Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

One could argue that the carbon footprint created by thousands of people driving or busing to work at call centers in San Jose for the above mentioned morally gray industries, and people driving to Gamblers Anonymous meetings, etc. as they try to get ther lives back in order after exposure to industries orginating in your country is far greater than that created by Sony techs. Never mind the psychic, emotional and material loss. I'll take a carbon footprint over a lost soul any day. Don't be myopic. And the shot you took was at the United States...you typed USA by name in your post...you didn't mention any other country.

 

I'm not pro gambling, it was an attempt at humor. My brother is a lieutenant in Montreal's police force & he told me about the impact of the opening of a big Casino there (suicides, crime, prostitution, shylocking, etc). He got my mother blacklisted by the casino as she was spending all her pension there. There is no practical moral differences between Vegas, Atlantic city, Montreal's casino or online gambling, they are all bad IMHO, especially if you take in account the total social costs.

"And the shot you took was at the United States...you typed USA by name in your post..." - it's not my fault if you are the #1 consumer of energy per capita on the planet. I thought that you guys love to be #1?

Note that Canada is #2, but it's cold up there and sparsely populated; you have to drive 500km to get to the next village. And Canadians are nice people, they don't mind being #2.

 

"Online Gambling" paid for my Sony Vaio.

 

Could you share the URL & your lucky number?

 

Hi Folks - greetings from Down Under - my first post

I'm about to get the " vaio F" and got a question about the Express Card Slot:

My idea is to put in a 32 gb SSD Express Card. Does the Sony F BIOS enable the express card to load windows (= install windows) ? I would like to use the SSD as hard drive and boot windows from there.
I know Windows 7 does but it is only limited to the manufacturers of the laptops i.e. BIOS setup

 

I'm an "fpp Collector" on pokerstars

 

What is the throughput for the eSATA port on the F11?

 

In the Netherlands the best processor to chose from for the EB is the i5-520M. I believe this processor doesn't support more than 6 gigs of ram. I really want an i7 processor in my machine.

 

Just receives a VPCF11Z1 and desperately trying to install windows XP Pro on it.

Using a windows xp SP3 boot cd with intergration of the latest intel chipset drivers, but I'm still getting blue screen, when windows XP tries to boot from the cd after loading the drivers.

Any ideas ?

 

In that case, can you boot in Safe Mode? (Press F8 when the progress bar starts on the Windows XP splash screen)

If that works, then you case start working through all the drivers in a process of elimination until it boots in the operating system without crashing.

Good luck!
matt

 

@joey123

It would be great if Sony did refresh the GPU by the end of the month but I doubt it because they'll see a whole lot of unit returns for the past spec and in general a lot of unhappy folks who might feel cheated so early on.

The FW was first released sometime in June-July 2008 and I believe it was only in June 2009 that they released the HD4650. (Spec options differ for EU and NA and are released earlier or later )

if the F's refresh schedule is anything like the FW, then it'll be up to a year wait.

 

Well my 'sometime after the 5th Feb' delivery date has become a 'sometime after the 12th Feb' delivery date and I'm going to need my laptop for my uni work pretty soon. (I'm writing this on a borrowed laptop.)

Has anyone managed to get hold of the UK grey model (F11M1E/H) that isn't a CTO? If so where did you get it from? I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that they don't actually exist in the UK yet.

 

I'm not even getting that far I'm getting the blue screen during the installation (still in the text based part of the install), so I realy have no clue what driver is missing or causing it to blue screen.

 

i've seen that happen before due to incorrect sata/raid drivers. you'll need to find out what chipset is used and press F6 to load the drivers prior to installing xp.

 

play.com are listing it as coming in the 15th of Feb.

 

Thank you for your help.

You are right about these refreshments, it would be stupid if sony replaced any parts any soon. I didn’t think about that. Waiting a year isn't an option for me.

I actually think the gt330m isn't so bad as I first thought. As other forum members and one of my local salesmen pointed out: there isn't much difference between the HD4650 and the gt330m. Te biggest difference seems to be the fact that the hd4650 supports directx11. But there aren’t much games that support direct x11 yet. Direct x10 seems to be fine for me.

