the insides of this species pretty bad...

Does anyone know if the i7-720QM generates less heat/noise in these machines than the i7-820QM??

I'm aware that, by now, probably the only persons following this thread are those who we've seen posting comments. Anyway, couldn't someone with an imagination think of some fantastic means for throttling down the processor manually (with software, obviously, this isn't a motorcycle) and thus ensure cool and quiet operation?

 

If you've actually successfully calibrated your screen with this professional tool, couldn't you simply share the color profile (or whatever the resulting product's called) with the rest of this forum?

 

I wonder what the european versions look like! especially the screen! Please post pictures with specs when you get yours!!

Grtz Jan

 

I second the motion to share the color profile. Alot of us dont have another $80 to drop on screen calibration.

 

I know that way back someone posted that there battery was locked to 933mhz on battery did anyone else with a i7-720 confirm this?

I sent my F11 back before opening it and was getting ready to reorder but wanted to see if this was a confirmed feature. thanks

John.

 

On the Dutch forum ( http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/33345102#33345102), someone reported that according to sonystyle, sony got permission to start shipping from Friday onwards because of the processor but that they got information later that they can start with that already on Wednesday. Also, this change happened today, which is consistent with the two posts in this thread. In other words, we have a consistent story from two different sources here!

 

I thought the "Premium" in the European version referred to the Premium-ness of the black colour rather than of the display.

 

Well I'm afraid lack of a backlit keyboard is a deal breaker for me...

<rant>
If anyone from Sony is reading this, why on earth would you only produce a US backlit keyboard, and not for anyone else..?!?! This doesn't make sense, since the S and Z series all have backlit keyboards for everyone... Grrrrrr...
</rant>

 

Just ordered from Sonystyle UK (now I've found the working webpage!)...

Intel® Core(TM) i7 Processor
Genuine Windows® 7 Professional
Premium Black
128 GB Ultra SATA Flash SSD
8 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer
41.6 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
No Microsoft Office Suite
McAfee® - 60 days protection
No Adobe® Acrobat® Standard
No Adobe® Creation
No Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom

VPCF11X5E

Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks

*taps fingers impatiently*

matt

 

I'm curious about why the lack of backlit keyboard would be a deal breaker? My kids and thought it was cool, but honestly, how often will you be in near complete darkness while using your laptop? Also, if I recall correctly, there is a max time out of 1 minute before the lighting turns back off. That is actually quite irritating when you are viewing/reading the screen then need to type again.

However, I do see your frustration with regard to availability in other regions.

 

There is an option within the Sony control panel to disable the timer completely.

 

If you attempting to calibrate your screen and are resistant to purchasing a Spider 3, check this out>

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#Gammabox

It's stated here gamma for windows should be adjusted to 2.2. Included on this website is a little app named 'quickgamma' and works well. Brightness can be adjusted at the website as well. Also, here is an online monitor test. Use 'executable mode' and this seems to help also.

http://tft.vanity.dk/

I hope this may help someone. Anyone with more ideas?

 

The keyboard stays on as long as the environment is dark enough. If you want it on all the time you just have to block the sensor on the top of the keyboard with a piecs of opaque tape.

There is value to operating in a darkened environment. I edit video and it is useful in many photographic areas. People that play games love the total emersion feeling.

 

Just got my VPCF1190x 4GB 128ssd i7 quad gt330. Yeah!

Now I just want to delete everything that came with it! Well the question is What is clean? What can I nuke to get more HD space back? BTW this machine is sic. Very fast...

Would this work? I wanted to save $50 so i didnt go with the fresh start. Will this remove all that junk?

 

OpenSUSE is a different OS (a Linux distribution). The steps mentioned will remove everything from your hard drive to install it. So yes, it would remove all the junk, but also Windows 7 and your recovery partitions along with it. (It was probably supposed to be a joke, but I wonder if there won't be people just following that blindly without knowing what they're doing)

 

Thanks for the heads up, im computer illiterate and that could have been me

 

I'm quite often working away in low light, and with screen glare, I find my TZ keyboard annoyingly difficult to see properly. Therefore a backlit keyboard became a must-have feature. Initially, I was reluctantly looking at Dell and Alienware, but was over-the-moon when I discovered Sony had brought out backlit keyboards on a few models.

The F is perfect apart from that, but now I may wait and see what the new Z is going to be like instead...

 

I was just joking. The procedure will remove windows completely and install linux.
Perhaps others in the forum can compile a list of junk software that you can manually remove from your system to make it fresh.

How about that? What is the junk list?

 

Control Panel, and uninstall everything you don't need. Should be fine.

 

What would be a good registry cleaner to use to remove the crap left behind?

 

I think Vaio care actually comes with a registry cleaner, but I'm not 100% sure on that...

 

Exactly! This "backlit" thingie is a gimmick. Nobody is supposed to be doing anything serious in the dark. It's not good for the eyes. It never was, never will be.

 

I always used my MacBook late at night in bed and it made it easy to work on and the LCD dimmed enough that it didn't even bother my eyes.

 

Wasn't trying to start a debate on the pro's and con's of using a laptop in the dark. I don't. I also just wanted to raise the issue of the backlight time out. haxOrJimDuggan, I honestly don't remember seeing the option to never turn off.

 

I use CCleaner all the time.

 

Maybe UK model does have backlit keyboard, was looking at their pictures for it, and it seems to be backlit (So there is a chance it will be backlit)

http://gallery.vaio.eu/product_gallery/index.php?s=f&c=gb&l=en

 

I don't have my laptop in front of me but it's there - just look in the Sony Vaio Control Panel. Having the back-light auto timeout was annoying, so turning that off was one of the first things I did.

 

Have you ever actually tried a backlit keyboard? The brief time I had a Studio 17, I fell in love with it. It's nice to have in partially lit situations like airplanes and during conference room presentations when the lights are partially dimmed.

 

Revo uninstaller is very good at removing programs. It cleans the registry afterwards.

 

I'm glad to hear that you guys in the UK can finally order the F series again. Does anyone have any insight as to when us in the US will be able to order?
I have been wanting one and was about to order on Saturday when I found out about the hold!!! Also, I was planning on using the discounts they were offering last week on the CTO model, has there been any word as to whether that sale will be extended when they start shipping again, I will be very frustrated to be denied a discount because SONY had problems?