Official Sony VAIO F Series Owners lounge

That means the upgrade from 4 to 6gigs can be done in the field for the same price as the purchase-time factory upgrade. AND there's a 2 gig stick left over! That's very good to know, thanks.

 

There actually is an F-series pre-launch demo here that has the GT240. But the 200-series doesn't have the 7.1 HDMI audio offerred in the 300 series, nor a few other features.

 

Remember that when I sent mine back they actually instantly said the screen was defective, essentially they put it in the trash.

I saw a GT310 F11 at FutureShop; the screen was fine, with an even contrast over the whole screen.

Since the reorder was held up too long, as a Canadian buyer I supposedly couldn't even get the system I wanted anymore, but my rep pulled a few strings and I will be delivered a CTO with GT330 and 1920X 1080 screen next week. THEN I'll let you know what I think.

 

I'm confused . Is this sarcasm? I bought in store at a Sony style. I know I have a 4GB and 2GB stick now. I am thinking if getting another 4GB stick and selling my 2GB stick (hynix) for cheap to recoup a little bit.

 

I ordered one in the US and I am disappointed with the screen vertical view angles (as I was expecting I would be from review). I just couldn't find everything I wanted at the Vaio pricepoint and since my mac book pro died on me after three years I couldn't wait any longer.

I wish there was a way to upgrade the screen to one with LED backlight and be able to watch a movie with consistent blacks throughout the whole image. I'll definitely be investing in an external monitor at some point for the color critical work I do.

Other than that I am pleased so far! I am sure I will eventually get used to the screen. It's nice having this much real estate for windows and such, do the advantage of that is well worth it to me.

 

The 4 gig sticks you linked to cost $170. The upgrade from 4 to 6 Gigs costs $160 as a CTO. Therefore instead of paying at purchase I can upgrade in the field for the same cost, by replacing one of the 2Gigs with the new 4 gig, and that old 2 gig will be free for other purposes, whereas buying 6 gigs when new leaves me WITHOUT that 2 gig stick.

I maxed out my cash on hand with the SSD, Bluray burner, Win Pro, and Premiere, I just couldn't afford the 820 or memory options, and it seems the latter can be upgraded cost-effectively.

Again, thank you for the link.

 

I understand I thought u were hinting I was wasting money by getting 6GB's initially and upgrading to 8GB.

Glad I could help

 

You'll probably be a able to do a field upgrade of the screen when better displays become available. The launch situation with the American F11 is the type of thing that BEGS for a third-party to step in with a semi-hack and a display upgrade FAQ.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/1499...t_you_should_never_do_and_how_to_do_them.html

http://www.replacementlaptopscreen.com/

http://computershopper.com/laptops/howto/replace-your-laptop-screen

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=458785

 

No no, If I could afford two 4 gig sticks as an upgrade then that will leave me with a set of 2 gigs, which is ideal. I couldn't afford 6 gigs at purchase, let alone 8. The store-bought models have a balance of features which is not my preference, 6 gigs but not an HD screen or Bluray burner, and certainly no Premiere, so I HAD to go the CTO route, with 8 gigs not being a major priority.

 

That looks a little intense for me!

Any idea if Sony will provide an avenue to upgrade the screen later? I have the ADH and you never know, maybe I will have an accident in a year or so and have the opportunity to ask them to upgrade it (For a price I'm sure) while they are in there making repairs? Or just send it in regardless of an accident.

 

I had a local Sony style, that had the 1080p, 6Gigs and blu-ray burner.

 

I'm in the UK.

I understand that the F series laptop doesn't come with a copy of Windows 7. Did anyone manage to get their retailer to provide them with an installation disc?

The reason I ask is that I want to do a clean install of Windows 7 when the laptop that I purchased arrives. It's ridiculous that Windows 7 isn't provided in a CD/DVD.

I bought my laptop off play.com and am concerned that they'll refuse to provide a disc.

 

Win 7 is part of the bundled software, that's the usual way the OS is offered with computers nowadays.

 

Not sure if anyone noticed, but the F series with GT330M is available for pre-oder in CANADA.

Also, they seem to be advertising the premium black colour??
http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/ProductDetailDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&productId=1007406

 

A prebuilt with GT330 on a 1600 X900 display. That's already been pointed out several times in this thread. With no Bluray burner and only gigs of memory and all the bloatware it's not a terribly good deal. Essentually it's$400 more than the model with GT310 and a step down to the 5400 RPM drive. It's the same two-tone black as the CTOs.

 

I'm glad it worked out. Sorry I didn't figure that out for you yesterday. I just assumed that since you were using Matt800's profile you had the European screen.

