Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

@student@antwerp2009

5400rpm still on the FW and AW too (Probably thru all the series) in the Belgium site! what is going on? that's just plain weird...

 

I think the Flemmish market is too small for Sony, we speak dutch, but use azerty keyboards. So its obvious we don't get new or a wider range of laptops than countries like the Netherlands (they just have the same laptops with qwerty keyboards like other countries, but with a european power cord).
The taxrate is also very high here, and many people buy low cost consumer laptops like acer and packardbell because thats what the supermarkets usually offer.
We are with few, have different hardware demands (other keyboards), and we rather buy cheap junk (we belgians like it cheap, even the germans could not impose their ration-based economy on us because of our black market during WW2), no surprise sony doesn't care about our market.
To give an example, there are more people in prison in the USA (9 milion) then there are Flemmish people. The people from southern Belgium can buy french laptops since they speak french... And even if one would take the Wallonians and the Flemmish AND the small german speaking society together....we are only with 10 million people. And a very small percentage of those buy a laptop.

 

It 5 in the morning and all is quiet through the house....even the F laptop is quiet as a mouse....(I'm using it now).

 

Sorry, but I have to object here. The Dutch are famous for being cheap isn't it, not the Belgians!

If you really want the Azerty keyboard AND the 7200RPM hard disk, the easiest is probably to get your laptop in Belgium with Azerty and replace the hard disk.

I am actually quite happy now that they offer the US intl keyboard on sonystyle.nl instead of the NL3 variant. I was always a bit annoyed by that keyboard on my old Vaio. It is a good thing I can type blind because I am using the US intl layout with an NL3 keyboard now on my old Vaio. I don't understand Sony why they wouldn't just offer one European shop where you customize everything, including the keyboard. Having a lot of regional shops is a bit of an overkill.

 

Hi all. Nice to see a forum with people having such a good high-tech knowledge. I am a poor guy who never had a good laptop since 10 years and always looking for another laptop.

My first laptop was an IBM Thinkpad almost 10 years ago and it was the only laptop I've happly used. Since then I am lookin for an another laptop.

My first another laptop was Toshiba Satelite and after 3 years I was so happy that he died. Next I've buyed my second another laptop, a customized HP DV9700 and now it gives me such a pain that I won't even wait for 3 years to buy my third another laptop. Actually the pain was a combination of Vista and HP. Any way my target another laptop is Sony Viao F11 now. I was in between Sony F11 and Dell XPS16 but after seeing the build quality and elegant design of a Viao FW in a store I decided to go with Sony. The heating and power problems of Dell also affected my decision.

My question will be: Is there any difference regarding the build quality, design, and screen quality between Sony FW and F11? I don't mean as a written spec, I mean as a real user experience.

Thanks for the replies. Cheers!

 

Exactly my question.
I've been looking at the Dell's with i7 720qm cpu, and would like to know if the Sony Vaio F-series suffer from throttling

The Dell Studio 1747 and XPS1645 come with a 90W PSU and performance is suffering from throttling when both CPU and GPU are stressed. Using ThrottleStop AND a 130W PSU seems to solve these problems, but may be bad for the system as it seems it was not specificly designed to work with this much power.
The Dell Precision M6500 does not throttle at all; it comes with a 210W PSU brick to make sure there's enough power..

The Sony Vaio F-series comes with the VGP-AC19V16 PSU and as I understand it, it is a 120W PSU. This combined with the lower TDP (23W) of the Nvidia GeForce 330M GPU (compared to the ATI 4650 (Dell Studio 1747 | 35W TDP) and 4670 (Dell SXPS1645 | 35W TDP))

The total TDP of the F-series seems to be lower than Dell's Studio 1745 and XPS1645 models, and it's got a better PSU, but it would be very nice to have some solid benchmark results on this.

*quote from 'New Dell Studio 17 announced (Studio 1745/47)' forum thread*

 

I have to agree about the durability of the IBM laptop. I have a T23 with Tualatin 1.2 and that thing is indestructible, it is still a good enough performer to be very useful including for web video playback.

You didn't like the Toshiba? That was my second choice as a new laptop behind a VAIO.

The FW is somewhat more elegant in design than the F-series. And being a late revision the bugs seem to have been worked out. I ALMOST bought a brown FW590 with P8800 store demo for several hundred dollars cheaper than the F1190 I'm getting. That was a lovely machine! But I decided this was to be both a laptop upgrade and a home system upgrade, so it had to be State of the Art.

