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

" F-series is crippled by_Sony" - False IMO.

 

You should see faster load times overall for the games you play most often. Game files can take up a lot of space and I am unsure of how specifically the drive decides what to put where, so you may see mixed results.

If you do get it, please post back with the results!

 

To me it is, because of the modified F/W for the HDD that limits it to SATA1. The Design Team's choice. xD

 

Guys.

You have spent more time discussing why your drive is slightly slower, on some synthetic benchmarks, than you will ever recoup if you were to actually have the extra performance.

2, 3 or more re-installs of Windows? Are you, actually, insane?

Move on!

 

Has anyone found a nice, well padded laptop case for the F12 that you particularly like?

 

Yes, I was insane until I got enlightened. I will keep my Vaio, and not return it. I will live it it, sleep with it. It is my little crippled child, as it grows it will mature.

 

are you talking about F11 or F12?

 

Usure, both the F11 and F12 do have the same issue with the OEM-drive, just now it is the Seagate ST9500420AS that they modified the F/W to only support Sata1.

 

Has anyone found a nice, well padded... *room* for some of the guys in this forum.

 

My only reaction to this, is :



Also, see : crippled - Wiktionary

Bit of an overstatement, no? The real-world impact is likely 2-3% on ONE COMPONENT. You would never, ever, in a double blind trial, be able to distinguish between them without benchmarks.

+1 !

 

Sorry off topic XD

Joe you have to make a collection of pics with all those wildlife u found!

so kewl

 

my notebook again freezing !
i have creat another post before about this issue.

i did memtest,CPU test no freezing!
no BSOD ! when notebook freez no BSOD shows up
i really cant figureout how to debug :S

080110-20342-01.dmp
this is old log but cant locate it!

 

+1

I will see when i got to medical school in a unknown country, they should have some padded rooms, will keep you posted.

I uses an old sleeve from Hedgren 17 inch tjat collected dust, it works great.
check page 119, Hedgren Spring - Summer 2010

+1

I blame my education in Science, everything was in teori (synthetic). And yes I overstated and I wrote that I would like use real life benches couple of days ago. Sorry that my negative side took over.

 

Ive just received a Fenvi hdd case. Installed my drive into it and next into the laptop. HD Tune pro 4.50 reports its mode as SATA 1, same like sisoft sandra. Overall Im happy.

 

Why is it not SATA3 xD --> A joke

How much do the F12Z cost in Poland, want too know much I could have gained by buying it there when I move to Poland in fall.

 

~1100 Euros for F12M
~1400 Euros for F12S
~1650 Euros for F12Z

According to the current currency exchange when you buy 1 Euro in Poland for 4.02 PLN

Be aware that these are only avaiable models in Poland. Sony doesnt offer any customised or changable equipment - there isnt also any Sony Style online shop. Only Sony Centres in major cities or othe various resellers and distributors. SO if you want a blu ray burner for example, its only avaiable on F12Z model which comes also in "Premium black finish" - a rubber black thing on the touchpad area.

 

It is the same in Sweden as in Poland, only those 3 models is available.

So I lost 61,15 EUR and it was on 101,91 EUR refund when I bought F12Z. Swedes has expensive stuff. xD

 

Found an enclosure both containing a HDD and a ODD at the same time. Though someone would be interested.

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/external-cases.php?we_objectID=6827

 

Hi, I recently received the e-mail from Sony regarding the overheating problem/firmware upgrade...well it was Email #2. I did the upgrade a while ago to solve the problem or whatever. I was wondering if these black spots on my laptop are a sign of overheating or are simply due to my hands being there all the time. Sorry if this is a lame question, just want to know if there's a problem

 

It is Official, The Seagate ST9500420AS will be replaced by an SSD and too be put in an Esata enclosure (couldn't not find a PoEsata in Swe from a serious store )

 

I would guess that you are correct and that it the spots are from your hands. First, your hands contain dirt and oils that can discolor the plastic and secondly, if you use it enough, it could rub the plastic and take some of the texture and finish off. These marks are right where my hands are, so your thought is a good one.