 

The profile created when calibrating the screen will definitely vary according to the lighting conditions under which it was created. Different profiles can be made for use under different lighting conditions, as many as one would like to create (yet another advantage to having your own calibration package). For practical purposes, just a few would suffice--bright tungsten, dim tungsten, daylight and fluorescent for example, if one really wanted to fine tune one's screen for a variety of conditions. I've been happy enough using the one profile I made in the dark that I haven't bothered making others. But I might try out some different ones, just to see how much difference it makes.

 

Out of the fold, but overall, my experience was still positive and if/when I get another Windows based laptop, I would more than likely get another Sony.

btw, here is the profile I created for my US 1080p screen. I totally stole the already existing instructions, but hey...

Spyder2express profile for Sony F US 1080p

Just another profile, that's all, if you like it great, if not great.

EDIT: After reading the above, the laptop had been on for about an hour and I made it in the dark.

 

Thanks you slrosenfeld and count schemula for the color profiles. I have both profiles and like them both. I am definitely going to pick up something from Spyder so I can calibrate my monitors.

I just tested hooking the HDMI out from the Vaio to my 40" Sony TV and it works great once I set it up correctly. Sound also works nice through the HDMI to my surround speakers. One thing I am noticing is that the fan is running pretty fast and loud while I am using both the HDMI out to my TV and also using the laptop screen even when I am not doing anything demanding. I even limited the CPU speed to 933mhz and yet the fan runs quite fast,loud, and warm. I guess the video card is being stressed more running two screens at 1920x1080 and causing the extra heat. Anyone else notice this while running to an external monitor or to a TV?

 

I received my US BB VPCF115FM/B ( specs pdf and Sony_Support)1080p GT 330M, 6 GB DDR3 memory with Samsung HM500JI HDD 5400 rpm (rated 4 eggs by 31 users here) and after playing an hour or so, first impression is: WOW!

I did not get it in a box from my US friend so I don't know about a dot sticker, green, yellow or whatever. I don't care.

Built quality, looks, keyboard, etc, everything is fine. Zero "issues" so far. Zero dead pixel, screen is kind of semi-glossy when turned on with some kind of anti-glare treatment. While I would prefer EU Premium matte, it's much better than expected! Can't wait to see it calibrated as it's already great out of the box.

Much more whining in this thread than on my lappy. Quiet @ idle with the fan revving slowly. Judging by the warm air, this powerful i7 engine needs some cooling, that's normal & expected. Will measure fan speed, noise emission, CPU & GPU temps later.

Here are some screen grabs out of the box w/o any customizations right after First Boot: Norton trial not activated but running some services, Sony_Vaio not registered, BB marketing crapware declined.

Installed software, I don't get all these comments about "bloatware", not much & easy to fix. Start Menu > right click > Properties > Start Menu tab > Customize > Number of recent programs to display > set to 25 to view all & prevent scrolling. Red dots will be removed, pink may be useful to some, all the others seem useful, try them before doing anything.



Task Manager > Installed Programs:



Task Manager > Performance (no programs running except for Task Manager, not even Paint which was started after Alt + Print Scr.):



Note: after > Windows Update > Vaio Update (only 1 for WinDVD) > Clear Windows Experience & re-rate: memory went from 7.1 to 7.4.



I will post again after swapping HDD for 7200 Seagate 500GB Momentus SEST905003N3 & optimization. Not sure what route I will choose yet: optimization, semi-clean install or annoying clean install. There is useful stuff on this preconfig IMHO.

Awesome machine!

 

Just a quick question... I have read almost the whole thread and though my box has a green dot, my monitors vertical viewing angles are so narrow that I can't have my whole screen a solid black... it's either black on top and dark gray on the bottom or the reverse. Here's a pic to illustrate. It's driving me crazy that I can't find a sweet spot for the entire screen all at once, and I have a feeling it's just the screen, but if this is defect land I want to exchange it.

Here are two kinda crappy pics that illustrate this gradient.





Is this acceptable land? For example, as I scroll through this page and look at my images, at the top of my screen I can't discern the keys from the keyboard, but at the bottom it seems as if I boosted the iso settings on my camera and I can see all the grainy noisey detail in the image.

 

So I guess that along with Poohkie I'm one of the last of the Oldtimers to yet actually get one of these, er, things.. What was it? I've aged considerably since ordering this and I guess my memory is becoming wizened. erm, the flat thing with buttons...