 

There ARE performance tests online, the F-series does better than the equivalent Dells. Remember that the i7 is DESIGNED to throttle. It only runs full tilt with one core, then slows down as more cores come into play. Thus it remains as optimized as possible while maintaining a safe thermal envelope.

 

According to the pics the new F seems to be fully made out of plastic, where the fw serie was made of metal, or did the silver paint just fool me?

 

The Dell Throlltlegate problems don't have to do with the normal throttling as it can be expected using the Turbo mode.

In the case of the Studio 1747 and SXPS 1645 the CPU gets throttled because the bios won't allow to draw more than 90W from the PSU, even if the standard 90W PSU is replaced by a 130W equivalent. This does not happen when the laptop is running on it's battery, only when the PSU is plugged in.

S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation
S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

 

It's silver paint...that wears off...

 

Now listed on Play.com with an expected ship-date for 2nd Feb Good deal on the top-spec model!


Sony VAIO F11 Z1E/BI / Core i7 720QM 1.6 - 2.8GHz / 8GB / 500GB / Blu-ray BD-RE / 16.4" / Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit / Laptop / Notebook / Premium Black

( Not yet rated ) | Write a review »

£1299.99 Free Delivery
Pre-order. | Due for release on 01/02/2010

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/654/86...otebook-Premium/Product.html?searchtype=genre

 

The FW's chassis, lid cover, and keyboard plate are magnesium. The F series case is made from recycled CDs and DVDs. This info was released at the intro
of the Vaio F during the Sony presentation at CES.

 

Hi All,

Im am thinking about getting the Vaio F11 with the core i5-520M processor (coded VPCF11V5E in the Netherlands via Sony style online; 500BG 7.200 Rpm; 4GB 1066 DDR3; DVD; 1920*1080 screen with geforce 330m 1gb). I have some questions about the configuration. I would like to use this laptop as a replacement for my current 7 year old desktop. In general i use it for general office and internet stuff, but for my research project i have a large database (in Access) and my desktop can hardly run it. Also for my research i use the R-program for statistcal analyses. Further i would like to do some image editing (lightroom or photoshop) and some casual gaming (like Farcry 2 and the hunter, not those stupid internet flash stuff ).

1. The first thing i noticed on the core i5 version is that the RAM speed is 1066 MHz fort the core i5 and 1333 MHz for the core i7. What is the difference? would it be considerable slower? (ie. is the 300 euro extra worth the difference between the i5 and the i7 for my usage). Or do i better spend the extra on 6 GB of ram instead of 4 GB?

2. Secondly is the 7.200 rpm upgrade (from 5.400) on the harddisk worth the extra?

3. What is the difference between the windos versions. Ie is the upgrade to win 7 pro worth the difference?

4. What about the display, Sony is generally considered very good with their X-black displays. But the info on the sony websited doesn't say anything about this. Would it be color accurate once calibrated? Does anyone have some more info?

Thanks in advance!

Grtz Jan

 

Agreed, the exterior housing of the fw series was magnesium (although it looks like plastic). I thought that the W series "Eco" version case was made out of recycled CDs and DVDs, no? Anyhow, there are a couple of people on this forum who have said that the computer feels like a rock and no reports yet of flimsiness or a cheap feel.

 

I think the laptop you have is more than enough for what you want to do.

ad. 1. There is of course a difference with the memory speed, but I wonder if you would notice that. Better get more RAM indeed.

ad. 2. I would definitely take the 7200RPM because that is noticeable.

ad. 3. It looks like the home version does not have windows XP mode. The other one has and this allows you to run anything on it that also runs on XP.

ad. 4. The displays on the i5 and i7 models are really good. The i7 variant has a slightly better display with wider viewing angle and has better color accuracy. I wonder however if that is really noticeable if you're not a professional photographer.

The i5 version is good value of money I think. When I ordered mine, I was in no-compromise mode and just ordered the i7 version. Also got the 500GB 7200RPM disk and 8GB of memory and windows professional. SSD turned me off a bit because it is just too expensive for my taste. The i5 has one major advantage over the i7 and that is that it will probably run cooler.

 

When I shopped for an FW390 with SSD a bit back, it had a loud whine, too. My FW190 appeared totally silent next to it. BUT with all of the talk of whining, now IF I put my ear close to the machine when the fan is off and I am in a totally quiet room, there does seem to be a very, very faint hum.

