Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *Part 3*

Omaroo,

Without wanting to flame, just buy the damn laptop!

You've made 146 posts over the last 7 months about either the F11, the F12 or previously the 'what laptop to buy' section where you scared everyone away from helping you, mostly because your response was "but what about the Vaio F?"

You want a 100% perfect machine. There is no 100% perfect machine.

In my opinion (and most people here, too) the Vaio F is the highest quality all-round performer on the market. It's FFAAAAAAAAAAAAST it's light, it's stylish and it's the coolest running i7 machine out there. The keyboard alone is worth a third the asking price! To hell with the speakers. You can buy better ones for £30 ... it's a complete non-issue.

If you absolutely need great speakers in a laptop try one of the Asus 18" machines with 5.1 and a subwoofer. Good luck getting to the bottom of all the issues with those

OR you can buy one of the F12 EU models, with their gorgeous pro-grade screens and FINALLY start telling us about using it .. rather than asking a bunch of random people their completely subjective opinions on the speakers.

Again.

 

Folks,

Strange question, but I would welcome any ideas. I have a F11, which I love, having had top of the range Vaio's since they came out. I travel from the UK to Asia and the US West Coast every month on British Airways in Club Class, which has a regular power socket on each seat, but I have never been able to get it to work. It used to with my old A Series, and even with the battery out and just pluged in, I get a little burst of power and the power dies. Any ideas? Is the voltage needed too great? I have now invested in three extended batteries, which gets me through about 6-7 hours of usage, but most of my flights are over 12-14 hours. Your thoughts? Thanks.

 

Willscary, Nothing to apologize about, I thank you for the detailed instructions and high quality information in general.
I am hoping someone else who did not think of trying 32 bit and hacking the final download page gets to upgrade.
I am also in US and selected exact same options and saw nothing about international until I paid attention to the downloaded package name.
My passmark scores improved some but immaterially, the harder 3D ones in the end (islands floating in the sky) seemed a bit better to me similar to Furmark reduced jerkiness Willscary quoted.
This is the first time I upgraded the f12 and the default February dated driver was likely slower than many on this board.

--------------------------
"I'm sorry to hear that you had problems. I live in the USA and I used the Windows 7 64 bit driver dropdown and the English dropdown. I had no problems.

I did not try the international version and I did not have to modify anything. I simply did exactly as I posted...from uninstalling the original to installing the new.

My original Furmark (GT330M/1920x1080) was in the 650-680 range without overclocking. Now, with the Beta 258.96 dirvers, my score with the same settings is 1048."

 

From all of the reading/searching I've done, it seems impossible to find out what the VAIO Messenger program does, though it hogs resources (up to 33,000K at time for me). I've been worried to uninstall it, since I don't know exactly what it does, but have been unsuccessful in disabling it at startup from msconfig.

I did realize a few days ago that the Oasis2Service is what manages VAIO Messenger. I've disabled that at the Services tab in msconfig and it prevents VM from operating.

The result --- VM no longer hogs resources, but still runs at startup. A few minutes after booting, a pop up occurs regarding a connection error w/ VM. I click OK and go on with my life. Now, I'm not worried about it hogging things or removing it and not being able to reinstall or what not. My 4GB RAM now "idles" around 28-30% from the 46%+ from before I started removing unnecessary programs and items at startup.

Has anyone else had experience with working around VM, or what it actually does?

Thanks!

 

anseio, great advice mate, i also am kinda of annoyed with sony regarding the poor speakers, but if you can hear it just about then its okay, like i said i will use my headphones or external speakers.

Phil, great rant lol, i understand what you mean, i apologise for putting people of me, that was not my intention, but its been 8 months that i have been looking for a great laptop, and i keep coming back to the F11 and F12, i understand that im being stupid about the speakers, but most of you guys have basically convinced me in buying the F12, and in the next week or so i will get one. But the problem im having is whether to get the 6gb or 8gb one, so i will go to my Sony store on Friday to check both models out and make my decision, and let you guys know. Thanks everyone

 

omaroo - I understand what it's like to be paralyzed by decisions. I, like you, was immobilized and couldn't make up my mind between Toshiba a500 (awesome sounds, but crappy keyboard), VAIO F (awesome display and keyboard, but crappy sound, and Lenovo z560 which still has not shipped so it was an unknown for me, but had good specs). The sale price on the VAIO is what made my decision.