 

I'd been meaning to try out the .icc profile that slrosenfeld a while back. I tried yours and his, and on my screen atleast they look pretty similar. But WOW the colors sure do pop and everything looks much more vibrant (if not a little too warm for my tastes). Much better than the stock color settings though. Much thanks + props to you and slrosenfeld for posting your profiles

 

It's not a defect in the sense that there is something wrong, so an exchange will not "fix" it at this time.

I did end up returning mine over this issue. I would do a lot of graphics and video editing on the laptop and if I moved my head at all, the vertical view would change quite a bit. It's a level of stress I did not need in my workflow.

What does this image really look like?

Also, it made watching movies kind of annoying.

I hear that Sony updates their laptops frequently, and hopefully the US market will get a proper 1080p screen soon.

I don't think this issue is bad enough that it would bother everybody (ie programmers), but it did kinda get to me and a lot of i7 purchasers will be looking to work with images.

I have 2 Sony TVs in my house now and used to rock Trinitron CRTs back in the day. Can't say I was expecting to have an issue with the screen. Peyton Manning would be pissed. lol

 

I thought they were fairly similar as well.

I did feel that the profile my Spyder2expree made was maybe a little less red, and maybe a wee bit brighter in the midtones.

 

lol just wanted to say that sony put one hell of a proc in this laptop. I was playing a 720p youtube video, encoding a video at 1080p (with the thread priority set to highest) and the cpu was churning along at a measly 50-60%. That's just sick. And seeing 8 processors in task manager is pretty sweet too

 

Today I returned my machine for that same reason. The manager of the Sony Style store was quite
disappointed -- he said today was a Big Return Day for his store, over $6,000 -- but he was gracious.
I told him I'd come back and take a look at the new Z when it comes out in March. A salesman standing
nearby said that the new Zs had fantastic screens, and also he said that he had heard complaints (the
same as mine) about these screens on the F series. The three of us had a good discussion. I will definitely
give them another chance to earn my business.

 

My scores were similar. I also received a 5.9 for my hard drive, which is a Hitachi 7200rpm. In device manager it's listed as Hitachi HTS725032A9A360. I'm surprised my Hitachi 7200rpm received the same score as your 5400rpm. What's the model number of the Hitachi 7200rpm drive that you will install?

 

I just finished talking with a Sony rep and he says that Sony will not upgrade the LCD if they make any improvements to it; not an option at all. I am a little scared to try to do something like that myself, but that seems to be my only option.

 

I wonder why is you RAM performance 0.4 lower than mine although we have the same thing... Could it be the SSD or clean isntall than influenced Windows test?

I've heard that at such densities as on the 500 GB and above - there's very little if any difference in performance between 5400 and 7200...

Btw, I've seen some people having an F with a Q820 CPU - something not available for Europe, as I understand. What's the windows performance with this thing?

 

Yes the US 1080p vertical viewing angle margin is thin. Will post a video moving the lid tomorrow. I use a plain desktop background, much better to find quickly the sweet spot: Control Panel > Appearance > Personalization > Solid Color > Dark Blue. For me black is useless.

Check VAIO_F Display Uneven Brightness?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5894602#post5894602

On the plus side, this F display is sharp! I can read text easier even if it's smaller @ 134 DPI compared to my CRT who now looks cr@ppy @ 96 DPI. After testing, switched the text & icons @ 125% & Win 7's Magnifier works great.

Just opened an envelope, my friend brought me a Seagate 500GB Momentus SEST905003N3 7200 instead, it's fine too. I asked originally for a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B .

The plus side is that I can use Seagate's free DiscWizard for cloning (made by Acronis). It works only if one of your two drives is a Seagate or Maxtor. I searched Samsung & Hitachi's support for a similar utility to no avail.

Step by step how-to clone here with nice animation: http://support.seagate.com/kbimg/flash/laptop/laptop.html

My 8 year old daughter "cleaned" my office & I can't find my blank DVD's for the recovery discs. All I found is one DVD-R & one +R & it's 2h am. Need two identical!

 

That could be DDR3 1066 as opposed to DDR3 1333 ( in Europe it says 1066 on the box but I think highest model has 1333 and the one with 6 GB has 1066- maybe somebody can confirm that), or no fully dual channel operations, or some function that works only when you have two exactly the same modules installed.

 

Yeah, I saw this. It was my understanding that if my box has a green dot then it means that my monitor is fine?

Would you say that my pics show the same problem you were having? Should I attempt an exchange/service?

 

You're wellcome!

So happy for You

But You've been maybe the first one to 'unscrew' it

 

I don't have a problem (yet!).

According to several comments on the US 1080p, your screen seems normal. I have to go & play with my F, bye!

@ ilfuca: thanks! New toys are fun.

