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

That's because as the symbols show, it's a special eSATA/USB Combo Port, not just a regular eSATA:



You can use it for:

- USB 2.0 or 1.1 for power, data or both power & data like for an external pocket HDD enclosure.

- eSATA to external HDD enclosure for 2~3x faster data transfer rates & can power the 2.5" enclosure via an other USB port cable or an external A/C adapter (a must for big 3.5" enclosures as USB 2.0 is too weak to power those).




- Use a special eSATA/USB Combo cable, also called Power Over eSATA (POeSATA) or eSATAp to connect to an an external pocket HDD enclosure (2.5") that is compatible with said cable. In that case the single combo cable carries both power over the USB part & fast transfer rates via the eSATA part of the cable.



I have such an enclosure since several months, works fast & stays cool but can't find an other one anywhere! It's an unbranded Delock 42465 for half the price ($15: both POe & USB cables included): HE-2521B. Mangosango reported that his StarTech S2510PESAT POe enclosure also works fine. Problem is it's overpriced @ $30 considering they don't even included the POE cable which is the reason to get that enclosure in the first place but since it seems that nobody can find the HE-2521B or an alternative, I guess that's what I need to get now as I need a second POe enclosure. Should have bought 2 or more HE-2521B's when they were available. Dam USB 3.0 enclosures cornering the market!

*****

The same drive in the same enclosure connected to the Vaio_F via USB only vs. eSATA/USB Combo cable:

BTW one can see by looking @ the graph that the faster Seagate's read transfer rates is choked by the enclosure while the slower 5400 rpm Samsung is unaffected.

 

Whoa nice post

I was wondering if I could turn my bare OEM hard drive (internal) and put it in a case and use an eSATA connection to connect as an external HDD. How would I go about doing I if it's possible?

 

Find an enclosure that's compatible with "power over esata" and a power over esata cable. For me, finding the enclosure wasn't so easy. No local stores had it, and amazon.com only had one type to choose from. I really wanted the black enclosure from the UK. "De" something. Can't remember the name. It would have been too much $ for me to import.

 

That's exactly what I did. Mangosango bought a bare drive for his enclosure.

Basically you just buy one of the enclosure described above & put your drive in it.



Look in sig for how to remove HDD from F.

 

It's Delock & it's not from UK.

One cable 2.5" enclosures are rare but the 2 cables model can be found @ $15 or less including shipping worldwide on Fleabay. Search for: esata 2.5" enclosure. Make sure that the regular eSATA + the USB cables are included. Those do NOT work with POe cables so you have to sacrifice a USB port or use an A/C adapter. See post above.

 

Clarification: It was the "black enclosure" that I wanted "from the UK" (amazon). I did not specify that the brand itself was from the UK.

I appreciate corrections and typo's being pointed out, but not mashing up my words.

 

From Taiwan: Tragant International Co Ltd: "Brand Delock and Navilock", exact same as my unbranded HE-2521B but more expensive.

Both are out-of-stock at the present. Delock just made a batch of USB 3.0 enclosures. Those are NOT compatible with the F. Hoping that they will make an other run of POe HE-2521B as they were cheap & good.

 

I also bought this enclosure from a localshop in Belgium and put the original drive in the external enclosure and putted a WD black 320 GB 7200 RPM in the F.
The start- up time decreased with 40 s according to vaio care.
It's a fine enclosure only the screws aren't very good, I screwed one in and the (don't know the word in english) place where you need to put your screwdriver was completely worn. I have to make new ribbles before a screwdriver can get any grip on the screw, just a point of attention.

 

John Bleau, I +1 repped you because I'm looking for exactly what you described and have been looking in the wrong place for days now.

The 500gb upgrade option on the F12 costs +£80 so I figured it was cheaper to buy a WD Scorpio Black 500gb drive and a 2.5" drive caddy/enclosure. Continue using the 320gb drive as an OS/app drive until I can scramble together enough cash to replace it with an OCZ Vertex 2.