Can you feel the heat in these locations? Mine is cool as a cucumber unless I just plain hold my hands stationary on those spots for a long period of time, in which case the plastic seems to heat up to my body temperature.

 

That may be a mistake. It takes a special person to be able to handle the high performance capabilities of a good SSD.

 

I can feel a little heat, but nothing abnormal. It gets kinda hot when I play games, but I assume that'snormal. I have it on a cooler 24/7 though, unless I'm like...watching tv out of the room or something. thanks for the help

 

It could be that the heat gives energy so the the oxidation process of your sweat reacts faster with the oxygen in the air.

But I have not seen this before so I do not know.

I will complain to you if I can not handle it.

 

anyone can suggest me something?

 

i have one more question regarding a fresh install. i do a little bit of gaming with this laptop, and overtime, i imagine that computers get bloated with random crap. back when this used to happen to my desktop, i would reformat with the windows disc that came with it.

i have done a bit of reading in this thread, but due to the fact that its almost 400 pages, i obviously cannot read all of it. so i am very sorry that this may be a duplicate / common question.

I'm interested in doing a clean/fresh install, but I read a bit about voiding the warranty. My question is: what exactly voids the warranty, and what is the best method of getting my computer to it's new state again. I downloaded an untouched Windows 7 iso and I have the cd key under my laptop of course, but I do not want to reformat if this voids the warranty.

again, Im sorry for asking a question that's probably already been answered. Thank you in advance to anyone who points me in the right direction. I appreciate the help.

 

A Clean Install will not void your warranty. I was being argumentative.

It's best to do your clean install and make a system image. Then, to get everything set up the way you like and make another system image to fall back on. This way, you don't have to reinstall if you want to wipe things out. You can just restore from one of the previous images and not have to worry about extensive work to get everything set up again.

check out the link under my sig. It has some info and contains a link to Joe Bleau's clean install process.

I prefer to clean install from the discs and NOT from VAIO Care. You can do a Complete System restore from the discs. Are you on the F12? If so, I cannot speak in certainty, but... during a complete restore from discs you should have the option for if you want the recovery partition to just be windows or to contain Sony software. During a clean install, the bloatware is added to the partition, then installed from it. If you don't let it get added to the partition, then you'll be asked to insert the discs later on. You can cancel out of the process. For the F11, once things are done, you'll need to immediately insteal the Realtek and ALPS drivers.

Good luck!

p.s. - don't bother with the windows iso. You have to manuall install ALL of the device drivers in a specific order. If you install from recovery discs, the drivers are preinsalled.

 

Hey all I have a few questions about my VAIO F1290X
specs: Black -740QM - 320GB HD (7200 RPM) - 4 GB DDR3-SDRAM-1333 - 16.4" HD 1920x1080 -GT330M 1GB - CD/DVD - Backlit Keyboard - Windows 7 Home Premium

1. I set my vaio to performance mode and cpu-z shows the cpu running at 2200 - 2900mhz at all times now. is there any downside to this such as reliability or anything?

2. I upgraded to the 320GB 7200RPM drive for $45 extra but it still seems slow. HD Tune shows its a toshiba drive?? Here is the results image: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/4997/hdtunebenchmarktoshibam.png
Is this normal for this HD?

3. What programs can I uninstall? Do i need all these SQL servers and Microsoft Visual C++ that are installed? Also how do i get rid of stupid vaio messenger that keeps popping up even though i disabled it? I would like to keep vaio control center but i don't need all the other stuff that comes with it.

4. When hooked up to HDMI external monitor, when I close the lid of the vaio it changes from 1080p to 720p in the vaio control center. I have settings changed to 'do nothing' when i close lid, why is it still doing this?