One does indeed wonder if there is always some sort of background hum and whether the loudness of it is the issue. The FW390 was perceptible at normal use distance; the earlier model not.

Hmmmm.....

 

I can tell you that my SR and my AW series were/are noisy but I never noticed it or if I did I quickly, subconciously, pushed it to the back of my conciousness.....until I came on this forum with reports of F noise. Now I hear noises everywhere. True story.

 

Okay, I'm a bit confused here -- and these are important feature issues because nowhere in the States is there any mention whatsoever of the display light sensor, just the backlight sensor for the keyboard.

Are you indeed saying that during the daytime (where no keyboard light would be at issue), there is an ambient light sensor which adjusts the brightness of the screen?

And then are you saying that, in the evening or in a dimly-lit room, both the brightness of the display AND the brightness of the keyboard backlight are being automatically controlled? And are these by the _same_ sensor? When you spoke of software adjustments, did it refer to different functions of the same sensor (for backlight and for display brightness) or as a single function?

And does the sensor involve a pop-up or have some other way of telling you just what settings it is choosing a) for the display and b) for the keyboard backlight?

This is very, very interesting because nowhere has anyone ever implied that the U.S. screens have anything that resembles a matte screen while there is a thread at NBR ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=450919) that has photos of a European F model which appears to have the kind of matte that Sony offers on the Duraview of the Z series (and someone also posted that a Sony rep said the coating was like that of the Z). Additionally, the European screens are described as scratch-resistant, another feature of the Z screen's Duraview coating -- no mention of that in the U.S.

Nowhere in Europe is there any mention of a keyboard backlight available but everywhere in Europe there is mention of the light sensor for the display.

Can you help to sort out just what your American model has? And anyone in Europe who has an F with the ambient sensor, can you compare that to this discription?

I have my suspicions that there is a different screen in Europe and that it functions better with the light sensor and that the American CTO is using the older stock screen which is semi-glossy and may be interfering with a keyboard backlight sensor's operation. Which of these two F's (the one with just the display sensor, or the one with the keyboard backlight sensor that involves the display) is the chicken and which the egg, I don't know. These are just "spec"-ulations, of course.

Thanks, merci, Danke, grazie, etc. for any further info y'all can provide.

 

I will be buying a CTO F Series soon I hope, to replace my 4 year old SZ1XP. The SZ has served me superbly well but is a bit long in the tooth now. I run a secondary screen off the laptop and opening Photoshop next to say, Illustrator is not pleasant to watch.

But I digress - a few questions..

1) I want to buy the F with the 500gb 7200rpm drive and then buy a 160gb IBM SSD separately to replace it with. Will I be able to put the 500gb in my SZ1XP? The SZ has a 100gb Fujitsu MHV2100BH (5400rpm) in it at the moment, can I just whip that out and put the faster 500gb in it's place? And then put the SSD in the F? Copying recovery partitions as I go.

2) Why no fingerprint reader on the F? I've looked at as many pics of it as I can and it's just... not there.... :\ Not essential obviously, but it was a nice convenient way to login in rather than typing a password.

Thank you kindly.

 

For those of you just like me purchasing the new VAIO F series who is having the buzzing noise problem, BTW I am in age rang of 25-30. Here is the quick solution to stop this noise. Click on Start, Control penal, sound and hardware, sound, and click the recording tab and leave it on. This will stop the buzzing noise immediately. Not a permanent fix, but aleast good for now untill Sony fix their own mess. Thanks for reading.

 

For those of you just like me purchasing the new VAIO F series who is having the buzzing noise problem, BTW I am in age rang of 25-30. Here is the quick solution to stop this noise. Click on Start, Control penal, sound and hardware, sound, and click the recording tab and leave it on. This will stop the buzzing noise immediately. Not a permanent fix, but aleast good for now untill Sony fix their own mess. Thanks for reading.

 

You should be able to replace the hard drive in your SZ, since both are 2.5 inch SATA drives, although I'm not sure how hard it is to get the drive out. On my z1ra, you have to basically take apart the entire computer to get to the hard drive, but it's definitely do-able.

 

There is only ONE sensor and it is used to automatically adjust the screen's brightness and to engage the KB's backlight.

The settings for these two features are separate. You can disable the automatic brightness feature while still having the light sensor automatically turn on the KB's backlight...and vice versa.