My main problem was finding a 2.5" drive enclosure that could be powered off a wall socket and which has an eSata port connection. The USB/Firewire bus powered stuff is dead to me because I'm a port hog - Access Virus TI, ESI M8U XL Midi interface need USB ports all the time in the studio and my soundcard is a TC StudioKonnekt 48 so that wants the ilink port for itself.

I'm also in short supply of wallsockets because my synths, monitors and rack gear has eaten all of them. It looks like you can get this outside the Bay and German retail though!

DeLOCK 2,5" box SATA HDD to Power Over eSATA 42465: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

 

I used a personal copy of Acronis backup software for probably 8 years while working for a Fortune 100 company and repeatedly had failures of the software when I needed it the most. Over that 8 year span of upgrades and updates, Acronis repeatedly failed to restore information successfully from a previously created backup. There were literally dozens of different types of failures, sometimes the restored files would be corrupted, sometimes the backup file would be seen as corrupted, and sometimes the files I had backed up could not be found in the backup file to name a few.

Acronis support is abysmal to say the least. When I desperately needed to restore a file and Acronis had again failed, I would have to wait a MINIMUM of 48 hours for any response from the company. I wasted many, many hours trying to work around the failures while waiting for their response.

When Acronis works it is a great program. When it fails, and there is no reasonable way to know in advance when it's going to fail, you end up in the same boat as the folks that never back up their files.

Acronis is simply not much better than never backing up the system at all.

(This is obviously an opinion based on extensive personal experience with Acronis. By definition your opinion may vary.)

 

I'm looking for a cooling pad thats cheap, yet efficient. This computer goes nuts for heat. What's your recommendation?

 

Check out the photo under step 9 of Joe Bleau's steps to install a HDD in the Optical Disk Bay.
Secondary Drive in the Optical Drive Bay of a VAIO VPCF Series

The VAIO gets warm, but handles the heat very well. Under stress, we've only been able to get it to 66C compared to some other brands that get up to 100C!!!

 

I noticed that the fan can output some serious heat, but thats a good thing I guess. I've been looking at this whole color profile thing, and it's sort of confusing to me. Which color profile is the best?

 

I haven't specifically tried what you're doing with my F12, but I ran into the exact same problem when I recently replaced the AMD/ATI graphics card in my home theater system with a much faster Nvidia card. The screen scaling controls Nvidia offered did not allow me to fit the desktop to the TV screen anywhere near as well as my older and slower ATI card.

This didn't make sense to me because I had previously had an older generation Nvidia card that handled scaling very well, but many of the scaling settings for the older card were missing on the new one's control panel. After several hours on the phone with Nvidia I was able to speak to a escalation technical rep that understood exactly what the problem was. He reluctantly explained that the hardware and screen controls on Nvidia's newer generations of cards were optimized for game play, not for video, and many of the video settings that were included on older cards were no longer available. I had to return the Nvidia card.

That said, many televisions include a format control that allows you to shrink the desktop to fit on the display. I've personally used it on Sony and Mitsubishi HD TVs. As is so often the case, each manufacturer may have their own terminology for this feature if they've included it on their sets. On my Mitsubishi the shrunken desktop is a bit too small and doesn't quite fill the screen, but it's much better than not being able to see the Windows desktop controls.

 

Thanks for the rep. Maybe you missed it but anseio is the one that linked to the Amaz UK Delock enclosure page. How about some rep for him too?

It's not only that it's cheaper than upgrading when ordering the F, it's that in the end you have 2 drives, one that can be used as backup or for movies & cr@p so you can have a smaller amount of data on your C drive which makes it faster, faster to defrag & maintain & faster to backup.

While it's a tad expensive (I paid about £10 for my unbranded one), I would order it immediately if I would live in UK. Amaz does not ship to Costa Rica.

Check in my sig for an other solution: putting the optical drive in an external enclosure & installing an HDD in the ODD bay using a caddy. In fact I do both as I need al lot of storage for photoshoots & videos. I use 3 drives @ SATA speed simultaneously on my F.