5. Ringing sound from fan. i brought this up before and i still haven't got a sound recording yet of it. anyone else have this or know how to fix it? btw its not the one thats fixed with mic settings, different issue.

 

1. It should not hurt to use the peformance mode

2. It is a normal curve.

3. Better to do an clean install. http://www.monteverde.org/images/Sony_Vaio_F11/Vaio_F_Series_Clean_Install_Guide.htm

4. Do not know

5. Do not have the mic or fan issue, can not directly help you.

 

1. I run mine at highest performance at all times (plugged in) with no problems. I also run it at highest performance when on battery, but I will only get about 45-55 minutes out of a charge.

2. I have the base 5400 RPM 320GB HDD that came with the F11 in an external "Power over eSATA" enclosure and my speeds are 10-15MB/second faster than yours. Performance settings, drivers, background programs, processes and services, disk indexing, swap file, page file, heavy RAM usage could all be affecting hard drive speed. Don't be disturbed by what the benchmark says. If you read the last 10-15 pages, you will see several hard drive speeds and the discussion on how to increase them, along with what can cause them to decrease.

3. Personal preference. I wipe the drive, including the recovery partition, and install a clean copy of Windows 7 Pro (from Microsoft disK). Then I load all drivers from the Sony recovery disks that I made prior to erasing the hard drive. Then I load programs. I load per the instructions on the Sony F11 help webpage. Then I perform all updates and add all personal programs. I check everything, and if working, I look for and install any desired driver updates, one at a time. If a problem arises, I roll back the driver. I keep my machine as close as possible to the Windows 7 installation. Keep all MS programs except Windows Live crap. Get rid of all Sony and vaio crap other than those listed as neccessary in Joe Bleau's semi-clean install post.

4 and 5...I can't help with as I do not use 4 and I do not have a problem such as 5.

 

The palmrest discoloration is a problem with the paint sony used on the 'black' F and Z series machines (if you check the Z series thread you'll see the same exact complaint). Apparently the silver/grey ones do NOT have that problem.

I intend to call Sony about that in the next day or two, and I do expect them to replace the parts on a 4 month old machine. I just took in my 3 year old MacBook today for a hard drive replacement (they had a bad batch), and they offered to replace case parts that were cracked free.

Guys, please call sony and complain about the black spots - those aren't normal (I don't care what Joe says).

 

I'm about to spring for a new laptop. I want it to be a Sony, but my required specs include a 1920x1080 resolution in as big a screen as possible (preferably no less than 17") but absolutely in 1920x1080 resolution, and as much internal hard drive storage as possible (preferably a 1TB drive). BTW, I am much more interested in HD storage space than HD speed - 1TB @5400 is much preferable (for my needs) to anything smaller, regardless of how much faster anything smaller might be.

Anyhow, it looks like if I am to go with Sony, my choice will have to be a VPCF1290X - even though that will require significant compromises down from what I ideally want, both in terms of screen size and HD storage. I would have gone for one of Sony's spectacular & huge 18.4" AW's, but it seems that Sony, sadly, is no longer making anything at all with that screen size. The largest screen screen size Sony currently offers is their EC series (17.3") - but, strangely, Sony doesn't even offer full 1920x1080 resolution in that screen size... So, all this means the VPCF1290X with its even smaller 16.3" screen is the largest screen in which Sony currently offers 1920x1080 resolution. (Why Sony no longer offers their highest resolution in their largest [17.3"] screen - which is smaller than the larger screen in which they used to offer that highest resolution - is beyond me...)

I also want a full 1TB hard drive (I believe 500GB x 2 was available in the discontinued AW series), but disappointingly, the largest HD Sony offers in any of its current laptops is only 650B... So, it looks like I'll need to compromise on that too...