 

I read that some people made different profiles for the gt330m. So one for gaming and one for your normal activities. So my question is: will the card set to a lower profile consume less energy? Will your battery last longer this way?

Thank you in advance.


edit: I forgot to complete the sentence. My big question is: how longer will your battery last with an low card profile?

 

win experience seem strange to me I've always had diferent scores everytime I've run it.

Now I've got those 7.1 7.4 6.5 6.5 7.6 another time it gave me 7.0 7.4 6.4 6.4 7.7 :boh:

 

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post here, I've gone for this spec:

Product ID : VPCF11X5E
Description : Laptop VPC-F11X - Configurable
Price : 1.659,01
Optical Drive : Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer
Hard drive : 256 GB Ultra SATA Flash SSD
Modem : No Modem
Wireless LAN : Wireless LAN + Bluetooth
Chipset : Intel PM55
Processor : Intel® Core(TM) i7 Processor
Display : 41.6 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
Graphics : NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M 1GB
Microsoft Office Suites : No Microsoft Office Suite
Finishes : Premium Black
Bluetooth : Bluetooth
Memory : 4 GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
MPEG2 Encoder : No TV Tuner card
Battery : Battery life up to 3 hours
Keyboard : English QWERTY keyboard
Memory cards reader : SD and MS card slot
Camera : Built-in camera
Area : NOT VISIBLE
Country : GB (UK)
Ports : 2 USB 2.0
Anti-virus : McAfee® - 60 days protection
AC Adapter : 1 AC Adapter
Market : VPCF11C5E
Adobe Acrobat : No Adobe® Acrobat® Standard
Adobe Creation : No Adobe® Creation
HDMI(TM) output : HDMI(TM) output
OS Preinstalled : Windows® 7 Preinstalled
Adobe® Lightroom® : No Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom
Operating system : Windows® 7 Professional(64bit)

I'll need to wait until I get my laptop to look for downloads. As it's such a long list to go through. I cannot find them!

I'd also be interested in trying the custom matte, that can be used for the display. Do I need to search this thread for it?

Kind Regards,

Matthew

 

And I didn't scratch the bottom, unlike one fellow here who disassembled the thing entirely and now has decided he wants to return it because it fails of his expectations. Sorry, I had to dig..

I'll check those same removable components on this one too; and one thing I'm planning to do is to directly compare performance of this 720QM laptop with my overclocked Asus X38 desktop with Q9450 CPU.

 

Yes. .....

 

One thing for sure, if the screen on the laptop coming this week is as bad as on my first one, it's gone... Bye bye F-series..

 

Why? .....

 

Yup, out of the box > Windows Update > Vaio Update (only 1 for WinDVD) > Clear Windows Experience & re-rate: memory went from 7.1 to 7.4.

It's a ballpark benchmark @ best.

 

I had to read through several times to make sure - your system is absolutely identical to the one I ordered, except I added Premiere, and have a lighted keyboard, and you of course get a better display (but our resolutions are the same.) $2111 cdn including 13% tax and $2.14 environmental.

 

?

What are You talking about, drivers, utilities, programs

why not











http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5862633&postcount=3312

 

Hey there,

Sent you a youtube PM but might as well post these here as well:

The colour profile (EU only) along with instructions can be found at:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5862633#post5862633

Drivers:
http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/downloads/preinstalled/index.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VPCF11Z1E_BI

Windows 7 ISO image:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5862633#post5862633

G'luck and welcome aboard

 

I've also opened it up but I don't want scratches, I always use this:

 

Excellent, how are you finding your system? I always use my laptop in a well lit room - for my eyes. So a lighted keyboard isn't really necessary for me. Although useful to have. Is there an option to turn the light off?

Thanks for the link I work in a computer shop. One of my pet hates is all the rubbish companies bundle with their laptops. Sony aren't the worst, but I like to setup the machine from scratch. That way I know exactly what's on there and how it's been configured.

Plus with my 256GB SSD. I'd like to use as little space on the OS side as possible. I will probably be using an eSata external HDD for data storage anyway.

Thanks for all your help, much appreciated. Hope I can return the favour some day.

I assume the ISO image accommodates all versions of Windows 7? I.e. It's the key you put in that dictates what version of Windows 7 is installed?

Thanks again everyone, hope to make quite a contribution to this forum

 

Blow by blow apprehensions?

 

Hmmm. Returning a CTO in Canada, eh? Good luck.

Seriously, that's why waiting two more weeks for the refresh is not undue stalling....

BTW CTO is supposed to mean that it is individually tested before it is boxed. Notice I said "supposed"....