Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

I just wonder if it's a batch problem - I simply can't see how something as noticeable as people are suggesting could get past all the design/testing stages it must go through... unless all their engineers are over 35 or so?!

 

Not the voltage regulator itself, which is a chip, but there is a filter coil, a "choke" on the regulated side of each leg designed to remove or reduce high frequency hash from the buss. THAT is what can make the noise. It's a coil on a core, a perfect audio transducer if that coil is at all loose. Loudspeakers use the same principle. And the switching supply OPERATES at 12 to 18Khz, thus a loose coil can be heard by some of us. And frequently a loose coil in a choke or transformer, as it rattles about, also produces frequencies that are a half and quarter of the oscillating frequency, thus within the hearing range of everyone.

Noise from a power supply is ONLY produced by any inductors (coils) in the unit, not by transistors, IC's, nor capacitors. Occasionally a magnetic field may affect a chassis part, causing vibration, but that's still due to inductance, which is a characteristic of coils, not capacitors nor chips.

Hard Drive whine is produced by the disc bearing as the spindle does slight "once around" in the sleeve. It's slight, but still significant if the disc is turning fast under power. Also noise is caused by eddies of air as the rotating disc causes turbulence

 

I hope so....but then again if this is a batch isssue, I believe there are some in the States who hears that noise..therefore, I will (most likely) get a unit in the same batch since I believe most of us ordered fairly soon after it was made available and all these US units are assembled in the West Coast.

 

Unfortunately if there are a batch of poor VRM coils they're not field fixable.

As for the matter of testing for the whine by the factory before these are shipped, does anyone REALLY think a production line is quiet enough to be able to HEAR anything below a dull roar? They do burn in, stress testing, check build quality, look for physical problems, not take them to a quiet room and sit listening to each unit. I'm sure samples are taken for extensive testing, but they may not necessarily have the bad coils.

 

I wonder if they may have rushed it to make the 2010 CES show and figured they would fix it with an update. (cynical me). I tried listening to it at the Sonystyle store. I thought I heard it but it was just too noisy in the store to be sure.

I did what others had suggested and started in safe mode. Just like everyone else, the buzz does not occur in safe mode.

One more thing for those thinking of getting this laptop, if you buy from sonystyle online you can return within 30 with no restock. If you buy from a sony store, you only have 14 days and there is a restock. Otherwise, it's a great machine - I am on the fence. Should I keep it and hope a patch comes out? Probably won't but it's a REALLY nice unit.

 

Let's remember that if it is a general fault, it's covered by Warranty. A widespread problem usually leads to an extended return for refund period. If a replacement unit seems likely to have the same issue as the customer's original complaint then they'd rather close the invoice than keep an ongoing source of friction with a client.

 

As far as returning to the sonystyle store, if there is any manufacturer defect and you "whine"... , there is no way they will charge you a restock.

 

Well...hope everything works out for the better for everyone!!

I've enjoyed the Sony product line for quite a long time now with some luck in impulse plunges such as adopting the PS3 early with PS2 compatibility. (I was actually under the impression that all PS3's were backwards compatible up until last year )

Hope the F has a fighting chance to survive!!

 

I started ordering laptops in November, after cancelling each one in turn for one reason or another this is the fourth order and the first one I'm actually taking to shipping. I HOPE it's allright.

 

Talked with Sony Tech Support. They tried some things but could not resolve the buzzing. The offered to send a tech to try and repair it. Might do that but if others are experiencing the exact same problem I am inclined to just return it. Any of you hear anything about a fix?