A gnawing concern is that, with my luck, as soon as I place the VPCF1290X order (or at least as soon as it is delivered and too late to return/change), Sony will indeed once again come out with a larger 1920x1080 screen and/or with a 1TB HD option... I know such concerns are always the case when buying tech products... though the former presence in Sony's laptop model lineup of "bigger & better screens" (and bigger HD capacity) that are suddenly absent from the current model lineup does seem like a surprising step backward...

 

Can you give us some more background information on what you intend to use this for? More specifically, why you need so much built in storage and such a large screen?

As of right now, mainstream laptops typically max out at 17", so I can almost guarantee that you aren't going to find much (if anything) larger than that.

The problem with larger screens is that of practicality. A larger screen would require an enormous amount of power and would consequently make the laptop incredibly impractical. A much better solution would be to use the built in screen while traveling and connect to an external monitor (or TV) when you are at home or your office.

Similarly, not too many laptops are available with 1TB drives. They certainly are available, they just don't typically ship with laptops. That being said, you can certainly go with the smallest HDD option and purchase your own 2.5" 1TB drive and replace the drive yourself.

You can also use external drives. The F has an eSATA port (and an ExpressCard/34 slot) you can use to add more drives. If you don't use the optical drive much, Joe also has a guide for replacing the ODD with an HDD, which could easily get you over 1TB.


In any case, the F is a top of the line laptop with some of the best specs you will find in a laptop at an unbeatable price. I can guarantee that you won't regret getting one (assuming you do). Sony also just refreshed its laptop line up, so we aren't expecting another refresh of models until probably around the holiday season. Of course, the world of technology is constantly evolving, so you are guaranteed to always be behind. Eventually you need to just throw in the towel and purchase a laptop.

 

I don't mind the screen size, I think it's just what I want. I wish it had a more high end GPU though, but I'm going to order one anyway this weekend after I get paid. I'll just leave the intense gaming to my desktop

 

I consider it the most necessary and important of all the resident programs. It has recovered my system from a crash or driver screwup four times, two of those occasions having been after all other means of recovery had failed. I documented those travails in an earlier thread. VAIO care is the ONE Sony program I would never remove, it is an indispensable safety margin.

 

Who said that anyway?! Compromised a bit by the screen and having only USB 2 maybe, but it is as fast and cool running as possible. There's no crippling at ALLof its performance.

(edit) Oh, referring to Seagate drives running in Sata 1. For a mechanical drive that can not max out Sata gen 1 speeds, Sata gen 2 only adds Command queing and hot swap, it shouldn't affect read/write speeds at all, that is a different issue.

 

Did you enter "BSOD" in "Search this thread?" Have you got NOD32 antivirus? Also an MS update for mid-month July has caused some of us problems. ESET Knowledgebase - Microsoft security update (KB2286198) for Windows 7/Server 2008/Vista hangs or causes a BSOD on restart

 

Thanks for your reply post.

My need for so much storage - I store many thousands of personal photographs on my computer - and take hundreds more weekly. A hobby need, not a business need, but hey... In any event, I do want them all to continue to reside organized in nested subdirectories "in one place" on an internal hard drive inside my laptop. My current ("virtually deceased") laptop has a 250GB hard drive which I maxed out pretty quickly - necessitating use of an external 500GB usb drive which I can see is filling up as well. Is the external hd - maxed out? No - but it is filling up at a rate that leads me to believe if my new computer is to last 3 or so years without having to once agin resort to an external hd, 500GB may not be enough & 1TB would give me the "breathing room" I need. (Plus, I have a music collection of over 16k CDs & as I begin to burn them to my hd, which is a project on which I am about to start, well... again, the more hd space I have the better.)

As for using an external hard drive, I use my computer mostly on my lap & using a laptop with an external hard drive connected via a dangling usb cable and the exernal hd of necessity balanced on my knee or on the palmrest of the laptop, is less than ideal, to say the least. (BTW, my prior laptop was a 17" & I know from experience that using it on my lap w/out an external hd was no problem whatsoever either heat or size wize.)

