Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

There is no real need to clean the registry. You could delete an important entry by accident. And, it's not like you'll save much space.

More here:

http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-windows-performance-tweaking-myths


But if you have a problem, sure, try one (a cleaner), it might help.

 

@dd123pp: I didn't see that pic on the UK site, but as you can see, it is a stock image of a backlit US keyboard layout, and there is no mention of a backlit keyboard in the text anywhere (that I found), so it seems unlikely...

@paule123: Yes, I briefly owned a Studio XPS 16, and found the backlit keyboard an absolute godsend..!

 

Looks like the F series cannot be ordered on the site right now. Update imminent? or do they do that a lot?

 

What discounts did you see? I remember that I configured an F and even put it in my cart, but it's gone now and I don't remember what the discount was.

 

I don't remember the exact discounts other than that the headline was "up to $200 off CTO F series laptop" The exact discount depended on which options you went for. I priced a few different configs and have them written down so I can try to haggle with them when it becomes available again.

 

That keyboard does look nice.

 

I don't remember all but here are a few...

CPU - 820M upgrade $250 instead of $300
RAM - 6GB to 8GB was $125 (original was $150)
Hard disk - Had approx $50 < than original.

 

The folks at sonystyle seem open to haggling. I ordered a ready-made model last week (coming tomorrow) and I was able to call them and get a discount. Just an FYI they gave me a 10% discount pretty much just for asking so it's worth a call to talk to a person. There was some back-and-forth and I ended up with a 15% discount. The price in dollars was $1529 originally and I got it for $1300 which is right around the price at BestBuy, though with a faster HDD and BluRay writer. Looking forward to finally using it.

 

That's part of the problem. Let alone the fact that this is not good for the eyes, many appear to have lost sight of even why this functionality exists in the first place.

 

What would that be?

 

Hello
You are in a mistake
According to the oficial website you have :
*in selected models
brightness
antireflection
colour saturation


That means premium screen add this features.
Nobody seems received a european model yet,so we are waiting to see also
if this screen comes in matte too.


A big faulty os customizing,you cant have black or silver finish with premium screen you can only customize premium screen with premium black finish and I dont like it.
I have to wait to prebuild VPCF11S1E/B

 

Well i have some good news for people who aren't all that satisfied with the the Sony Vaio F series (though i think it's awesome compared to most of the laptops within the some range) , Say hello to the new B series which seems a more solid notebook with the core 17 technology. Here's the link:

http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/subcategory/notebooks/performance/b-series

Anyone managed to get their hands on this?

 

nice laptop but its not for gaming

 

The "B-series" is the former "BZ-series"....essentially something positioned around 2 notches below the F/FW in the Sony range and meant for "business" users like analysts and supervisors.

 

Looks pretty good. But this is a business notebook. The screen res isn't all that great, the video chipset is not good for much beyond spreadsheets and the like. Pass.

 

Your right it's definitely not for gaming, but it's advantage over the F series is it's build quality, very durable in the long run.

 

Exactly. They don't exactly compete with each other in terms of their intended use.

 

I can't believe they don't say a word about the screen finish: glare or anti-glare?

 

why is that Vaio F Series is not available yet at SonyStyle (USA) website? Am I missing something?

I might get mine at best buy, any disadvantages?

 

I am having the same problem with my laptop. I have some confusion on those instructions. Can you post how you used that Phoenix software?


Thanks.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5779025&highlight=believe#post5779025

 

OK, as requested, here's the screen calibration profile I created for my Vaio F using Spyder 3 Elite, along with the (somewhat lengthy) instructions for setting up the screen and installing the profile. A copy of these instructions is also in the attached zip folder along with the profile itself :