 

I'm in good company, I ordered my HP DV6T quad in Nov., didn't like the screen resolution, returned for the HP DV7T quad - it had a terrible screen, speaker cover coming loose and a flexible clicking keyboard. Then returned that for a full refund, and got the Dell SXPS 1645 - returned that since it had power throttling, 10 non-functional keys, and random crashes. Just got the refund with the F11 shipped yesterday for my fourth try. Buzzing, what buzzing... LOL

 

I bought this laptop from Best Buy for $1249.99 on 1/13. They just came in and the BB guy was just setting them up, they didn't even have the price/spec card printed yet. Bought the first one they had. It has the following specs:

Sony VAIO
Model: VPCF115FM/B
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM processor (1.60GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.80GHz
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Black
500GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
6GB (4GBx1 + 2GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Blu-ray Disc™ player (read only)
16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) with NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU (1GB VRAM)
Microsoft® Works
Norton Internet Security™ 2010 (30 Day Trial)
Standard Capacity Battery
Keyboard Backlight

SPEED:
I have a quad core desktop, not an i7, and this seems faster. I have only installed applications, but they are much faster installs than what I recall for the desktop.
The wireless-N network is extremely fast on my network and has consistently excellent connectivity at 300mbs. A caveat - this is my first experience with Win 7, so it is not an apples to apples comparison.

SCREEN:
I adjusted the size of the windows and fonts to 135% since I leave the resolution native at 1920x1080. Vertical viewing angle seems limited, you need to be positioned just right or the screen is either too dark or too light.

KEYBOARD/TRACKPAD:
The backlit keyboard is cool, but it turns off too quickly in dark or dimly lit environments. I have not checked to see if I can increase the timeout on it yet.
The track pad works with gestures, zoom in/out, and there is also vertical and horizontal scrolling on the right and bottom, respectively.

HEAT:
It does not get too hot, but I will be putting it on some type of riser or cooler since my last laptop had issues with heat and died.

Finally, NOISE:
I do not hear the high pitch sound people are complaining about, I am 40+, and my 8 year old does not hear it either. HOWEVER, my wife, 30+, does hear it and says it's annoying. To me it is perfectly silent, except the fan running, which is very quiet, but I bought it for her and she needs to decide if it goes back or not.

Just found that there is "stuck" pixel. I am trying to fix it now. If I can't fix it, back to Best Buy for a replacement.

 

You can change the backlight timeout by going to VAIO Control Center (appears in All programs) >> Keyboard and Mouse >> Backlit KB...

 

A lot of us were wondering about Gesture support. Thank you.

 

Thanks, I figured that out when I started working on fixing the pixel issue.

 

Yes, it works. I'm not too familiar with Win 7 or gesture support. What else can be done with gestures? Any links?

 

I bought this one because of the screen, based on an old Vaio A117s i used to have, which had one of the best screens i have used. So any new owners have any comments to make about the screen.

 

See my post above. It's nice, but the viewing angle seems limited. You have to be positioned just right for optimal viewing.

 

@aco

Well now that's odd...and lol! This reminds me of how some people are very receptive to hearing frequencies emanating from electrical lines, powerplants, et al. and how others are not. (irregardless of age)

As a passing thought, I entertained the notion that Sony released a notebook with it's own character.. "The mysterious case of the F series..."
Complete with the eerieness of and background track of 'unsolved Mysteries'

Well back to reality...and I am amazed at how the dynamic has changed from eagerly waiting for mine to arrive and having a blast with it to eagerly waiting for mine to arrive to confirm that it's broken....lol

 

If the vertical viewing angle is that bad, then it might have to go back. I just sent a HP DV7T back because the vertical viewing angle was atrocious.

By the way anyone know when the 30 day send back period is supposed to start, from date of billing i am assuming?

 

I wouldn't say it's bad, it needs tweaking out of the box, i.e. angle, brightness, contrast, etc. Once you get it to your preference, it is a very nice screen.

 

I can't hear the noise on the F11 I have. But I can hear a whining on my SR that's about a year old. It's funny but I never noticed the noise on the SR until I started searching for the noise on F. One thing that's irritating me is that while downloading iTunes I decided to wathc a few MSNBC videos. They are unwatchable as they are jerky and sporadic. On my SR with 4gigs of ram, 2.53ghz d2, they are smooth as can be. Can anybody give some insight as to what the problem can be? In addition the Logitech mouse I'm using freezes.

Thanks

By the way my AW was really noisy.