I am not a heavy gamer that want's the best GPU on the market. If I can play most games on high settings but maybe with a lower resolution I am happy. The real gaming laptops that I found are from alienware and asus, but these things look like bricks with a screen attached to it. I just love the f's overall look.

I think I will just buy the F. Could take some time before I get it though. In the Netherlands there seems to be a shortage of these laptops in stores, and the delivery time on sonystyle is 3-4 weeks.

 

@joey123

I asked the question in the official EB owners thread just now if the i7-820Qm processor and the faster DDR1333 ram will help compensate for the GT330M's performance when compared to the HD5650 in the E with lower end processors and slower ram. Hope the answer is yes but I have a feeling game performance is mostly dependent on GPU.

In retrospect, I realized that I shouldn't really be bothered by it because most of the games I have will be played on the PS3 and even then I play for stress-relief and don't have much time for it.

I blame it on past waiting upon waiting to get the next best spec but end up not buying because it became a never ending cycle of procrastination...

Besides...I have never seen a true gaming laptop that I liked and comes close to how the F looks.

 

degreef.nl also offers customization options (and perhaps more than sonystyle does).

 

I tried playing a blu-ray disc last night for the first time (Quentin Tarantino - Ingloriuous bast erds) and that worked great with windvd. One problem I noticed was the fan noise, but I could solve that by going to power options, activating the Corel WinDVD profile and then setting the max cpu powerstates to 5 percent. After that the fan just became almost unnoticeable. No hickups whatsoever while playing. I guess windows is a bit too eager to claim CPU even when it is not needed.

 

Are you trying to replace Win 7 Home Premium with XP Pro?

Check Windows Anytime Upgrade: Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional? Note that this is not for a clean install but will add the virtual XP feature.

 

I wouldn't worry about that too much. The website stated 4 - 5 weeks when I ordered mine and i'm expecting it on Wednesday, just under 2 weeks from the date of order!

 

Ok so I've just finished doing my clean start (as opposed to a fresh start). Everything is working great, including the auto-brightness on the screen, the function buttons and the special vaio buttons. Both my S1 and VAIO button are set to the same function but I don't have VAIO care installed so I think that's probably why. I left the hidden recovery partition intact as well, so I can always go back to the Sony factory default if I want.

Couple of things to note in case you're considering doing the same...

- When I boot into windows now the RAM usage is about 1.2Gbs. I don't remember the exact figure but I think it was about 2.2Gbs from factory install, so I've saved 1Gb in bloatware loaded into the RAM! Bloatware isn't just in the programs list, its deep in the machine in stuff that you don't see or know about. I have AVG antivirus installed btw...

- Download drivers from sony's website before you reformat and save them to a usb drive or CD. There are also more drivers on the HDD (think it was windows/drivers off the top of my head) so save them too, I think some were missing from the sony site. When you reinstall for the first time Windows 7 will not recognise the wireless network card so you won't be able to connect to the internet without having the drivers already. Luckily I had them!

- I haven't found the arcsoft webcam software yet, but haven't looked either, not my top priority and other apps can still use the webcam.

- You need your own copy of Windows 7

- The order you install the sony apps has an effect, I had to play around with them a bit, think it was event viewer first, then shared library and setting utility series but I don't remember which of those two I did first, then Control Center, etc... I installed the sony apps after the rest of the drivers.

- You have to install .inf's from the device manager, google how if you don't know...

Overall I'm really happy I did it! My comp is exactly how I want it and using minimum resources, and its noticeably faster than before.

Hope this helps...

and...

The recovery disks are made by a sony app which as far as I can tell reads from the hidden recovery partition. It doesn't matter what you've done to your laptop, the changes shouldn't be reflected in your recovery disks. The disks are essentially a copy of the recovery partition, so that if your HDD fails you have disks to fall back on. I had done a bunch of stuff before I made the disks and it made no difference as expected.


Hope you're all enjoying your laptops!

 

luftwaffa does it throttle on battery?

 

Haven't run it on battery yet, but how would I test that anyway?

 

By power management design, the F i7 is limited to 990 mhz when running on battery, see this post w/ benchmark: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5753653&postcount=725

And there is no option in the BIOS to prevent that @ the present.

