Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *Part 5*

Is it very annoying? I want to buy F1390 and I am confused about this stupid sound!

 

Finally i got my Sony Vaio F13 Laptop and i am very very very happy with it
But i have one question :
The laptop comes with Windows 7 Home Premium and the hard disk is only divided into 2 partitions one of them is 450 GB having the OS installed on it and the other one 13 GB Having The Recovery .
My question is how to make some more partitions without losing the OS or the Recovery Partition .
And is that possible that i install Windows 7 Professional and have my Vaio , Assist and S1 buttons working ?
Thank you very much and i am ready for any questions about the laptop .​

 

@mido201005

First thing... make recovery discs.

You can shrink your C:\ drive by going to Start > type Disk Management

Select your C:\ drive, right click and select shrink volume. Follow the steps from there. You cannot shrink past things like your page file and system restore files. So, if you can't shrink enough, then you'll want to disable both temporarily, do the resize, and then start them back up.

I'm not sure about your Win7 pro. I know that it can be installed as a clean install, no problem. You then need to install VAIO Care. From VAIO Care, you can install VAIO Event Service, VAIO Control Center, and Settings Utility Series. Combined, these will make your Fn, ASSIST and S1 buttons work. There are many other programs you may want to install as well.

What I don't know is if by installing your windows 7 pro if you'll be able to keep the 13GB recovery partition, which is the stuff that recovery discs are made from.

 

I think you and I don't have the problem because we don't have the full HD display/GPU. That's really the only difference I can think of.

 

What do you do?.. if you just browse the web, or word process, definitely not.
Infact, things like Core i3 and Core 2 Duo are adequate

If you do stuff like video editing or gaming, you would benefit

 

@ mido201005

Use windows anytime upgrade to upgrade to Win7 Pro easiest way. You can kill 3 birds with one stone if you wanted to do a clean install with recovery disks. You could clean install and select the option to have multiple partitions set the partition sizes and start the clean install following the guide that was linked to a few pages ago. Once clean install is done, reinstall the utilities from Sony that Anseio pointed out to omaroo and that are also in the guide then all your keys are working. Then like the author of the guide once all set up and clean you can use win anytime upgrade and upgrade to win 7 pro. Once that's all done I'd advise updating windows, downloading and setting all your main programs and anti virus etc updating them all and once set with your clean system do a system backup so you have an image of your fully set up clean system. If this sounds like a good plan the info is all in the guide and these threads, good luck! Enjoy your new laptop

 

Well I've hooked it up. The incline is a little steep on the U3 for my tastes (they say its 10 degrees but it looks a bit higher to me). You can tie cables underneath it so my desk looks much neater now. I've folded the esata cable underneath which was annoyingly inflexible so no more hanging/coiled up wires which is nice.

I positioned the three fans centre, top left and middle/bottom left since those are the areas that seemed to get the hottest to me. I left my F12 on overnight with chrome running + 14 tabs along with all my systray stuff active (everest, avast, rainmeter etc) and when its left completely idle it keeps temps down to this when the fans are up full whack:



I'll do another overnight idle without with the fans on minimum tonight but with the 3 fans going at full speed, it only emits a constant low wooshing sound. Its quite pleasant and at completely idle state (cpu fan < 2900 rpm), it helps 'break' up the variable cpu fan in the F12 so you notice it spinning up/down less. Above 3200rpm it doesn't really matter because the cpu fan becomes really audible then.

In practice its difficult to tell whether the U3 is making any real difference because doing anything (opening up MS Paint) causes the cpu to kick in, temps to go up and the cpu fan to start acting up. The cpu fan is still highly variable.

If you want to get one, the first reason should be that you want an attractive looking stand and/or a place where you can stash/tie cables for a neater looking desk. Then anything beyond that is a bonus ihmo. Unless your notebook is designed so that it can take in cool air from the base plate, pass it over the cpu/gpu heatsink and vent it out the sides then I can't see this thing having much of an effect. The cpu fan is still doing pretty much all the work so I more or less agree with the Tweaktown review.