You really can't go wrong with the F series. I've got 4GB and, after removing some unnecessary things, have it down to about 30% consumption (49% at this very moment while running WinDVD, iTunes, Nokia Message Center, 4 browser tabs and stuff).

Now, if you get the F11, I found that the sound from WinDVD was so low... practically inaudible compared to all other programs. If you install the Sony update to WinDVD, this problem is corrected.

I have not looked back at all on my purchase, especially after the great price I got. There's nothing that I could do that could remotely tax this machine, but I couldn't bear the idea of a slow processor and having to wait each time I clicked on something.

 

All this talk about the screens, any EU owner want to open the screen and tell us US owners what the model number is. I'm sure us in the US can scrape a small donation, and also give you the instructions to get at the screen. So any takers?

 

Buy the 8Gig if you can afford it. Get the best you can, since you will have to live with the machine for a while. But of course, if there's a choice, select the optional features that best suit YOUR purposes in running a computer. I paid well over my budget on my F11, but I USE the extra stuff, I've never for a moment thought I made any wrong choices in selecting an F11 to begin with, or how I had it configured.

 

yeah it looks nice, almost within the range of a 5740 or a 480M. But its a mid range card can't blame it. So will the f11/f12 have the power to run what I plan to do?

Hey guys was wondering if the Sony VIAO F series is a good deal? Any known problems so far? I need one for university and my dad really likes it. He saw it at a Canadian best buy for aprox. 1500 dollars. I think it is a base model or something. Well this is what I want to do:

 

Random-ish post in response to that one above:

If you are going to use the laptop on battery most of the time you shouldn't buy an i7 720/740/820/840/whatever QM laptop. Most of them throttle on battery, and the ones that don't get very little battery life anyway.

The Vaio F's performance is acceptable, but not ideal for primarily battery usage. If you do anything more than 1 relatively simple task (like viewing a single web page with no flash), you'll get "barely" 2 hours of battery life (maybe 2.5 if you're careful) on the standard battery, and that's running it with the 4 cores locked at 931mhz.

You'll basically find you drag the power brick everywhere, and it's not a very friendly power brick for dragging around everywhere because it's big, ugly, and poorly designed. It'll even cause the lights to flicker depending on where you plug it in, and there's no place to wind up the cords - plus the power cord half isn't that secure.

However, the Vaio F is one of the lightest laptops in its class at 6.9lbs, gets more battery life than most i7 quadcore laptops, and runs much cooler than most laptops do.. period.

 

is there a decent link for a youtube or other guide on how to replace the EU f11 keyboard with a backlit one ? I know where to get a keyboard from but not how to change it. I think Melodymaster may have posted something but I need something more graphical.

 

With the disassembly pictures from Joe Bleau. you have everything you need. The keyboard removal will be self-evident. Remember the ribbon clamps!

 

The only thing that concers me is the gaming performance with that graphic card. It's really hard to find a laptop if you're looking not only for gaming but also a stylish laptop.

I wish we can fit Asus G73 or Alienmware M15x into F serie's chassis

 

the 330m will be fine for most games run at medium settings..

 

Hi, I'm new here. Just got my new UK F12 (VPCF12C5E) CTO premium black model, just awsome, brilliant screen, no complaints (so far though only had it for a couple of days); fan hardly noticible in normal ops, no whine noise. FYI here is my understanding of the different models. The premium-black model has the non-reflective (premium) screen and a leathery feel palm rest strip which is also a darker black colour than the surrounding body (not sure if its actually leather though). I think all these features including the matt screen are tied in to this premium-black model colour (similar to the AW which had the RGB LED screen only on the piano black colour model)

 

Sort of a guide on a Dutch forum:
Google Translate

 

Good, that adds a picture of which screws to remove.

 

I just had a hard freeze, not much event data on it though. What update are you talking about? The last auto update I had was on the 15th

 

Hi!

I've been trying to find a nice multimedia notebook for weeks right now, and every now and then, I stumbled into the fancy Sony products.

Finally, I ordered an E-Series notebook (which comes with an ATI 5650 over here in Europe) and I really liked it - despite that fact, that it had this nerv-wracking whining noise. I could hear it constantly, and it got even worse when it ran on battery and usb devices were connected. In the end, I had to send it back :/

So now I'm thinking about an F12 and I was wondering how many of have this device equipped with an i7-740QM and still hear this high-pitched sound?

Some differentiated answers would help me a lot, since I would order this device in the US and therefore won't be able to return it if this whining occurs again with the F12. Thanks a bunch in advance!

