Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

No unfortunately is not working...
It is not system sound it's the key press sound maybe it's by sony not by windows...
Other suggestions?

 

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-VGA-HD15-Male-Cable/dp/B001OLCHJ6

Simple fix. Then all you need is a 2.5mm male to male audio stereo cable.

 

Thanks. I was afraid of that. Getting a new TV will be a hard sell--especially after this laptop. I was hoping that I could sneak a BluRay player into the home theater by using the laptop--no such luck.

 

"NOTE: this cable don't support signal from VCR, COMPUTER or LAPTOP output" + negative user comments on the page.

HDMI/DVI to Composite and S-Video Down-Converter: $264! "designed to down-convert HDMI or DVI digital signal from PC, Mac, GPS System, Apple TV, Camcorder or Video Game to Analog S-Video or Composite Video".

 

Well I finally did it! My VPCF1190X CTO, with an estimated ship date of Feb 10, will hopefully arrive around mid-month.

Placed my order via phone and after telling the sales rep that I was doing so I stated that I would be asking for a discount. After configuring she asked how much of a discount I wanted and I told her 15%. She said that 10% is often given, but anything higher Sony prefers that a Service Plan is purchased, something I did not buy. She asked the manager(s) and after several minutes she said that they were feeling generous so I got the 15%. High Five!(Borat accent) Also got 3 day free shipping, which I'm not sure is standard. The only thing I did not factor in was sales tax. I assumed there wasn't any, but apparently it's applied in CA. All in all I am very pleased.

Many thanks to all here who helped with this purchase. Big props to those who mentioned asking for a 10-15% discount.

 

@viking quest

15% plus 3 day shipping

 

I have installed NVIDIA driver accordingly. But during booting Ububtu display screen looks like white-black mosaic.- moving one side to another. Did I do anything wrong to create the EDID file? I do not know! Any suggestion.

 

Problem with NVIDIA Geforce drviver:
I have installed NVIDIA driver accordingly in Ububtu 9.10 sony viao note computer. But during booting Ububtu display screen looks like white-black mosaic.- moving one side to another. Did I do anything wrong to create the EDID file? I do not know! Any suggestion.

 

You're welcome.

 

@Viking Quest, I got the same 2 discounts with my specs, but mine is getting shipped the 9th!
I only paid 1804 dollars to boot including a vaio messenger bag lol

 

Man oh man do i feel ripped off Shoulda waited till i next visited the states!

 

Do you think it was better or identical to the FW51 Full HD screen?

 

true, but depends what value you place on a warranty. Glad I will have one with mine. Having said that, i once shelled out 1000 bucks for US spec HD camcorder which had no valid warranty in the UK. And that was 3 yrs ago and it still works fine ! Kind of poetic as backing up my HD footage is why I need the F11 !

 

Yeah, but the US neither has the "premium" full-HD screen with 100% Adobe RGB coverage, nor the premium black color - both of which you seem to have opted for. So you are still ahead.

 

Canadian CTO is cheaper than in the States.

 

Very true. If it doesn't break down then i'll feel ripped off

Will take some bittersweet comfort in that Am due in the states end of March, i'm sure there will be a plethora of changes to envy up until that point for all of us. Can never win with Tech.

Still couldn't wait any longer, running an AMD 1.6 Ghz Dell Latitude with 1.5 measly gigs of RAM shared with video and a low-res screen (stingy work laptop).

 

With all the talk about about full adobe RGB coverage, I think I need to point out that it's somewhat irrelevant if it is still a 6 bit panel. If they (Sony) are still using a 6 bit panel, you will still have dithering for every color above the 262K mark.

Don't get so hung up on the full adobe RGB coverage, you should care more about the display being 8 bit vs 6 bit, and ideally an IPS panel.

 

I don't own one myself and the local F51 wasn't powered on so I wasn't able to compare them on the spot. Subjective impression and a slight educated guess would say it's likely identical, and the FW51's screen was quite loved in reviews over the past year or so (I've been checking the F51 out and saw the announcement of the F11 only one or two days later so I decided not to purchase it, but if I hadn't found out...).

