Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

Will do. I may purchase AnyDVD HD, i will be traveling abroad and having a program that deselects region codes for me will make buying blu-rays much easier

 

As I've said, my first F11, a very early unit, was perfect except for a defective screen. ALL units with the missing mic circuitry have the buzzing and no external mic, but that's under warranty. Other complaints have been due to construction problems with individual units.

 

ahhhh, yes, good point. I thought my screen looked a little on the blue side but maybe it is fine just as you have suggested. Thanks for your input.

 

Yes I saw that link but step 4 states,
" Your computer will begin to reformat and install Window".

Reformat means deleting everything, which is what I want to avoid.

And I could not find the launch.exe or launcher.exe program nor can I find the "Vaio Recover Folder"

 

Hey folks. I haven't been here as much lately--mostly because I've just moved on to actually using this amazing laptop instead of talking about it. But after having caught up on the last few hundred pages of this thread, I thought I'd chime in again with my two cents. I haven't been having any problems--on the contrary--I'm liking this laptop better and better. It's just been amazing to have a machine this fast and powerful that I can take with me anywhere. I've been able to edit photos and post to my website while watching my daughter's gymnastics class--faster than I was able to do at my desktop (and that machine is no slouch). I was a chaperon for my high school sons' choir trip to New York City (where they sang Carmena Burana to a sold out crowd in Carnegie Hall--and got a standing ovation--but I digress). On the 12 hour bus ride home, I got all of the photos from the the trip selected, ranked, sorted and did the bulk of the editing, all while one of the other dad's on the trip watched, fascinated with the process and the power of the software. At home I can work on projects wherever I want to be in the house, and I'm surprised at how much more I can get done that way--I really hated going down to the dungeon to work on my photos because I was then completely out of touch with the family. Now I can sit on the couch while my kids are watching TV, work on my stuff and still be a part of what's going on. I recently got a couple of e-sata drive enclosures (Thermaltake, BlacX) and now, with one connected to the esata port and another to USB 2 I'm finally tackling a project I've been putting off forever--reorganizing all my old photos onto a single drive (or two) and into a coherent database in Lightroom. I've got a one terabyte HD that I'm copying to in one of the enclosures, and I can just pop in each of my old hardrives with photos into the other. The access speed is amazing, and with the Vaio just smoking through Lightroom the whole daunting job is A: actually taking place rather than being put off forever, and B: far easier than expected. Just wanted to throw in a bit of encouragement as it seems that forums like this can tend to accentuate the negative. I'm not saying the laptop is without flaws, or that the joy I'm experiencing couldn't be had with a different (similarly spec'd) machine. The point is, I've got my laptop now, it's exceeded my expectations, both for photo editing and everything else, and I'm glad to be done searching and obsessing over my laptop purchase.

 

Erm, to reduce the size of the footprint you HAVE to do a clean install. If you've already got stuff configured the way you want - too bad. And some of that stuff you changed may be USING the stuff you want to get rid of.

Start over.. Sorry.

Launch and Launcher are generic names for starting a series of programs.

Recovery is in a hidden partition, not a folder.

 

If whites and greys look blue it is possible that the profile isn't installed properly, despite what I said in my earlier post. If you've followed the instructions that were included with the profile exactly (Matt800 just copied my instructions when he posted his profile) I don't know what else to suggest--aside from taking the plunge and getting a colorimeter of your own. If you know anybody with a calibrated display-laptop, or desktop, you could compare your screen to theirs, at least to get a sense of whether your color balance is neutral or not (ie, not drastically blue when compared to their calibrated display). On the other hand, if things are looking good to you, don't sweat it--just enjoy your new laptop.

 

Howdy folks, from sunny (not - it's 5:25am!) Manchester where I am ensconsed earning some cash to pay for new laptops and tings.

Picked up my new F11S1E/B yesterday afternoon, but by the time I'd got home and had my tea, I had barely 45 mins with it before I had to come into work. No labels or stickers on the box where it states "Made in China".

Early impressions are excellent - specs can be seen in sig.

Mine being the pre-built F11S1E model is in the graphite colour and looks very elegant. As doesn't the power brick, though it's the elephant in the room by necessity.

The screen, an EU premium matt model is excellent and whilst I haven't done any conclusive tests, I couldn't see any dead pixels. I reckon it could be a SIPS panel as it has a slight silkyness of image. Also, no idea as to how it's backlit though further time with the machine may garner an opinion at a later date.

Keyboard is astonishingly good - if you know your keyboards, I use an IBM model M, PS/2 keyboard on my desktop so that is always my reference.