 

Got answer from Sony: The F series have never had LED backlit display, which means The Vaio Premium screen uses two CCFL tubes as backlight here in Europe so it can not display full ADOBE RGB colours.

 

I will then take the F12M because Dell have stopped to deliver the XPS studio 16 with the i7-720M and equipt it with i7-620M, and sells for the same cost as the i7-720M.

should I gamble and take the envy 17 xD

 

Excuse me ! Can anyone pls tell me ,is that vaio F115fm can use wwan card ? and where i can install it? thank you for reply.

 

As I said in an earlier post I managed to get 2 hours and 40 minutes with the display brightness on minimum. I had two different word documents open, IRC, and did some light web browsing. However, I watched a short youtube video and it literally ate 5% of my battery.

But I don't think people expect to be able to watch HD movies and game on battery power. When on battery power people want to be able to do exactly what I did and I managed 2:40 out of it. The battery is 57wh. If you're thinking about getting the extended battery for 100 dollars extra go ahead and get it, this laptop is already 6.9 pounds the extra battery weight isn't going to be that big of a deal. I'll repeat what OotLink said; this is one of the lightest, sleekest, and longest battery life i7 laptop on the market.

 

Looking at your list, the 330m will cope pretty well, with only a slight compromise here and there, but nothing major on most games.

Even Crysis is quite acceptable, and runs 20fps on high.

 

Does anyone know how big the color gamut is on the Vaio F Premium display e.g the envy has 82 % color gamut?

 

Can you confirm which high pitch sound you have? Have you listened to the sound clip posted by Tausif? If that is the exact same sound you have, I can confirm that I have that sound. I have a CTO F1290S - bought in Canada, made in the US. I bought an F1190 back in January and returned the unit because of that sound. Now the new F12 still has the same sound, I now believe it is just a characteristic of the Intel i5/7 processors, it's normal. Others have reported that the sound went away on it's own after a couple months, while others have reported that they never had the sound before, but after 4 months the sound developed. I also have a squeaky Left Shift and Enter key...I am hoping those just need to be broken in and will go away naturally over time also.

I am not much of a technical person, more of an extreme noobie. My bf did all this for me and from what I understand, the laptop froze up during Windows Update and was stuck at 15%. He had to turn it off and restart in safe mode, it reverted the Update and then had a BSOD. Then he reinstalled the OS using the hidden recovery partition and then the Windows Update worked just fine after. I think the error message that popped up was something to do with Power or Power management. The laptop is much zippier now than before the reinstall. He did a semi-fresh/clean start install (installed critical programs only option). I was worried that this might not install the Adobe software, but it DID include it.

 

Hi there,

I haven't this thread in total, sorry for that. But I'd like to know how noisy the VPC-F12M1E is.
Will I hear any fan-sound if I watch any HD-movie? Or in any other case, like when gaming a little or watching some heavy HD-flash-stream?

Best regards

F

 

^^^

In my experience, all Intel multi-core CPU's have SOME sort of high-pitched whine to them - it's to do with the processor stepping down the frequency - as when they are under some load (at least 10%) the sound goes away.

Had this on my T7200 and doing anything, even scrolling a webpage, would make it stop! Specifically, as told to me by several tech guys at Dell, it occurs when the chips are in power-state S3 or S4.

I could exactly replicate this by loading Ubuntu, and comparing the CPU's operating frequency (using the handy applet) with the occurance of the whine: it exactly correlated.

I can only imagine the 'fixes' posted about this are, in some way, preventing the S3 and S4 power states?

Hard to know.

 

Fan sounds generally quiet ... but you're in the EU and so would be best advised to plump for the "pro-grade" screen, and not the xxxM1E model IMO.

 

Any ideas where can I buy an antiglare protector for my F11? I haven't seen any on ebay.

 

Thx for quick reply!

Pro-grade screen?

The different models in the F-series where I live is:

VPC-F12M1E
VPC-F12S1E
VPC-F12Z1E

Which ones have the Pro-grade screen of those three?

/F

 

update: its been well over a week now since I got my sony vaio F12M0E. Initial problems of the whining fan and the light bleed on the screen don't bother me as much anymore, I'm making use of this machine and to put it simply - its the best laptop I've ever owned (coming from a M1330 Dell XPS). I've had many laptops in the past, but nothing has come close to the quality of this laptop.

 

S and Z modell

 

Not sure I'd agree with that - the fans on my F12 spin up and are very noticeable when playing an HD movie. I hve the EU VPCF12C5E with premium screen, i7-720, 8GB RAM.