 

STATS please....region, config, store, etc.

 

As far as watching Web Videos...Make sure that you have the most recent version of flash, and get the latest driver for the GPU. If you still have issues, try the latest Beta of flash & modify the driver. I had this same issue with my Dell 1645 SXPS & this process fixed it.

 

Resource conflict, devices haven't been assigned memory I/O properly and they are trying to use the same memory space. Logitech drivers frequently cause this problem. Unistall Logitech and uninstall and reinstall the video driver. If video is still jerky then disable sound hardware to see if the jerkiness goes away. If so then reinstall THOSE drivers.

Also make sure the Sata hard drive access is DMA, not controlled I/O. it can drop to I/O DUE to a resource conflict, resulting in slow drive access and jerky video.

My Asus notebook did the same thing after a Logitech update, video became unwatchable AND the drives had defaulted to IO.

Finally there is a possibility of a Trojan or virus intercepting the interrupt routine, and/or running busy-ness in the background. Check Task Manager.

 

No Additional Video Editing Software
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-820QM processor (1.73GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.06GHz
Component: 16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) with NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU (1GB VRAM)
Component: Fresh Start
Component: No additional Office Software
Component: No additional Photo Editing Software
Component: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Blu-ray Disc™ player/burner
Component: No additional AntiVirus Software
Component: Keyboard Backlight
Component: Large Capacity Battery
Component: Black
Component: No Engraving
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit
Component: 500GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)

 

wbglider, melodymaster...thx.

 

Well - Bad news - I also checked out that unit on display, and agree - no noise; same with the unit on display in Best Buy on 5th Ave. in Manhattan. However, the unit I picked up today from the Sony Store indeed has the whining - it sounds like the sort of buzzing I get when I hold my blackberry too close to the telephone cord on the phone in my office.

 

Okay there is a noise as discribed. Mine's a CTO. I just did a "restart". When the laptop turned off there was no noise. When I logged on it became louder and more intense and then settled down once personal settings were loaded. I don't know what to think of this because my Sony SR and AW are louder. The SR has a particularly loud whine. So I have (had) three noisy Sony's. 2 were c2's, one a c4. All three had plenty of ram and 7200 hdd's.

 

I must be one of the fortunate ones, my F11 doesn't emit any weird whines or sounds. But going from the posts here no whine is probably an exception...

Should I call Sony and return the machine to get the whine?

 

Does the american verion of the F have options for a 7200rpm hard drive? All we got here is 5400, I believe sony still thinks we are in 2008 for some reason.

 

Is it worth it to wait for the new Vaio Z series?

 

Thank god for this forum. I just picked up this laptop at Bets Buy and noticed the high pitched whine right away. I am 37 years old, but still have excellent hearing.

The noise reminded me of an annoying whining monitor at my work that made a similar noise and my boss could not hear it at all with his ear right up to it, but I could hear it across the room.

Anyway also thank god for JLGMIAMI who posted about opening the windows recorder and it stopped the whining. Mine stops whining too if I do this. I then found that the whining alos stops if I right click the system tray volume icon and select recording devices. I though disabling the mic might fix the problem, but acually once I hit disable the noise came back, but then enabling it again the whine stops as long as I am on the recording tab under sound. Even changing to another tab in there makes the sound re-appear then it goes away again when I click on the recording tab again. Weird stuff. Also the CPU is not at high usage when it stops the whining it is a 1 % idling.

Well I hope this works on others with this problem too so that they can have some relief from the whine and maybe it will help narrow down the cause. Thanks

 

If plenty of people report this to sony perhaps they can fix this error?
Anyway this is the reason why I don't trust buying the newest products, there are always some issues.

 

Why are you asking that question here? Seems like if have the need to wait for the Z series then you wouldn't have to ask.

 

Well it depends if portablility and battery life is important to you. The Z is alot lighter and has a longer battery life plus WAY more expensive. I am also undecided between the F and Z....chances are I will get both.

 

Unfortunately, that is right for both software and hardware. When I got my new phone last year I was also one of the first and now it will get a hardware fix soon.