One thing I'm disappointed in is that you dont get a 4 port hub built into it like you do with NZXT Cryo LX.

 

That's too bad about the cooling. Perhaps it's because the U3's fans are less powerful than the the U2's.

Anyone out there with a whistle and a U2?

 

I still the whistle but its only really in the 3200 to 3700rpm range. Things like web browsing now are mostly whistle free because its always lower than that but if you load down the cpu a bit more to spin up the fan and keep it in the 3200 to 3700rpm range it turns into whistle central.

It cost me 29 euros shipped so either way I'm kind of happy since my desk is really neat now. I might cut off the spongy pads at the back to lessen the incline though.

 

I sent email with screenshot from specifications page to Sony Canada. The screenshot displayed that F1390 has USB 3.0

sonystyle.ca sent me answer (see attached screenshot) http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/3564/1013201073500am.png

Any comments?

 

Shrank the System Reserved Folder and it give me an unallocated partition. How can I merge this into the c drive? Or did I make a mistake and this is irreversible unless I reformat drive?

 

Well I definitely will be hard core gaming.. But I was thinking I could just overclock it a bit safely to get it close to the i7 840. I also want to be able to play Crysis 2 when it comes out next year...

 

Not too sure the extra processing speed with help with what you are going to be doing. The bottleneck is in the GPU.

 

Crysis 2.. jesus.

I would get something with GTX 460M atleast, or HD 5850M

 

2

Wow, they are being particularly difficult with you, aren't they? Considering that you spoke to someone in person and USB 3.0 was confirmed!

The argumentative side of me would request that they EXPLAIN why on g0d's green planet that all of the F13's in the world do have USB 3.0 EXCEPT for the Canadian unconfigured CTO?

I hate to say it, but you made a mistake.

You cannot move partitions from right to left using the disk manager in Win7. There's a feature on the Ultimate Boot CD (Parted Magic) that will allow you to move/resize partitions, but it's not guaranteed to work. I didn't have any success when I did it with my SSD. The MFT got screwed up. You can always give it a try though. Just be prepared to to recover from a system image in order to clean up the carnage.

 

Crysis 2 will be pretty well optimized, so I'm guessing it will play decently (the demo machines that Crytek uses to show off the game were running core i7 + gtx260's and they had everything maxed at full hd).

That said, for MP games, if you turn all the settings down to low, you will definitely get 60+ fps. BFBC2/Medal of Honor plays at 50+ fps on medium settings in MP.

If you want a gaming machine though, I would go for an Asus or Alienware with a better graphics card.

 

Alright thanks. I mean I'm getting the 425m video card.. And isnt it sottered into the Motherboard? So in order to replace it by 1st-2nd Q next year wouldn't I have to change the entire MOBO?

 

The new MOH? If I'm gonna pay $1700 dollars for a Sony Vaio F I wouldn't want to be playing on minimal settings.. Never was an Alienware fan. And I just came from HP.. I also like a little eye candy. Mainly why I switched over to Sony.

 

Yeah, same. I mean for MOH (and for other recent AAA fps games), you can turn everything up to high and you'll get like 30-40 fps, but the game looks fantastic at medium settings (you can turn textures to high b/c of the 1gb of vram though). In singleplayer, the fps doesnt matter as much so I turned everything up to high. Man it looks good.

 

looks like my 2 F1390x shipped. From China. "YANTAI CN" Have to wait till next tuesday to receive it.

 

Right, right. I mean how noticeable is it at 40 fps? Can you tell that it's chopppy? So you can play Crysis on max settings? I torrent most of my games so I'm not USUALLY able to do Multliplayer anyways.. But if I cant get higher than GeForce 425M and processor. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to overclock it a bit with RivaTuner.