 

Apparently some of you have never owned a gaming desktop rig. If you think the F12 is loud...

 

Hi Mariog

Welcome to the thread. Can you confirm your UK model number. I can only find two CTO models on the UK site. The higher priced one gives the model number as VPCF12X5E at a basic price of £1089. That one has the leathery palm rest and appears to fit your description but I can't find the model you quote.

I've got one other main query. My main reason for going the CTO route, is to get Windows 7 Professional, rather than Home Premium. I've noticed that when you click on the software upgrade, the "Also included" section alters to show "No Vaio software". When you ordered yours, did your config do that? and if so, did it come with Vaio software. (That query would only be applicable if you ugraded the Window 7 software)

I am about to make a move, whilst the free blue-ray writer offer is on until 26th July. (It's already been extended once so they may not extend it again). How long did yours take to deliver from the date you ordered?

I'm glad you are pleased with yours. Beware of the USA readers trying to get you to take your screen apart to get the model number for them. Much as I'd like to help them, they don't realise that's why their screens are knackered!

Good luck, Dave

 

Melody i might just get the pre configured one, as i dont think it need optional updated on the laptop. For gaming it seems really good for most games at medium settings any way.

One thing i need to ask is that isnt the F12 a full 100% RGB adobe screen like the F11.

Also if i plug the battery in, to watch movies and play games, will the battery not charge properly and what else will happen.

 

This premium screen has CCFL so it should not be able to show 100% Adobe RGB. F series have never had LED because the screen is too big. Sony explained that to my today.

Please say that I have wrong and got the wrong answer from Sony.

 

Very noticeable = quiet when you're talking about cooling an i7 / 8 Gb / 330m system playing an HD movie.

It's all about perspective.

 

It seems that the model with premium black color (Z model), leather palm rest have the best screen of them all and is able to output 100% Adobe RGB. Why did Sony lie to me about it is exactly the same screen? Please enlighten me instead of ignoring me. :O

 

now ive been put of by the screen, everyone was saying it was an RGB Adobe Screen

 

what country are you from, It might be different for you. The advertisements I have seen and sony homepage for other countries it is only the Premium Black model that have 100% Adobe RGB

 

Hi,

I'm seriously considering purchasing a new Sony F Series laptop and have a few questions for those that have gone before me.

1. Do the Sony machines require the motherboard to be replaced when the inevitable happens and someone trips over my power cord and breaks the power socket? I've broken the DC power socket on most every machine I've owned and on most of them the repair required an expensive replacement motherboard. I'm typing this on an old Thinkpad that has a separately replaceable DC socket so when the repair was needed the part was $5 instead of hundreds.

2. If (when) a repair is needed does Sony do the repairs quickly? What's the typical turn around time? I've heard horror stories about Acer and Asus machines that are out of service for weeks waiting for parts.

3. How's the durability of the systems? Do the CD trays, screen hinges and keyboards hold up well?

Thanks in advance for the info,

Steve in Washingon

 

Having the wifi power saving option disabled fixed the problem with the bluetooth mouse (still disconnects in between but not so often).
But I got a new issue with connecting to the net when waking up from stand-by, it doesn't happen automatically anymore... Frustrating and a little weird since the adapter should be on all the time.

 

1. It is not integrated on the motherboard, it is a separate module connected with wires to the motherboard.

 

lundstrom, im from the UK mate, thats where i got told by users that the premium black screen is RGBadobe 100% screen. Hope someone can confirm this

 

As a hommage to Joe Bleau - I can hear it now... "Everything is relative"

To me the fan noise is normal, it's nice to hear the fan whooshing away, you can feel warm air coming out the side and you know it's working and doing what it's designed to do. If there was no fan noise - I would worry!

For US customers I believe Sony provides on-site service. So perhaps depending on what needs a fixing you can set up an appointment at a convenient time for you and they can do the repair on the spot at your place of residence.

 

Anybody tried connecting to TV with HDMI. With the Nvidia GT330M control panel, I have not been able to get it adjusted so the whole computer screen is shows on my 720p TV. It's not a resolution problem, tried everything, even Sony support. Also does it on 1080p set. Is there an inherent problem with this graphics card?

 

It seems that every sony page in EU is made by the same person and have the same information and specification. Sony pages from Asia and Australia says that the in EU the Z model have 100% Adobe RGB. Asia and EU have the same matte screen.

 

Is the desktop too big for the TV screen or does it have black bands around it because the desktop is too small?