 

I come from having a broadcomm 4318 if that tells You something, hopefully it can't be much worse than that

mmhh maybe it was a typo in the terminal...

In any case we can try with easy steps, to check if there was a mistake somewhere, just answer yes or no to those:

Did you export your edid in .raw format? (as an example edid.raw)
if You browse to the folder /etc/X11 do you find the file edid.raw (or whatever name you gave it?)
In this folder You can find also xorg.conf?
In this edited xorg.conf under the section "Device" the last two lines look similar to those:
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid.raw"

here I put edid.raw but it has to be exactly the same you gave to your!!

also check that this name must be also the same that You found in the /etc/x11 folder!!


If still You get problems post your xorg.conf

retry with post 2517 if You miss something http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5820189&postcount=2517


Hope this help!

 

The universe has a way of making up for these things in other ways. We can't all win at every deal but at the end of the day, when all is accounted for, I bet you'll come out ahead.

 

Sitting here on my UK VPCF11C5E. If I can help any UK people with questions, do ask, but others have already posted quite a lot I don't think there's a need to repeat it all.

A few things:

"Morse code" buzzing when idling - but gone after the mic 'fix'.

Keyboard is nice, no backlight though.

It smells nice. Uh huh.

 

You can't get an IPS, or for that matter PVA, panel on a laptop. It would be too thick.

 

I did exactly what you suggested. I remove all NVIDA driver using recovery mode. I want to remove all files like xorg.conf with there backback from /etc/X11 folder. Then I will try again. Now no NVIDIA driver is show up in hardwre driver list. I want to install NVIDIA (version 185) manually from terminal. I tried like sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185.
It shows error. Could you please tell me how do I get correct address for this drive. I will post my xorg.conf file.
Thanks
again

 

Apologies for the double post, but if anyone has an idea/opinion I'd love to hear:

 

Hello all...I have been lurking all 258 pages!

I just got off the phone with sony and they told me all know issues have been worked out with the F series and they are offering a 30 day money back guarantee on the unit...I am ordering mine tonight!

 

As has been asked so many times, what country are you in? It's critically important if for instance it's about Canadian sales. I can't even order one at the moment, and am awaiting any Word.

 

Just to bump the question about the release cycle of VAIO editions - does anyone have a *qualified* guess about when the next iteration of the F-series is bound to arrive?

 

Yesterday while talking with a rep on Sony Style US, the rep said "aboot" so I asked him if he was Canadian & he said yes, the call center is in Canada. So line 1 for US w/ F's and line 2 for Canadians: out of stock!

 

ehm, I haven't really suggested You to remove anything, only to check the points i told You before to narrow down possibilities and see what was missing..

In any case It should be easy to find under System/administration/restricted driver* the Nvidia Hardware Driver 185 and simply enable it.

if that was the problem (the driver not enabled) You should fix it in seconds, otherwise try to check the simple questions I gave You before and I'll try again with those info tomorrow It's quite late in Italy now as You may guess..

If You can't wait till then take a look at ubuntuforums.org You'll get help there in US (not only) time


*I'm 'remembering and translating' since my laptop is out for repair since some days and I usually have the OS in Italian so maybe some menus can be named slightly differently for You.

 

that's not true...new MBP's are using an IPS panel. However, they are rare overall, and they have made some 8 bit TN panels, so again the 8 bit panel is more important than the full adobe rgb coverage.

 

Does it slow down the processor on battery?

 

Just talked to technical support, and asked about the fan "whistling" that mine has. He said that Sony is aware of this and the only resoution at this time is to return the unit to Sony for service. It's such a hassle to return, I'm almost willing to live with it rather than return.