BTW you can see in his screen grab that when benchmarking full load w/ Cinebench R10 64, his memory usage is @ 1.91 GB and you say that @ idle "I think it was about 2.2Gbs from factory install" on yours?

Maybe somebody w/ the factory Home Premium setup could confirm the memory usage @ idle?

 

Correct, tweaking will not modify the content of the hidden partition but may mess up the Sony app used to burn the discs as 2 users reported in this thread.

There is absolutely no advantage in creating the recovery discs later but there is clearly one in doing it right outside the box.

 

And the higher speccd i7, the 820QM throttles to 1.2GHz when running on battery.

 

@Joe Bleau
@MaxieHQ

MaxieHQ reports a much higher score with his/her Cinebench R10 test at 9750 plugged-in whereas notebookcheck has it at 3877 and even outscores the 7K+ of the HD5650. Would you know what's making this difference??
Thks

 

My 1920 x 1080 premium display momentarily had ~6 diagonal bands that were brighter than the rest of the screen. Does anyone know why this would happen, and do I have anything to worry about, i.e. defective display?

 

If it was just momentarily I would expect a software issue, probably with the graphics driver. I would keep an eye on it though.

 

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I have been looking into the Sony Vaio F laptop for quite some time now, and the fact that it throttles down to 990MHz has me wondering if this laptop will provide me with enough processing power on the battery? I have never owned a laptop before, and would probably take it with me places now and then, and I need something that will be fairly fast. Would the F laptop be okay, or am I better off to go with an i5 processor? Thanks

 

GeorgesF asked a while back about the performance difference between the i7 720 and the i7 820. A different poster (sorry, I can't remember where you posted) asked if, because of the battery throttling with the F, he/she would actually have worse performance than with his/her old single core CPU which ran faster than the throttled F on battery. In response to these questions, as well as to address To no End's question below I've attache the Cinebench 64 results from my core i7 820 Vaio F, and Maxie HQs core i7 720 results for comparison.

Keep in mind, I have an SSD, and Maxie HQ has a spinning HD. Also, I don't remember how much RAM MaxieHQ has. Not sure how significant these differences are with Cinebench, but it's not exactly apples to apples.

The Cinebench does 3 separate tests--single CPU rendering, multi-cpu rendering, and Open GL. The 3877 score reported by notebook check may well have been Open GL, or single CPU--that would be in line with what the Vaio F is scoring.

FYI, not all the results in the table below are from the two attached screen grabs. Some were compile from previous posts.

AC power, i720vs i820: Multi CPU: 9758 vs 10,589 (8.5%)
Single CPU: 3282 vs 4013 (22%)
Open GL: 3558 vs 5545 (56%)

Battery power, i720 vs i820: Multi CPU: 5058 vs 6887 (27%)
Single CPU: 1257 vs ?(didn't run that one myself)
Open GL: 1952 vs 2563 (24%)

You can draw your own conclusions. The poster who was wondering about battery performance compared to a single CPU machine can see that it depends on whether the application supports mutlithreading or not. As to why such a big difference in the OpenGL, I have one theory. EricEngerd posted the excellent little tidbit that by default, Physx support is disabled in the NVidea control panel. Enabling it not only improved gaming performance, but also did increase the Open GL score by a bit. MaxieHQ, when you did your Cinebench, was Physx enabled or disabled?

For additional results from MaxieHQs benchmarks, as well as a good discussion about this issue, go here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5759280#post5759280

 

Does anybody know when Sony plans to make the CTO F's available again with the 1920x1080 screen and a gt330m GPU? or can orders still be placed over the phone?

 

Wow, you can't configure or purchase a pre-built F at this time on the SonyStyle USA website. It seems to be just the F.

What's up with our friends at Sony??

 

@Slrosenfeld

Thanks for the great reply and clearing things up. I will bench my Notebook once it arrives. I have the same specs as your but a 320Gb 7200rpm drive for now.
I'll do separate tests with PhysX on/off. Overall I like your scores. I don't care much for the OpenGL since autoCAD 2010 doesn't support it and on 3ds Max it's optional. The multi-Cpu scores were more important to me.

Thanks again

 

Hmm that would never be a software issue. Possibly a loose cable on the back of the display. Try taping the back of the display and pushing in a little in areas around it, to see if it does anything.