As for screen size, true, anything larger than 17" might be overkill - and a bit cumbersome/hot to use on my lap - but again, for years I had a 17" HP laptop (with all the reliability problems that come with an HP, which is why HP is not on my list for the replacement and Sony is) - but - the HP's beautiful 17" screen size really spoiled me for anything smaller - and as a result anything smaller would clearly feel like a step backward - and typically "backward steps" are not what one expects to have to encounter when replacing rapidly evolving high tech items...

Lastly, I almost never use my laptop on battery power - I use it in numerous rooms around the house, as well as at two other locations away from home. AC power is available at all thes locations - and I travel to them by car, so carrying a large laptop is not a problem. And, of course, for all these reasons, a desktop cmputer is no "solution" - and multiple desktops are equally out of the question, as are multiple external larger monitors - they really defeat the convenience of an integrated (larger) laptop.

The ASUS G73 seemed to meet all my spec meeds (and then some - but it's a "gamer" machine and I'm not a gamer at all, so in some respects, it would have been overkill) - but it is available with a 17" 1920 x 1080 screen & 1TB hd. However, its well-documented reliability problems preclude me from considering it.

Anyhow, at this point, I do believe I will spring for the VPCF1290X and simply live with the smaller screen & 650GB hd - but it is frustrating that in these two respects (screen size and hd capacity) the best the Sony model line has to offer is less than what their model line had to offer at this time last year... and that their largest existing laptop screen @ 17.3" isn't even available with their best 1920 x 1080 resolution, necessitating an additional step down to 16.3" to get the best resolution.

 

I've had that issue for well over 2 months now right where my left palm sits on the palmrest (right beneath the WASD keys ). Anyhow, I thought this sort of discoloration was normal, given the amount of time I've been on the laptop, but I'll give sony a call about it if its an issue with just the black model and not the silver/grey.

 

The hard drive in the sony is pretty easy to upgrade apparently. Just make sure that the 1TB drive you have in mind isn't taller than the 9.5mm standard height for 2.5 inch hard drives.

 

OoTLink is right, we are ENTITLED to perfect machines immune to wear & tear!

He is right about the metallic gun metal paint that is applied on the keyboard side & the display's bezel for the North American black version. I dunno about the silver model or the Premium model with the rubbery palm rest found in EU, Asia & elsewhere.

While I maintain my OS & system to tip-top optimized performance, I totally neglect the exterior except for cleaning the display's surface often with a damped microfiber cloth & occasionally deep clean using Nikon's lens cleaning fluid sprayed on the microfiber & not directly on the screen as I do to clean my expensive lenses.

It's rainy season up here & I use often my F in the field and it is quite dirty after 5 months as I don't remember the last time I cleaned it. Sorry for the quality of the photos below, it's night time & I used a point & shoot camera.

First image shows how dirty it is & the discoloration where my right wrist rest most often. You can see some really grimy spots.



Second image is after cleaning lightly with a damp sponge. One can see that there is no discoloration where the spots were. They protected the paint. If you don't remove the advertising stickers, you will have some bright spots of new paint like when you remove stickers on a car after a year or so. Third image is after cleaning again with the damps sponge + a little bit of rubbing alcohol. Forth is a macro photo showing the metallic paint wearing off on top of the texture. Note the spots where the grime was.



Lastly, I noticed that the paint is also wearing off on my Canon p&s as well as on several of my Nikon's DSLR's. OoTLink, do you think that I should also send them to the manufacturers & claim body parts replacements?



Nikon & other major lens makers say that fingerprints contain human acid oil that eats the multi-coated lens finish & should be cleaned promptly. So if you want to limit the paint wear, I suggest you clean your palm rest once a week with a damp cloth with a little bit of alcohol or mild dish-washing liquid. Just be extremely careful that no drops of excess water fall in the keyboard or cracks of the touchpad unless you want to kill your F.