Just had time to pop in a quick Blu-Ray disc before leaving for work - Casino Royale. Colours were very strong though perhaps with a blue-ish cast indicating a spot of calibration is in order - I'll try the posted profiles before messing too much myself.

Finally, it doesn't feel like a 3.1 Kg laptop, possibly due to the slimness of its design.

I'll be playing some more later today and will post some further impressions when I can - I've got 12 hours between shifts.

 

That would be M A T S H I T A (Panasonic), right? Funny. notebookreview will not permit to post that brand, it trunks it to MATA, maybe it's a Japanese por*n word or something?

Dunno if this would work but looks promising.

From the "FW Blu Ray/DVD Burner; bloody region code!" thread:

Tip: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4659204&postcount=12

Reply & testimonial: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4758024&postcount=29

Does not mention 64-bit but... WinDVD Blu-Ray (BD) DVD Region Free Reset http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/04/25/windvd-blu-ray-bd-dvd-region-free-reset/

 

S H I T is the p o r n word. And the word p o r n is itself ALSO filtered. Can you say damn .. .? Ah good. You can't say friggin(g) either.. It's all very childish really; other chat rooms I frequent have no such restrictions, and they remain perfectly calm....

[rant]And WHEN will someone get some decent "funny" smileys here? Those on EPhatch and AudioKarma are so much better, and more than suited to computer chat, many are much more on-topic than the small library available here.

Enough site-bashing, at least I assume they're not immature enough to Mod what I just wrote. I guess the site is run by computer nerds who don't get out much into the world... [/rant]

And what's useful for anyway?

Now THESE are SMILEYS

 

Yes, think of you when you were trying to decide on what model to buy.

Many people come here to seek opinions from real owners, like you.

"What kind of feedback" - screen, keyboard feel, noise if any, performance, built, etc.

 

Yeah - and the frames without screen recording are much better, so it is playable with ultra settings at 1280x720. Medium settings at 1080p with 2xAA run smoothly (although I am hard-pressed to see the visual differences between medium and ultra...). And in terms of the driving - the computer is actually piloting the car , but I'm not much better than it is sadly...

NFS Shift is up as well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwF4LjliS34 - all settings set to high with 2xAA. The video looks choppy, but without FRAPS the game runs without a hiccup at 32 fps. The one thing that I really like about the F11 is that even if the framerates of games aren't amazingly high, they are very consistent (they never vary wildly or make the game seem like it's stuttering). So basically, even when a game's fps isn't very high, the game doesn't seem to lag very much.

 

Come on Joe, one doesn't HAVE to post a review before asking a question

 

So the moral is: next time you buy a computer, burn recovery discs & repair disc if not included, then semi-clean install or clean install, THEN customize & install your software.

Meanwhile: slrosenfeld's F Windows 7 Pro with Fresh Start, Start Menu screen grab:



So you could uninstall any program not listed there & your F would still be fully functional.

In case of doubt, try out the program to see if it's useful to you before uninstalling.

Check also: Windows 7 Service Configurations optimization, just don't follow blindly every recommendations, check his reasoning for each Services and decide for yourself.

 

No need to post 20 pages but to contribute is a good thing IMHO. Comments by happy users balances the "issues" posters.

If 100 owners are happy & 5 have complaints, it gives a better overall sense of the value of the product.

I also love when somebody post a problem, gets suggestions & tips & never comes back to say if it worked or not.

So the next user with the same problem asks: xyz, did it work, how did you solved your problem?

BTW, animated stuff is the crapware of message boards.

 

I tried the Crysis demo for the first time ever and boy does the constant air rushing out full steam from those vents sound umm..well...loud enough to be annoying.
(really sounded like someone was vacuuming a couple rooms away)

Two fixes that came to mind. The first one is to ignore it. The second which worked SO MUCH BETTER is to wear headphones. Well that did the trick for me anyway.

 

Yeah. Put on some headphones - it's good to wear headphones for fps's anyway. You can hear people sneaking up on you.

 

THAT I agree with

 

@MangoSango

Good point!

@Joe Bleau
When is your F11 arriving? I am most curious to know what your impressions are when you get it..

 

You've got to remember that this is one of the most powerful home computers ever made. It's equal to a supercomputer of 10 years or so ago. Of COURSE it produces heat..

 

@MelodyMaster

True enough...geh...i still remember computer classes in grade school working in commodore 64's...oh wait...those times were actually fun!

 

Tomorrow!!! My US friend is in Costa Rica, 4 hours away, looking at an active volcano, Arenal (my pic):



He will send the stuff to me via taxi-boat-taxi. Sounds exotic, no?