However, if you disable the automatic sensing for the backlight, there is no other way to turn it on. It must be turned out on using the light sensor.

I too was surprised to know that it had this feature. No where in Sony's marketing material does it mention it.

 

You are mistaken. It is the W-series that is made from recycled CDs/DVDs etc. The F-series and the previous FW series are all built in the same way.

 

Yes, I just replied back mentioning exactly the same as you did - that it is the W-series and not the F-series that is built using recycled materials.

Also, can confirm that there is no cheap feel at all about the F-series. Built tight as a drum with no creaks or other unpleasantness (my current Lenovo on the other hand, feels clearly cheaply built).

 

Thanks, I'm not in the same country as the box and manual at the moment but I will have a look around the sony site for some exploded diagrams or something.

And I meant Intel SSD not IBM SSD.

 

The hard drive bay is accessible by removing two screws.

 

I recieved my New F series on Wednesday this week. Yes, I too have a slight buzzing, but seeing that its the norm for now, I'm going to keep this laptop. I bought the black version, i7, 4gb ram, 500 gb hd, blu-ray burner, lighted keyboard. So far everything works fine. I just loaded Adobe CS4 Production Premium to edit HD video with. I'm in the video production business and I'm using sony ex format as my HD source from my HD camera. Its interesting that the buzz goes away as I type any button and comes back as soon as its idle. As long as its not dead quiet, I'm not really bothered by the noise.

Performance which I just tested with Passmark Performance test gave it a system rating of 797.8.

cwd

P.S. I have a sony ericcson phone.....and with its bluetooth it works as a remote! I can up and down the player audio with my phone and jump to the next track.....didn't know it would do this.......a small bonus.

 

Okay everyone here is my video showing you how to stop the buzzing noise, it's not a permanent fix, but at least we can bear with it while Sony work on a software patch fix. Thanks for watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI2P8roNN1E

 

Thanks for the suggestion - it works great as an interim fix. It seems like a software patch will easily solve the problem. My only question is do the SONY higher ups even know about this? No one on tech support seems to be aware of it. I know it takes time for this stuff to filter up. Maybe if enough of them get returned to Sonystyle they will get the message and act. I am inclined to return mine now and maybe purchase it again three or four months down the road if the problem is resolved.

 

Thanks, are you referring to the F Series or the SZ1XP here?

 

VAIO F series.

 

It also helps if we all ask about it and complain about it at sony. And don't forget a reference to this discussion.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your solution.

 

Location: United States.

My F Series arrived last night. Here's my first impressions. Keep in mind that although I've had six or seven laptops over the last 20 years, I used my last one (Dell Precision M90) for about four years. Right now I'm still coloring my impressions of the Sony as compared to the M90.

The Dreaded Whine
I plugged the laptop in right away and started transfering files and installing programs last night. I tried to hear the whine, but didn't hear a thing. This morning I unplugged it and immediately heard the high-pitched whining noise. It sounded exactly like the noise in the YouTube video somebody posted earlier. After about 10 minutes though, the noise went away. It seemed to me like it was related in some way to the hard drive activity. I could hear the normal hard drive chatter, but the high-pitched noise seemed to coincide. Since the noise went away fairly quickly and I'll mostly be using the laptop while plugged in, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Edit: When I plugged the laptop back in again it started whining. Again, it went away after about 10 minutes. It seems to me that it is related to changing power states.

The Case
I got the silver version and it looks cheap to me. It definitely does not look as nice as the FW and looks like silver plastic. My old Dell had lots of metal, so I'm used to the cool touch. The textured palm rest looks especially cheap to me and gets fairly warm (compared to my old laptop). The heat of the palm rest definitely makes my hands sweaty. Visually, I prefered the design of the FW. This design looks a little generic.

The Screen
The premium screen is good, but far more glossy than I'm used to. I like matte displays and hate the extra reflections. I'll need to find some anti-reflective film for this thing if I'm going to keep using it. Anybody know of a good film of the right size?

There seems to be more of a limited vertical angle for this display than I'm used to. The auto brightness kept changing last night as I opened and closed windows. I guess the added brilliance of an open Explorer window would impact the brightness sensor right under the screen. I might have to turn off the auto brightness feature.

The Keyboard
The keyboard is nice. There isn't as much key travel as on my old laptop so I'm still hitting the keys too hard. Although the island style is similiar to the keyboard on my Macbook, it doesn't feel like the same quality. It feels a little cheaper and less precise. Some of the keys squeak when pressed. It's nice to have a number pad again but I keep forgetting it's there.