Thanks for the tip OoTLink but I don't think that I will spend $120 to ship back & forth my F to USA and be 6 to 8 weeks w/o it because of a patina that gives character to my machine, just like my scars & wrinkles. Women who prefer kids with baby faces are not my niche.

I agree with Willscary's post including that my palm rest is cool & prefer paint wearing off than uncomfortably hot aluminum palm rest like for the Envy_and other brands. OTOH Sony_could have used colored plastic w/o paint like in my old_Acer so paint wearing off would not be a problem.

@ dappolo: cool image, I like the angle & lens choice!

 

Hi all, been reading these forums for ages, ordered a custom Vaio F through Sony Style (eu) last month with the same spec as the VPCF12Z1E/BI (i7 740QM, 8GB RAM etc) but with a smaller drive with the intention of upgrading to an SSD - also got the free bluray burner offer so saved quite a bit of money than buying the VPCF12Z1E/BI package.

The laptop arrived on Monday (Sony failed to send me any tracking information or my PDF invoice which annoyed me a bit, lucky someone was in to get it when it arrived ) I also bought my SSD (Intel Gen2 160GB) from ebay (£295 new with warranty! ).

I read a lot on here about doing clean installs with recovery discs and decided that was the route for me, so went for it using Joes guide and kcirtaP's additional details about doing it on an F12.


I found it really straight forward, there were a few differences from the guide that I'd note:

1. I didnt have to change any bios settings, the Optical Drive was already set to #1 boot priority.
   
2. The boot option was not listed as "Restore Complete System", but rather "Vaio Care Rescue" (or similar, cant remember exactly)
   
3. The dialogue boxes/install status windows while installing Windows were much simpler than the restore complete system photos shown in Joes guide, it was simply a single progress bar which asked for discs to be changed at given times. (I had 3 recovery disks as opposed to Joes 2 as well)
   
4. The one thing that surprised me the most, after restarting towards the end of the installer and hitting ctrl+alt+del to be ready to kill the vaio care rescue task after "installing restart driver" appeared to get a fully clean install, my machine automatically shut itself down and restarted before I could kill the task. Windows then booted and finished setup - with no additional bloatware or any Sony software installed (other than the drivers). So the recovery (for me anyway) gave me a clean install of Windows 7 without my intervention.
   
5. I couldn’t install Vaio Care from my recovery disc 1 - it simply said vaio care failed to load when I tried to install additional programs from it. I solved this by just downloading vaio care from the sony support site.

After that the only thing not working was the Vaio buttons (assist etc), so I read through kcirtaP's post which took me to ilfuca's guide, which has a step for fixing this:

I only seemed to have 2 of the above 4 as install options using my vaio care/recovery dvds, so I downloaded them all from the Sony support site.

After that everything worked perfectly, and all that remained was to do windows updates etc.
Sorry for the long post, hope this helps some F12 owners that want to do the same thing!

Thanks to everyone on here for the knowledge they've shared, particularly Joe Bleau, kcirtaP and ilfuca, my laptop is running sweet as a nut now, and the SSD performance is amazing!

 

i dont have NOD32 av.
i have the latest updates

 

Thank you ajsuk for your feedback & very interesting observations! +1 to your reputation power. BTW one can do the same by clicking on this that you can see in the left column of a post you appreciate.

You don't have any F12_screen captures (or photos) by chance that you could share & that I could add to the Vaio_F Series Clean install w/ OEM Discs article? I will add your comments & link to your post.

"1 - I didn't have to change any bios settings, the Optical Drive was already set to #1 boot priority." - It's the same default on the_F11, I just added the detail so to give info about the BIOS options or to remind people who would have changed that option. Once your custom clean install is done, if you go back to the BIOS and change the boot priority to the main drive, your F will boot a tad faster because it will not have to check if there is a disc in the ODD.

"2 - The boot option was not listed as "Restore Complete System", but rather "Vaio Care Rescue" (or similar, cant remember exactly)" - Could you do it again but w/o actually say the final yes to the restore process so you could take a photo of the screen?