As for the laptop I am continuing with the order because there is the 30 day return policy. Also asked sonystyle about this problem (no answer yet). At least if they recognise this problem then I will certainly keep it.

All the workarounds with disabling graphics card or starting sound recorder indicate that it is possible to work around the problem with software. So, regardless of the true nature of the problem (hardware or sofware) I would expect Sony to release some software patch to solve it. In the past I have heard of software fixes from other manufacturers to work around hardware issues such as bad memory segments on a handheld device.

 

where did you looked for Your vaio? I mean it seem to me that is available at sonystyle in all europe and I'm getting mine with a 500gb 7200rpm.

 

I looked at the belgian sonystyle store, which offers laptops which can not be customized.

 

nothing to do with the whine, but that word suddenly reminded me about the 'dell throttlegate', any of U has already tested it to see the performance of our new kid?

 

Weird, and can't You get it form Germany, France or Holland?

 

Normaly sonystyle offers a few french and english laptops but not at the moment. If I buy a french one I get the azerty keyboard but won't have an english windows version, If I chose an english laptop I'll be stuck with a qwerty keyboard.

 

Guys, there are so many of you that are sending your notebooks back... Can you take some pictures of it before packing, and post them so we cand see how it looks like? There are some pics at the begining of the thread, but they lack sharpness. Please post some photos, especialy with the grey(silver) pattern.

 

I would also love to see some pics of the new F.

 

In the US, there are 2 7200rpm options (320GB and 500GB), in addition to 3 5400rpm options (320GB, 500GB, 640GB) and then the 256GB SSD.

 

This is a good question.

To be quite honest, my impression about the F-series is that the 16.4" screen seems to be fitted onto an over-sized base (the place where the keyboard and the touch-pad etc are located) , for whatever reason.

In other words, the base looks like it is actually made for a 17" laptop (something with a 1920x1200 type wide-screen), while the 16.4" screen looks a bit undersized in relation to it. I think they could have made the base significantly smaller than it is, for an overall laptop size that would have been a lot more compact. Maybe others would disagree with this. Thus in my opinion, the 16.4" screen size is great, but the overall laptop size is not (relatively speaking). I have a 17" work laptop (1920x1200 resolution screen) and I don't see a size difference in the overall laptop size, even though the screen of the F-series, clearly is significantly smaller. I don't like needless size.

The Z-series on the other hand, is a 13.1" laptop that is "size optimized" and "weight optimized" all around for that petite size - thus improving its portability even before factoring in its extremely portable 13.1" size - while not sacrificing on the sheer power packed within it (same 8GB RAM, same 330 GPU with 1GB GDDR3 memory, same disk capacity upto 512GB, available ports like multiple USB ports, HDMI port, IEEE port, bluray burner optical drive etc as the F-series, while weighing in at an incredible 3 lbs).

Of course these machines are targeted at 2 entirely different type of customers and target markets, and thus are rarely cross-shopped, even though I am one of those rare cross-shoppers ! If a fix for the whine is not announced over the next couple of days, then I might send this F-series back and wait for the new Z's release.

 

I'll post pics of the grey version when I get it...though you'll have to wait till Tuesday night for an iphone quality version or a bit later thru a better camera. what are you looking for specifically? The sonystyle galleries already have images of the grey version at various angles and I don't think any photo I take can do any better...maybe even worse!

 

Ok thx for the info, if those 7200 rpm models are available in the usa then they will hopefully also be avaible in belgium after a few years

 

Did any of you also see the F series with the silver keyboard and white lid or is it a silver lid? I believe I saw it in the Belgium site.

I don't understand why the need for Sony's marketing strategies to offer such a disproportionate selection across the world. One would think that the internet and partnerships with shipping companies would have already done much much more to push sales.

 

Sony works in mysterious ways, while customizing your laptop would make sony more popular, they still have no plans whatsoever to introduce customisable laptops in Belgium for the near future, according to my email conversation with a sony salesman.