It depends on your usage: a secondary drive is much more useful to me than the ODD which I use once in a blue moon.

*****

F Overheating? And Monitor Profile(s)

Then something may be wrong with your F as all F owners reported cool temps under stress compared to other brands of laptops with i7 quad core CPU.

Search this Thread with: Everest to find ton of posts by F owners with screen captures of stress tests & cool operating temperatures reports.

Anseio was linking to my very cheap notebook cooler than I am currently using as I type this:



"Which color profile is the best?" - Depends if you want accurate color representation or what is pleasing to you. That's why we all wear clothes of different colors. Also, the same profile may have a different output on different hardware, even if they have the same configuration.

 

Joe- It only gets hot when I start playing games on Ultra high settings haha, other than that it keeps cool. I wouldn't trade this laptop in for anything else in the world, my first high tech laptop and I love it.

I just want a more warm color profile, this one is way too white.

EDIT- Also is there any way to increase bass through the speakers or no? They have a distinct lack of bass.

 

All is OK then. If I would be a gamer: Search this Thread with: laptop cooler to find stuff like Willscary's Cooler Master U2 Laptop Cooler w/ photos w/ his F on it.

Define hot? Are you monitoring your hardware with some utilities?

The factory default F monitor profile is too blue as for many other brands of laptops. That's why my monitor calibrator hardware & software pulled down the blue input/output curve as shown in the screen captures in the F Series monitor profile roundup article.

 

Like I said, I'm new to all this and don't know any utilities other than some defragging, iso mounting/burning, and basic other utilities. I read your article, but a lot of it still confused me, so I couldn't really figure it out. Could you recommend some tools that would be helpful now and in the future?

 

has anybody tried on something like this ?
VGP-KBV1/B | Keyboard Skin | Sony | Sony Style USA


i am really tempted but my god 27 bucks when applying tax and shipping sounds a lot

 

I tried one on an E Series for a few minutes at the local Sony store. The plastic is so thin and pliable that the keyboard feel was still very good. I'd buy one today if they made it for the F12.

 

The speakers on the VAIO F are extremely lacking. It's recommended to get external speakers and be done with it.

 

LOL. I was the exact opposite. When I was checking out the VAIO E at the Sony Store, I took OFF the keyboard cover. They are nice, I just don't like using them.

 

That skin is for the FW, not the F. If you look closely, the arrows are aligned very differently than on the F along with a number of other crucial differences. It would not work.

That being said, if you search the thread you will find links to replacement keyboards for about $35 shipped, which is only $8 more than those. The keyboard does not really get dirty, but if you ever felt the need to give it new life, just get a new one.

 

I just got my VAIO and was wondering if the white sticker on the left of the touchpad was easy to remove without leaving any residue. Also, I didn't get a blu-ray sticker, is that something they stopped putting on them or did they forget lol?

 

I'd volunteered twice already, maybe I should message an administrator.

 

+1 vote for you.

You guys could you please write to semi-god by clicking: Charles P. Jefferies if you would like MelodyMaster to be in charge of post #1 on page #1 of this thread!

We need such a reference post to be able to send all the newbies there as well as being a reference with a bunch of useful posts for all of us.

 

I removed ALL of my stickers with relative ease. Absolutely do not rub any residue that may be left behind. Reapply a very sticky part of the sticker to any residue over and over and it will come off that way.

I removed my blu ray sticker. Was that a crime? Would have been worth like 30cents in 20 years?

 

I'm in the market for a new laptop and have been impatiently waiting for the introduction of the new model N73JQ-A1 Asus laptop expected in September when I came across the VPC121GX_BC on sale for $1049 after $150 manufacturers discount. I spent a good part of the day reading these very long thread and it does seem like a terrific laptop so it's definitely a possibility for me. Though the email ad said that the sale ends on Sunday 8/8, at the Costco store I went to they had them in stock and said that the sale was extended until 8/31 or "while supplies last." I'm wondering if this is the same F series laptop that this thread is talking about as there is no "F" in the model number? Also, has anyone bought this computer from Costco and if so, is it any different from the rest of them? It does seem like a pretty good price for the features to me. Any information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Costco - $1,049.99 after $150 OFF SONY 16.4" Laptop Core i7-740QM at 1.73GHz Blu-ray ROM

 

Yes it is the "F" series at a considerably lower price than the Sony website or store although it's not exactly the same as those machines.