1.In Vaio Control Center/Display/Automatic Brightness Settings uncheck the box that says "Adjust brightness automatically" and hit Apply
2. In Vaio Control Center/Display/Color Mode Setting, check "Do not apply color mode" and hit "Apply"
3. Make sure screen brightness is set to maximum using Fn and F6 on the keyboard
4. Download the attached zip folder and extract the profile to your desktop or other easily traceable location
5. Navigate to the extracted profile on your hard drive, right click on it and choose "Install profile"
6. To verify that it installed to correct place, look in "C:Windows/System32/spool/drivers/colors. The profile should be in that folder. If it's not there you can copy and paste it into the correct folder manually.
7. Open control panel and choose "Large Icons" in the "View by" drop down menu on the top right (if you don't already have it set like this)
8. Click on Color Management and uncheck the box that says "Use my settings for this device" then click the "Advanced" tab at the top of the Window
9. Click "Change System Defaults" at the bottom left and in the new window, click "Add" near the bottom left.
10. This should bring up a list of profiles among which should be the one you downloaded called Spyder_Vaio_F_profile.icm. Highlight this profile and click OK at the bottom right. Then with your new profile highlighted in the box click "Set as default profile" toward the bottom right.
11. Toward the top of the window click on the "Advanced" tab, then check the box "Use Windows Calibration" toward the bottom left. As soon as you check this box you should see your screen change to the new profile (a bit darker, crisper, less blue) and this profile should remain in effect until/unless you change it.

That's it. Thanks to MBGlider for posting most of these instructions earlier, which were borrowed from the Dell XPS 1645 forum. I tested them myself and they do work. Just keep in mind, this profile was made for my screen. To the extent that screens can vary even within the same model, your results may vary.

Also, if you changed any other screen adjustment settings (ie in NVidea control panel) prior to trying this profile you should set them all back to the default settings. If you installed any third party screen adjustment software that may be loading it's own profile on startup, you need to uninstall it or disable it from startup, otherwise you may get double profiling which can cause very funky results. Adobe Gamma is one of the most common culprits for this.

If you decide you don't like the results, you can retrace your steps through these instructions, remove the Spyder_Vaio_F profile and restore the default profile from Sony which is called Sony Vaio display profile_23yadayada. Good luck, hope this helps.

 

Thank you for posting the profile. It may not be perfect but it has to be better than default. I am still waiting on my Vaio F. I bought the BB version. Just gotta wait for it to be delivered to the APO.

 

roweraay: I haven't been ignoring your questions--I've just been trying to gather some objective data. Subjectively, it's incredibly fast. The problem is, (and it's not really a problem ) I've never had an SSD before, nor a processor this fast, nor this much fast RAM, and there's very little junk on the drive. So...its hard to say how much of the incredible speed I'm experiencing is from the drive. I'm pretty sure it's not RAID zero--it's just listed as a single 256GB drive in device manager and there are no raid controllers listed in device manager. Cold boot into Windows is 25 seconds. At the recommendation of phill, another poster here, I downloaded AS SSD Benchmark and I've attached screen shots of the results. I'm not sure what they all mean, but the few I can interpret seem to be good news bad news--really good sequential read/write times, but really lousy for longer read/write (4K). I don't know what 4k 64 thrd is but the drive could barely do it. It woudl have taken hours to finish, which is why it's missing from the result and why there's no total score generated. If anyone who knows about these things could shed some light on these results or give some advice about any tweaks that might be available to bump up performance on the longer read/writes I'd appreciate it.

 

Has anyone found out if there is a way to turn off the pulsating power button light when the laptop goes into hibernate/sleep? I believe it's called an Illuminating Lamp by Sony.

 

I don't think it's possible. Also, it should be pulsing just when it's in sleep, not hibernating. At least it was like that with previous Vaios.

 

Thanks for this mate, anything that makes my Vaio better (when I get round to buying it that is!) is really appreciated by me!

 

If you're from the U.K and you're buying any of the i7 versions, that colour scheme probably won't apply as we're meant to have completely different "premium" screens.

Anyone know whether Play.com manage to get things delivered for the release date or do they dispatch on the release date? Conflicting forum reports out there.

 

i might get mine at best buy today.

any advise that i need to do first when i first power on my new lappy "F"?

do i need to clean install or freebie software is good?

thanks in advance!

 

I bought a prebuild Sony Vaio VPC-F11S1E/B some days ago in Austria.
Made in China, Serial number 149
Screen is matte, wunderfull colours
No strange sounds as mentioned by some owners.
I didn't put it for longer period under load yet, but the core temerature was never over 55 C. Performance wit A/C power is ok. CPU-Z goes from 900 Mhz (multiplication x7) for the idle up to 2500 MHz with load. The black/gray collor is not as sensitive to fingerprints as the most of glossy products on sale now. It's not magnesium, looks like carbon.