"3 - The dialogue boxes/install status windows while installing Windows were much simpler than the restore complete system photos shown in Joes guide, it was simply a single progress bar which asked for discs to be changed at given times. (I had 3 recovery disks as opposed to Joes 2 as well)" - Please guys, could the next person doing the custom clean install please take some photos of the different screens as I did?

"4 - The one thing that surprised me the most, after restarting towards the end of the installer and hitting ctrl+alt+del to be ready to kill the vaio care rescue task after "installing restart driver" appeared to get a fully clean install, my machine automatically shut itself down and restarted before I could kill the task. Windows then booted and finished setup - with no additional bloatware or any Sony software installed (other than the drivers). So the recovery (for me anyway) gave me a clean install of Windows 7 without my intervention." - Wow, that's really cool! Did you press the combination keys ctrl+alt+del several times? As in the normal OS state, doing this forces a soft reboot which maybe you did w/o knowing it? That would be a cool tip, making the kill process easier.

"5 - I couldn’t install Vaio Care from my recovery disc 1 - it simply said vaio care failed to load when I tried to install additional programs from it. I solved this by just downloading vaio care from the sony support site." - Good tip. It worked from disc #1 for my_F11 but then it's easy to download the OEM Vaio_Care from one's model specific esupport page before starting the clean install. And then I presume that you inserted your recovery disc #1 & Vaio_Care automatically gave you the option of installing the extra programs of your choice?

"After that the only thing not working was the Vaio buttons (assist etc), so I red through kcirtaP's post which took me to ilfuca's guide, which has a step for fixing this:"

"I only seemed to have 2 of the above 4 as install options using my vaio_care/recovery dvds, so I downloaded them all from the Sony support site."

I will also add this to the guide.

Thanks again!

 

No problem, you guys helped me out, only fair I try do to the same

Afraid not, I didnt have my camera handy at the time and was concentrating on making sure it all went smoothly as I was short on time - if for any reason I need to do it again, I will take photos.

Sure, I will try and get one tonight!

I dont believe so - I had hit ctrl+alt+del quite some time before it shut down, I had task manager ready as your guide says so was sitting with my cursor over the end process button, but just when I was about to click it it shut down for me.

Thats correct yes.

 

What is battery life for sony vaio F12 with standard capacity and large capacity battery ??
sony site mentions it as 3 hrs and 4.5 hrs respectively.... but I would like to know from sony vaio f12 users...
Also, please mention battery life for standard usage, movie playing, heavy application use etc.

Thanks
-Manish

 

I get about 1 hr 30-45 min when gaming, 100% GPU load high performance setting.. but my battery has degraded abit

I get about 3.5 hr on power saver web browsing

 

Ive discharged my full charged battery from 100% to 1% (auto sys shutdown) and charged it full 2 times but it still reports 84-87 % battery on launch in next morning. Hibernation is turned off, also I dont have Sleep enabled. battery Care is Off also. Any other hints how to achieve almost 95-100% battery when I launch my lap next day ?

 

Run powercfg -energy. See: VAIO_F Series & Battery Discharging Overnight?

 

Average (ie non CPU/GPU intensive) use on a large capacity battery tends to be around 3 hours for the large capacity and 2 hours for the standard.

As an owner of the "black" F, I am a tad worried about the discoloration. If it appears, I may have Sony fix it. Otherwise I think that a little bit of metallic spray paint might do the trick.


For those looking to get a backpack for their laptop, Costco currently has an incredible deal on one ( see here). The pockets designed for the AC adapter are a little tight for Sony's behemoths, but there are plenty of pockets and it fits 17" laptops. The bag is very well made and feels very sturdy. Only $50 (USD) right now!


EDIT:
Newegg also has the 320GB Momentus XT for only $105 +free shipping with promo code EMCYWZN43. I am very tempted to pull the trigger on this one...