I intend to post stuff like before/after system performance, screen calibration, photos, etc.

 

I was top of the class in the mid 60's in High School in computer science. Cobol and Fortran. The school system was an RCA 660 mainframe or some such, a licensed IBM clone.. I started with home systems on the Vic20, even learning to program it. Then I kinda dropped out of computers until getting my own computer (when was it?....) a Canon Pentium-60 with VL-bus. I learned how to use a Microsoft computer on that thing. I still also still have a Mac 1A 1 Meg.

One of the most stooopid mistakes of my life, I saw a Lisa, yes Mac Lisa, in the local Goodwill a couple of years ago for $35, and didn't buy it! I'll never know why I didn't get this one extreme collectors item since I abscond with just about every other piece of interesting junk I see.

 

!!!Very nice scenery to see on a daily basis!!!

I am in NYC dealing with leftover snow which just looks like gray muck in 37 degree weather. On top of that, a friend of mine just told me she just came back from St.Barts on an impulse trip for a few days.....

Well, i'm looking forward to your thoughts..

 

I do miss snow as I am a skier, the last time I saw any was in 1998.

I don't see the volcano every day as I live 10km by dirt road from that point of view but it's so spectacular that I go there at least once a month.



I expect the F to kick butts when merging 3 12mb images like the one above.

 

@Melodymaster
I've seen some of the early macs in flea markets during the weekend. Not the Lisa's though. Do you remember the ones with the crts that could be rotated in landscape and portrait modes. Seen a couple of those but my girlfriend would kill me if I brought something that would not sit too well with the decor. In retrospect I miss those days having to tinker around in Dos. I still open the command prompt just for kicks here and there but it's not the same.

@Joe Bleau
Ironically, since San Diego is a topic of discussion in this forum that apparently it is a great place to live in where one can go to the beach and tan and ski all in one day throughout the whole year? Anyone living in San Diego that can corroborate?

 

What's snow look like? Here in Mississauga we haven't had any this year, well, a dusting maybe. The fellow next door is regretting buying a pricey rechargeable snow blower, since he hasn't had to use it this season. welcome to dry, warm, snow-free Canada,

not like theArctic wastes of the Central US!

 

But there's no jungle (except the concrete one), no toucans (except on cereal boxes) & it's in USA.

Night-night!

 

That colour profile was for the EU matte screen. I'm assuming since you got 10% off you're in the U.S That profile would be the wrong one to use if that's the case. Try srosenfeld's at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5784440#post5784440

 

I don't know if this was asked before but I'm looking for a VAIO F series to replace my FW and just wanted to know what kind of memory does the US-spec G330M use? GDDR2, GDDR3??? can anyone check this with GPUz??

Thanks =D

 

It's DDR3.

 

Just by the way, I ordered a hard drive caddy, the expensive one from NewmodeUS, http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=244 since I may be using a 12.5 mm drive.

 

(edit) OOOPS! Wrong memory. I gotta learn to read....

 

I found matt800's profile giving the wrong gamma on my screen according to lagom.nl gamma tests. Does the environment lighting influence the calibration result? For example, does moving from incandescent to fluorescent lamp affect the perceived color output? I understand that calibration devicec do take account of surrounding light. And is calibration done for every brightness level? As I have a slight feeling that colors change a bit when going to low brightness... I found Adobe RGB profile the best, so far

 

Below is my screen 9600GT from Samsung - looks like more bandwith and pixelrate than 330, right?, this is 512 MB but still does not look like this 330 is something special, in the contrary it's far ahead of this Samsung 9600.



Also can somebody comment on how this lappy ( fans) behave while photoshoping - is it the same as after Crysis game, or more quiet?
Two questions:

 

Just got back from a business trip last thursday and picked the laptop on my way back, and still have not given Vegas a full whirl yet. But Vegas Pro 9.0 is a professional software and all the reviews I read about it (prior to the purchase) seem to indicate that it is a stellar product. I will check it out firsthand and revert back on my findings.

 

And it is not "outside the realm of possibility"......can't absolutely and unequivocally rule it out ......that there may be several other changes during the lifespan of the current F. In fact, I guarantee that there will be several changes.

Bottomline, if you are waiting for that mythical perfect machine, it will be a long wait. You need to look at your needs and find the product that best meets it. Then purchase it and not look back till your needs change several years later, and you need to upgrade.....at least that is the philosophy I follow. I watch for some of the turning points, where there is a serious technological upgrade (like say the F-series moving into Quad-Cores from the former Dual Core CPUs of the old FW series, or the F-series moving to modern DDR3-1333 RAM from the slow DDR2-800 RAM of the older FW series and so on) and then flip the switch.