Speed
I haven't done any work yet, but it seems much faster than my 4-year old laptop. But then, it would have to be.


Other
I've noticed a few cases of "Engrish" in various places. For instance in the VAIO Control Center/Document Zoom panel it says,

I have no idea what that means.

The "VAIO" button on the keyboard toggles "Mute". I not sure if it is supposed to do that or what it is supposed to be linked to. I can't find any options to remap that button to anything else.

For people wondering whether the "Clean Start" option meant there wouldn't be any blue-ray player software-- I selected "Clean Start" and the blue-ray player and other items were still available in my start menu. It seemed like they did an auto install when clicking on the start menu item.

So, I like it but still need to get used to it. I'm sure that once I use this laptop for a week, everything will be fine.

 

Thanks a lot! Your workaround works for me. I contacted the Sony support team but it seems they have no idea of the problem. I sent them a link to your post. I hope they find a permanent fix.

PS: I bought my laptop (Sony VPCF115FM) yesterday from Best Buy and I was very annoyed by the high pitch buzzing. I was contemplating returning it until I found your post.

 

Thanks for the video. I will include this in my e-mails to SONY!

 

As always, could those reviewing their F-series laptops PLEASE let us know which country you're in and where the unit was bought! This forum is read worldwide and there is considerable regional variation in the F11, especially among screens.. I read all your posts Flumbo and still couldn't figure out where you are.

 

So from what I understand:

The US F comes with a backlit keyboard and glossy screen.

The European F comes with a matte screen with an ambient light sensor.

The new F will launch in Hong Kong in a few days. I wonder what specs and screen it will have.

 

Hawaii, USA.

 

The Canadian F-series DOESN'T seem to have a glossy screen, at least under some graphics options.

 

So in Canada the F has a matte screen with a backlit keyboard.

Is there any F with a backlit keyboard and an ambient light sensor?

 

Hope so! Shipped confirmation sent today - so should find out soon. BTW, Sony Canada told me that the Canadian Vaio's are built in and shipped from the US.

 

San Diego to be exact. The screen may very well be the glossy, so don't get TOO excited. What made the deal for me is finding that the video card would be a decent 330M with 1 gig Vram. I'm not sure why Sonystyle.ca still has that "211P" stuff.

I have one Earth-shattering question: how come I started here as a "Notebook Enthusiast" instead of as a Newbie, and now I'm already a "guru." hehe How does one go about becoming a "newbie?" :tongue:

 

And the "status" will change again when you get to post count of 100 and then again at 150 or so. "Guru" to "Enthusiast" and then to "Notebook Consultant".....seems like "Guru" should be beyond all of these, at least as per conventional definition.

 

what about people who ordered online or from the Sony Store?
does the laptop have the whiny sound?

 

Went into my local BB yesterday. In typical BB fashion one of the sales retards confidently stated that it would be at least a month before they had any Sony Core i7 laptops in stock. I pointed out that the laptop behind him was a Sony VPCF115FM w/ the Core i7. He scratched his head and I told him to go fetch me one. He said I was lucky since they only had 2 in stock.

Anyways, I booted mine up and the dreaded whining noise was immediately evident. It doesn't sound like the hard drive. My Macbook Pro has a hard drive whine, but this noise is different. I'm suspecting it's the fan, but can't pin the noise down. It almost has a morse code type beat to it and sometimes disappears altogether. It is a bit annoying when I'm in a quiet room.

Overall, I really like the laptop. It's blazing fast and is a good desktop replacement. Fit and finish is tight, but the display casing has some flex to it and I'm surprised that Sony went with a plastic shell instead of aluminum. I also like the 1080p screen. I would have preferred a matte finish, but overall DVD's and Blu rays look very crisp.

I still haven't decided whether I will keep this. I will have to see if the whining noise is a deal breaker or not over the next couple days.

 

Mine is a CTO from Sonystyle. But wonder if I am getting used to the in-famous whine or what, but I have not noticed the sound since today morning.

Don't know if whatever was causing the whine just fixed itself, after the laptop ran for a day or I just got used to it. I asked my wife if she is hearing any noise from the computer and other than the fan, she could not hear anything untoward either.

Definitely is giving me hope !

 

Perhaps the whining sound has already damaged your ears so you both cannot hear it anymore!! ROFL