 

No no, trying to do a clean install on the machine with Windows XP Pro.
Finaly got xp to install, after slipsteaming some additional drivers onto the XP SP3.

The application I need to run doesn't run in 7 with xp compatibility mode.

Only thing I'm still missing to finalize, are the driver for the Nvidia 330M chipset for Windows XP.

 

The guy changing his power settings in order to play a Bluray movie without too much fan noise, may have contributed some pretty value information for me. Requests for solutions for getting the laptop to run cooler and quieter have been put forth many times in this thread.

Am I to understand now, that it is simply a matter of going to advanced power management and switching the processor power state to some lower value (like 20 %) when plugged in?

 

Yes, that is exactly what I did. I switched to the Corel WinDVD profile instead of modifying the Balanced profile. Then I set max power state to 5%. I immediately heard the FAN noise going down significantly.

The trigger for doing this in the first place was when I unplugged the power. As reported earlier that made the processor throttle to its minimum frequency and that reduced the noise significantly. Therefore, the next step was to have a look at power options.

 

Guys, I've got a FZ31Z, under two years old. Took me a 6 months to get a beta version for 64 bit Vista and currently I'm running Windows 7 with bare minimum video drivers, I can't even watch a divx movie.

Reason? Sony does not support Windows 7 for the FZ range, end of. Honestly, if you still can, send yours back and invest in another brand.

 

I'm confused about all this "Fresh Start" vs. "Clean Install" business. Just got my new laptop yesterday, and I'm making recovery and system repair discs. I did not get Fresh Start, and I don't have my own copy of Windows 7. So, would the best path for me be to simply uninstall programs I would deem "bloatware" via Control Panel?

I do want the least mucked up computer possible to start.

Thanks!

 

ok i've looked there didn't know. thanks for the info; at first glance however i don't think it's my "cup of tea". (really unclear site if you ask me)
I didn't seem to be able to choose for i5 for instance, and the harddisks to choose from didn't show the size (!?) but only the type of use and the rpm.

maybe i missed something... but anyway i already ordered mine from sonystyle.

but again, thanx!

 

If anyone on here wants to brag about their new f11 and has the grey one, please post some pics. I saw that the black on the black model looked a little grayer in the bb store I was at...maybe just poor lighting. If you have any pics of the outside and inside that would be cool. Google search shows little and I read through a bunch of pages on here, my eyes now hurt

 

@FZ206

Hmmm... I don't quite understand what you're getting at. This thread is for the new F series. You might be at the wrong thread if you're just talking about the FZ series

Edit:
can't you just download the DIVX codec from their own site?

 

@Zebra3

I had the Gray F. I'm not sure but I might have been the first one to post pics of it. I can't link the post right now since i'm typing on an iphone but it's in pretty early at post 799 and 807.
The gray has been returned. My new one will be black.

 

Fresh start is a factory option - no trialware; Clean install is what YOU do and can't be accomplished with the software, including Windows, that comes with the computer. You have to buy a Windows DVD and find all the system drivers separately.

 

I had the grey, which was returned due to a bad screen.

 

Hardware dongle or a warez hack, I'm guessing, something that directly addresses the kernel. VirtualDub is problematic and analog video capture is fussy. Otherwise older codecs can be a problem, but even 32-bit codecs that refuse to run in Win7 or Vista 64 OR 32 bit do seem to work in the XP virtual machine in Win7.

However I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, dual-boot with a small parition with XP and its fussy program, and the rest with the more-pleasant Win7 is achievable.

 

For which country?

USA gray F gallery (on newegg.com).

To No End's USA F gray model nice photos in this post.

 

Yes. Sounds too easy, right?

Before doing this, could you write down or attach to your post a screen grab* & report your computer's performance (CPU & memory) using Task Manager w/o other programs running, before & after customization? See more Manager tips here.

Check the CPU usage monitor panel in Norton 2010 before uninstalling it, if you plan on doing so. It is a good idea to download and run the Norton Removal Tool to uninstall your Norton 2010 product for a complete clean-up.

*: Pop-up Task Manager, capture active window with Press ALT+PRINT SCREEN, open a new document in Paint, paste capture. More info here.