 

Looks like an F in the ad. Also, I don't think i7-740 quad core processors are offered in the other series.
I didn't buy mine in Costco though.

Edit: By the specs it it seems to be the newer F12 and not the first F11 series. (F11's were only offered the 720qm's as the entry level quad core options.) The missing F in the model number is probably a typo on their part. I personally would call up sales to confirm for ease of mind since i've never bought anything from that store.

 

Yes, it's a_VAIO VPCF121GX or VPC-F121GX as shown in some web pages.

It's a good deal compared to the basic VPCF1290X CTO on Sonystyle_USA. For $50 more you are getting:

- 60 more days return period
- 1 extra year warranty
- 500GB HDD vs 320GB
- Blu-Ray ROM / DVD±RW ODD vs. DVD±RW ODD

But you loose the Adobe Bundle.

For me the showstopper is: 1600x900 display w/ 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 310M as no way I would give up my 1920 x 1080 display w/ 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 330M.

 

I've seen so much talk about HDDs/SSDs on here lately...I wonder if this storage solution would be recommendable? Is it a good compromise between capacity/performance for the price? If so, I was thinking I'd order a CTO unit, go with the included HDD and then maybe upgrade to this. Does it seem like an okay idea?

Seagate ST95005620AS Momentus XT 500GB Solid State Hybrid Drive - 500GB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s at TigerDirect.com

 

As I've said here many times, no Nvidia card after the 6800 supports Mirroring, all that was torn out to control heat dissipation for an overstressed GPU. ATI has ALWAYS kept mirroring intact, that's why I say again ATI makes a better MULTIMEDIA card, thus an ATI GPU should have been used in the F-series, it being a so-called multimedia laptop.

Mirroring allows the Windows desktop and a media player to be on one screen, while a second screen can show fullscreen just the overlay, the image IN the player. Also mirroring allows completely independent settings of resolution and refresh rate for each screen; all ATI cards allow this, NO Nvidia card will do such.

Want to build a video editor or a home theatre console? You have to use an ATI video card...

 

... double post...

 

Many people here seriously WANT that bluray sticker. It's been getting $6 to $8 on Ebay. It's not generally included on CTOs and many retail F's are missing it also. It's not common, I'll buy yours...

 

The Costco model has Windows PROFESSIONAL, the CTO is only Home PREMIUM. That's a $60+ better value for the Costco model right there.

 

Costco price also includes these other two to make it a really really good deal.

Win 7 pro 64bit
Backlit keyboard

I do agree with Joe though. The GeForce 310M GPU is going to be the biggest graphics performance bottleneck in an otherwise very fast system.
(this really only matters if you do graphics/photo/video work)

 

The model number of the Vaio sold at Costco is VPCF121GX. I'm typing this on one.

 

The left corner of my premium EU vaio screen (model details below) seems to be darker than the rest of the screen.

I read the guarantee information but I'm not sure if this problem is covered. It's not a very big problem, however the fact that this laptop did cost me more than one thousand euro's makes me happy to see it fixed. I read that American users who had screen problems much worse than mine, who send it for repair got it back without any fixes at all. The fact that I have to pay for the 'diagnostic fee' in case that sony doesn't find any problems, leaves me slightly worried.

I would like some advice about what to do.

 

Thanks everyone for your input on the Costco F12.....it looks like I may be getting that model and it's great that Joe Bleau, Melody Master and To no End pointed out the differences between it and the CTO model and especially the limitations of the GPU. The most stressful graphics work I'd be doing on it would be some intermittent AutoCAD work but since I'm a retired architect, it would only be done sporadically. Besides, AutoCAD runs passably (though very slowly) even now on my nearly 3 year old Sony laptop. I appreciate To no End's comment in parentheses (this really only matters if you do graphics/photo/video work) because I'm thinking that the F12 will likely work well for me as I don't do any of that nor am I a gamer.