 

I got you beat on that. Our F replaced an Inspiron 8200 with a bad battery charging circuit, 512MB of RAM, and a P4 processor with a crummy little PCMCIA card for wireless that we bent up at a 30 degree angle cause we kept hitting it against stuff....oh and the power supply was held together with duct tape. But hey, it lasted 3 years longer than we were hoping for while we kept spending the "laptop" funds on other slightly more important things like a water heater, car repairs, etc.

I wonder if the new generation of Dells will last as long as this thing did. I was going to replace the old one with a Studio XPS 16 but when we were finally ready to buy, Dell had a Blu-Ray shortage (and still do) and I was reading about overheating issues. That's when I started shopping around, researching, and became a Sony convert.

 

Hey guys,

I've had my new customized F series for about 2 weeks now... I was using it last night, no worries, and everything worked fine. I turned it off through Windows.

Next morning I wake up and try to power it on, and I get nothing but a green flickering light on the power button. I've tried plugging in the AC adapter (because I thought the battery simply needed recharging) but no luck there either...

Now the interesting thing is that when I plug it in with AC, I can hear the unit power on and the fan turns on but the screen is blank.

I'm shipping it back to get a new one, but do you guys have any ideas of how the hell this happened? I just don't want to get another "defective" computer.

 

I think some US reps are indeed at Gordon Baker.

Canadian Fs aren't any more out of stock than US, they just have a longer backorder list. It's unreasonable to order now for a system that may not arrive until April. Anyway I'll pin it down tomorrow.

I am frankly getting a bit pissed off, since I've been trying to get a VAIO since November. You know what it's like, being second in line at a sales counter, while the other line is ten people long, then the other line moves along swiftly, such that you could have been served by now. Meanwhile in this line you've been stuck behind a guy who first had the salesperson page for a Price Check, then when all was settled his credit card is declined and he gets into an argument about other ways to pay. So then you walk over to the other momentarily empty line, but suddenly several people dash in line in front of you. That's how I feel.

 

Didn't you post this some pages back? If not, then another fellow has the absolute identical issue.

 

Did they mention at all how long something like that would take? I was just curious as to how long a typical repair period runs though I asked the "better half" again tonight if she would want to send it back to get the fan sound fixed and she said "no, I can't hear it, stop asking!" I think she's in love with it.

 

Using Z-CPU or whatever it is, I found that it does slow it to under 1GHz, but to be honest, I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't checked (I was web browsing, installing updates etc). It's the same even when the advanced power settings are set so that minimum processor state is 100% on battery. Default is 5%. Not sure if they're much to do with it though.

 

Use unclewebb's utility throttlestop- just use forum search feature. I guess it works...

 

Agreed. Even in the "throttled" state (running on battery), you would never notice a thing when web browsing or doing any other such regular stuff. I guess there is a lot of reserve power in the Quad Cores, that will more than suffice for these type of activities.

I am guessing that for RAW photo editing or Video editing etc., it might require the laptop to be plugged in, since such activities can fully utilize all 4 cores and the 8 threads, going full-tilt.

 

Sony Style Canada - Next in Line Backorder: "Next-in-Line Service works by having the total purchase amount pre-authorized by your credit card issuing bank. This is not a billing, and no charge will be processed on your credit card until the product arrives in Canada and is shipped to you.

You may cancel your order at any time prior to receiving notification that the order has been shipped."

So go ahead and order, if you find something else meanwhile, just cancel. My guess is Sony does not want to make unsure promises about shipping dates & get whacked in forums about shipping delays.

They know that it's a race to market for laptops w/ i7 starting @ $1,000 & if the demand is stronger than anticipated, after working the kinks out, they should step-up production to grab the sales.

 

I thought this doesn't work....?

 

Welp, found out mine is now delayed till 02/10/2010. Due to back ordered parts which they said 1.5 weeks ago when I called and said they would ship it today. Ordered 1/20 and it's going to take a month to get. Great service Sony!

If it gets delayed at all anymore after the 10th, I am canceling my order as I need a laptop before I leave town.

 

That's all very nice, but in fact Sonystyle are NOT ACCEPTING ORDERS for the F-series either via phone or the website.