After bad experiences with a Dell 1747 i7 820QM that died after two hours and went back to the manufactor, Dell Studie XPS 16 I tested one day, looks I found with F11 the best fit for me.

 

Ah... thanks for that. Good to know! Regardless, thanks to slrosenfeld for taking the time to post it, I'm sure it will be of some use to other people on here.

I was thinking of ordering through Play.com - but I might chance my arm at haggling to try and get a better deal.

 

Finally, someone with the matte screen, please post some pics, we would love to see it, video even better, thanks.

 

On the subject of haggling - how do you go about doing this with Sony?

Do you just ring up a Sales Rep and say that you're looking to buy an F series and what deal can he do for you?

 

(Obviously) not my photos:

 

Well could your credit the source & link to the page?

 

That's the same one I have on pre-order. Is the screen completely matte :S or just less glossy than most? I was hoping it would be the latter.

Can you post some pics / vid?

 

I´m confused, the pics above looks like a matte screen, but the European models don't have backlit keyboards, and as far as I know the US models don't have a matte screen? Hmmm....

 

Cool pics..!! But on the second to last one, what's that tiny brass-coloured socket near the power button..?

 

if I can, why? wanted different specs?

the pics seem to be of the Japanese versions, with also white color and transfer jet

 

Hello everyone, I've been following this thread daily since it began as this is my first choice for my next new laptop. I really didn't have much to contribute since I won't be an owner until shortly after the tax refund comes in. I've mainly been gathering useful information and watching for major issues, etc. Thanks to all who have shared their experiences, fixes, configs, etc so far.

I posted specifically to thank Cheek for those beautiful pics! Please post the source when you can. Also, has there been mention of when the F will be available in that gorgeous white color or the premium black in the US. I have to admit that I am just as interested in the look of my laptop as all other inside aspects and those two choices are what I would want to choose from. I also love screens on the F's in the pic as well.

I have been to a few BB's looking at the F on display and it is constructed nice, but doesn't grab me in color or the screen. I saw about calibrating the screen, but then my question becomes: after calibration will the current screens look as good as the ones in the pics posted by Cheek?

Beyond that, I can't do anything about the exterior color unless I decide to use skins or paint it, lol. I still have some time before funds are available, so if anyone knows, or can offer a guess based on what Sony has done in the past for when the white and/or premium black would be available in the US, I'd appreciate it. I don't know much about Sony practices as this has been my first time seriously researching their Vaios.

Thanks in advance and again, thanks for the pics, Cheek!

 

Here I'm really only supposing, since they seem to me japanese and the Japan version is supposed to have a dtv receiver or such a thing can it be linked with that? maybe a line-in for an antenna?

I think that Metsn can help us there.

 

Thanks a million for those screen calibration settings. I will try them out as soon as get my laptop.

 

Source is just some Japanese site. Didn't think anybody would be interested in the link:

http://blog.so-net.ne.jp/vaio_ones/2010-01-22

Here are some more:





















Source: http://kunkoku.exblog.jp/9701389/





http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Special/Computer/Vaio/Subwin/F/photo_02.html

 

Well, it's a question of "fair use", somebody took the time to create these images & linking to the site is a way to say thanks, drive traffic & help Page Rank.

 

Fair enough. If the source was English I would've definitely linked it. But since it was in Japanese I didn't think the reader would care, nor the host for a couple of US visitors. My mistake...

 

...and if you do want to read it...

http://translate.google.com/transla...-net.ne.jp/vaio_ones/2010-01-22&sl=auto&tl=en

 

Any update on your delivery date? Really want to take a gander at the UK version (especially the screen).

 

Well, it is not the Kingston security cable connection (because that is a small rectangular slot) but I suspect it is the COAX connection for the TV tuner (only available in Jap models).

matt

 

Looks like a port to add an antenna extension

 

No news from Sony yet, so I assume it's still just sitting in the 'logistics centre' and various reports suggest they'll be shipping some time between Wednesday 27 and Friday 29...