One thing I forgot to ask about was the Windows Experience Index of the Costco F12. On the display model I saw at Costco, the WEI had high numbers in everything except graphics which showed a 2.5. That is pretty low and was lower than that of other laptops there on display with seemingly lesser graphics and processor specs. Is this WEI the same as what you guys are getting? Is this a cause for concern at all?

Thanks again to all. I visit this forum quite a bit to learn about computers and appreciate all the knowledge and experience displayed here. I don't post much because I don't have any of that!

 

There must have been a problem with the machine on display at Costco regarding the WEI. My F12 (from Costco) has a WEI for graphics of 4.9.

 

Thanks raincity, that was a quick response! I was thinking that this might be the case.

Off-topic but does your "raincity" user name signify anything in particular? I ask because I live in Olympia WA. That's about an hour from Seattle, a city which I think most would consider to be "rain city."

 

A very good guess indeed.

 

Are you sure that's a F12 with 310/330M?
Because 2.5 is worse than what Intel integraded graphics score...

My F11 with 330M scores 6.5 on both gaming graphics and desktop aero. All other VAIO F with 330M should score the same. I think the 310M should score atleast 5.

I think it's either the machine is messed up or the benchmark was run when the GPU was under load from something else.

 

Yes I'm certain as I couldn't believe it myself so I checked those things and even asked one of the Costco clerks about it. He was no help. The Costco ad says "512MB NVIDIA GeForce 310M Graphics" and I confirmed that on the display model. The WEI of my 3-year-old computer is better than that. It's gotta be an error and since there are at least 4 Costco stores nearby, I'll go to a different store and check their display model before I buy one. Just how important is this number anyway?

 

Yah, it's just the display driver not being optimized in some way. Store staff don't exactly spend their time going around all their display models updating drivers and running performance checks after all. Could even have been in dual-monitor mode, feeding a non-existent projector or some such. I've seen that glitch on ATI drivers, though not Nvidia's.

(edit) and the WEI numbers are virtualy worthless, they don't even consistently map performance changes on the same system. But 2.9 is low..

 

Being an architect myself, I run autoCAD 2010 on the F11 everyday and the screen size is great for it. If you're going to be doing mostly 2d linework then the specs should be fine including the ram. However, I would anticipate that windows 7 coupled with recent versions of autoCAD, 3d modeling, and highly detailed working drawings (especially cad file practices where plans, sections, elevations, details, and xref photos are all in one file) might bog it down quite a bit.

Still, if I were to do a relatively uncomplicated single house project with a standard set of working drawings, I should be able to get by with those computer specs.

 

Any of you storage experts agree with this article?

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Solid State Hybrid Drive Review - The Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid - Legit Reviews

I'm thinking about replacing the included HDD when I order a CTO VAIO F with this model from Seagate and doing a reinstall on it.

 

I'm no expert so I can't answer your question but on the new Asus model I was waiting on, among the hard drive options offered were those Seagate Hybrid drives and the upgrade cost was $105 for 320GB or $139 for 500GB which seems very reasonable. Perhaps Sony will also offer them at some point. I know they are still fairly new.

 

Hi QuePasa87,

que tal? It's seems like it's a fast drive. But I'm not so sure if replacing the drive form the f12 to this one will gain a lot.
You have to pay a lot for just about 10% increased speed.
I would wait and see how the prices off the ss-drives evolve and
go for one them instead.
From what I read about the hybrid drives, is that they have to "learn" which
data is read more often. That data then is stored in the ram and boosts the
reading transfer rate. If that patten changes the drive has to learn again and
you loose the performance.

So if you where looking for a new drive, this seems to be a good one.
But in your case just replacing a drive which isn't so much slower is too
expensive in my eyes.