 

Thank you so much! I can wait. But I need to solve this issue. I bought this notebook few days ago only for analysis large size of data under linux OS that possible un windows. But I have very limited experience in linux.
I have checked all the steps! Everything seems to me ok. I will try again, if I it will not work again, I will post my steps on this blog.
Is there any to reinstall Ubuntu? Just overwrite on exiting one?
Thanks again

Zia

 

Wait a second. I thought you said you wanted an F rather than that flirtatious FW because of the availability of CS4 only with an F. Now you're saying it is actually cheaper to get an FW with the software bundled. AND you're upset at having to wait since November for a Vaio computer.

Get the FW and then the F later -- invest the difference and in a year or two get a refresh of the F with a better processor, video card, etc.

Heck, if Sony admits to having stopped the production line that means it was likely NOT software. Why else does one have to return the computer to get it fixed (rather than download a software or firmware fix)?

Sony generally will "trust" a customer for hard drive and optical drive swap-outs for shipped-out replacements for defective equipment (which is why the Sony esupport pages give directions for installation). The "fix" must be something that only Sony can do. You may be waiting longer still....

Just a few reactions from reading through ten pages of posts in a row....

 

Sonystyle.ca wont't give a discount on the FW590. The hardware is more costly than the superior F11, but you have to use Sonystyle to get Adobe bundled.

 

I believe what he is trying to state is that he was waiting since November, because he was dead certain that the next generation of the FW series, with new components (CPU, RAM etc) was right around the corner. No point in paying full price for a prior generation product (like the FW), especially when the newer model (F) was right around the corner. I know I was in the same boat and decided to hold off from buying an FW.

I think what disappointed me about the FW was the fact that it came with ancient DDR2-800 RAM, which was pathetic. The F-series, has leapfrogged over the intermediate DDR3-1066 and has gone onward to DDR3-1333 RAM......the Quad-Core i7 processors are optimized to use the fast DDR3-1333 RAM, unlike the dual-core prior generation Core 2 Duo processors, which could at best utilize DDR3-1066 (even though the FW was not equipped with DDR3).

For folks who plan to use the computer for multi-media applications (RAW photo editing, Video editing etc), the Quad-cores of the new F-series are a FAR better choice than the dual-core Core 2 Duo processors.

Just some additional perspective from me on this.

 

You wrote in this post: "Heheh, you read my mind... Since I'm dealing with a fellow in Sony Corporate, bypassing the sales network, it's repair, replace, or refund. I don't have to wait for turnaround." - so I guess you chose refund? So back you go at the end of the queue.

Did you see the Hands-On: Asus G73Jh with ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5780 GPU on notebookcheck? "In terms of performance, the Asus G73Jh is already just about as awesome as you can expect from the new technology generation.

Despite its enormous performance data, the notebook stays quite cool due to its smart cooling concept and even fairly quiet because of the big fans, at least in our one and a half hour pretest." The weak point seems to be the high-gloss display.

 

The F11 has impressive cooling capabilities. To see what it could do I installed MS Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9). FS9 only uses a single core (core 0), but at a continuous 100%. FS9 is CPU intensive. Win 7's background operations were using the other cores at up to about 10%. After running FS9 in full screen 3D for 45 min, here are the temperatures:

Core 0 - 67C - 152F
Core 1 - 59C - 138F
Core 2 - 64C - 147F
Core 3 - 62C - 143F

GPU - 63C - 145F

Using an infrared thermometer I found the warmest area on top to be only 99F, in the area of the E R, D F keys. I also measured the exhaust at 146F max. The max CPU temp at 152F along with the exhaust temp of 146F indicates that the cooling system is extremely efficient at removing CPU heat from the CPU and chassis. After quitting FS9, all temps were back to idle values in less than a minute. During the test I didn't find the blower fans to be excessively noisy. The F has dual heat pipes and radiators.

Also, FS9 ran just as well on the i7 720QM Vaio F as on my desktop with an i7 920.