Buying the older FW-series, anytime recently, would have been something I would personally have seriously regretted, now that the replacement models - the F-series - got released. I doubt you are making a mistake by buying the new F-series, even if a couple of additional knick-knacks get added onto it, over the next several months.

 

If anything were to happen to the Canadian price of the 256 Gig SSD it will go UP. $225 is a seriously low price already.

The machine is already very good, the core components all work as they should, even the sound card is better than average (on external speakers.) The only weakness is the display; I can see myself going to the Sony parts dealer and buying a better screen down the road, an upgrade that has been done to other models in this forum. Otherwise it's the beginning of a new line in CPUs and GPUs and the best current memory.

I see NO need to wait!

 

$225 is s steal for the 256GB SSD. We pay $600+ here in the US, for the same thing.

 

Having used the 256GB SSD for the past couple of days, I think the SSD is a solid upgrade over the 7200rpm HDD that I had in my prior F-series. The thing boots up near instantly, the programs are loaded near instantaneously and everything about it is just plain speedy.

Also, none of the noises that a typical hard-drive makes and the only sound from my laptop currently, is the sound that the fan makes when it turns on. When the fan is not running, the computer is just pitch silent !

 

I used the profile you published, on my new F-series and it immediately made a difference. The kind of difference one sees, when say the white balance is corrected on an image. Thanks !

 

Did you finally get happy about your screen? I'm not so sure about mine. I was showing it to my wife last night. She had asked me how the new computer was coming along. I told her the screen was bugging me because I was constantly moving my head around or adjusting the angle of the screen to determine what the real colors and contrasts were on the pictures I was editing. She took one look at the screen and said, "Of course -- you can't tell what you're looking at!" In other words, she saw the same thing I saw. The top part of the screen is always darker and more contrasty than the bottom of the screen. So if you're working on something at the top, you tilt the screen down a bit (or raise your head), and if you are working on something at the bottom, you tilt the screen back (or lower your head).

(I only wish my screen were as nice as the one Tcklim shows in his fine YouTube review! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEvJCu06cg8 )

I really like the machine in other ways -- it's a nice-looking machine, not too heavy for all its speed and power, and the display is beautiful if you don't look too closely and don't need to do any editing -- but this issue is going to be too much for me, I'm afraid. I don't even like to turn it on anymore.

So I've got one more week to think about it. (14 days to return it. I've had if for a week.) I guess I was spoiled by the matte screen on my trusty old LifeBook. I thought (hoped) I'd get used to this screen after a week, but no.

Maybe the store can show me a screen that doesn't have this problem. If so, I will consider an exchange.

 

According to the sony website the preconfigured version of the f with the i5 processor and 512mb graphics card has better battery life, than the one with the i7 and 1 gb graphics card. I wonder if this difference is caused by the processors or the graphicscards? Or maybe both?

Thank you in advance

 

Howdy Friends,

I received my new Sony VAIO VPCF11MFX/B yesterday afternoon!
It arrived from Sony with the GREEN sticker on the box. I have read
all the literature which came with the computer, and I will probably
begin the set-up this afternoon or possibly tomorrow. Any caveats before
I begin?

Regards,

Mark

 

pictures

 

That's it! srosenfelds's profile worked like a charm and got my display colors away from the blue-ish side. Wonderful!

For those of you who are too cash-strapped, like myself, for color calibration software I recommend in giving these color profiles a shot to see if you like it or not:

EU matte display should try tcklim's color profile
US glossy display should try srosenfeld's color profile


Thanks you two!
(don't know how to post links to their color profiles)

 

Yeah - I think rumor has it that the gt330m/240m/9700m are basically the same card with different names.

It's much more quiet . On Crysis the fan is literally spinning at full blast and while on Photoshop the fan is rarely audible.

 

Exactly what I was doing when I was trying to edit pictures on it. It was driving me nuts. I asked myself, could I deal with this on a day to day basis for the next 3-5 years. I was like no. So I sent it back and ordered a XPS 16 from Dell and I know the screens are great on them.

 

A quick comment on the color calibrated profile - while surfing the web to my usual sites I noticed a little difference. Dark Greys are Dark Greys, Greys are Greys, but Light Greys have a slight touch of a pinkish or lavender hue. Not a big deal but it's just an observation that I think I can live with.

 

Thoughts on 6GB vs 8GB's in these laptops?

I found the 4GB stick that sony uses in the f series here

http://www.google.com/products?hl=e...um=0&q=M471B5273BH1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wf

For about $150-$170 depending on vendor. I'm considering picking one up now.