 

Yeah, the guy per phone told me that it has USB 3.0 but per email they wrote it hasn't. ((((((

 

Me too. It pisses me off that Sony lied to me. Yesterday when I called they told me it would definitely ship yesterday and just wait for the email. When I didn't get a shipping email yesterday, I called again and they assured me it was in the US and being shipped to me already and that I would have it this week. Then this morning I get the email that it just got shipped in China two hours ago - and it was after the cutoff so there's already a Fedex exception on it and it's not being handled until tomorrow. It's been sitting finished in China for 6 days, they charged me, and then just let it sit there for a week for no reason, then lied to me about it. Not a good first experience with Sony for me.

 

My F13 had 2 x USB 3.0 (full HD, i7 740, 8gb, blu ray writer) and one s-ata/usb 2.0.

 

You ordered F1390 in Canada?

 

lol I can play Crysis at medium/high. A desktop gtx 460 struggles to max Crysis (depending on the resolution, a single gtx 480 will also struggle). Crysis is a really demanding game haha. Games only get really choppy when the fps drops below the high-20s. Most people draw the line at 30fps.

As an aside, rivatuner won't overclock the gpu on the F11 (dunno about the F13). You have to use nvidia's utility (nTune or nvidia system tools).

There are links in my signature to some gameplay/performance figures for the 330m. The 425m will probably perform better than the 330m in most situations.

 

Just a note nTune is a running process using approx 4 MB of memory. nTuneCmd.exe

 

MSI Afterburner people! ^

 

Yeah use MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision. Takes the out of Rivatuner.

 

LOl well the only video I saw was RivaTuner so thats the only thing I'm basing it on. And yeah, I've seen about 75% of your videos xD I'll check out MSi Afterburner. How much better is the 425 than the 330M? How much a part does RAM play in playing high-end games like crysis? And how much RAM does the game use?

 

Hi stevie,

So perhaps anseio is on to something here ...

There are now 2 reports of no whistling with the 1600 x900 display which uses the 310 graphics card. Is this something you would consider pursuing now ?

 

I just realized that part 4 of this thread is locked....

Some more videos:

Lost Planet 2 benchmark: YouTube - Lost Planet 2 Benchmark
COD4 - Modern Warfare: YouTube - Call of Duty 4
Medal of Honor (singleplayer): YouTube - Medal of Honor - Part 1/2
YouTube - Medal of Honor - Part 2/2

Mon on my channel: YouTube - MrChowderClam's Channel

 

Do you Torrent your games?
And if so, can you play online on any of them?

 

yeah, Mine has the exception as well. looks like our laptops are on the same plane or boat here. I'm pretty peeved about it, but I guess they didn't go past my estimated shipping date. I guess i'm just anxious and impatient. Just seems that once it hits the complete status, it should ship out that day.
However, I was expecting it to be shipping from California instead of China. So much for their free "2day" delivery. I'm just happy they're on their way now. I just hope the fedex monkey's don't damage them or stack a 200lb box on top of them.

 

If you want to completely max out Crysis at full 1080p with aa/af just get a desktop PC. It will be better, cheaper, run cooler, last longer and offers you the chance to upgrade the graphics down the line when it comes to DX11.

Speaking of DX11 forget about it with any current laptop. Even the high end mobile HD5870 gets creamed by a desktop HD5770 and that can barely handle tessellation right now.

 

same thing. Support told me once order is complete, it means that it has been shipped from china to USA. Once they get it here in the USA, they will ship it asap to me with tracking number.

today ( after 6 days of being "complete" i get fedex tracking number from china. Estimated delivery 10/19

as long as i get it and it works well.

 

Anyone know how to get access to the heatsink/fan? I'm guessing you have to take the entire bottom panel off...anyone done this before or have a guide or info? I used Joe Bleau's guide to take the keyboard off thinking i could access it from there.. but all I can do is see the 1 side of the fan, I can't actualy do anything with it.. any help would be appreciated.

 

I mean of course the obvious option in this case would be a desktop, but I go to a Boarding School and there is only Wi-Fi in the lobby so unless I got Tether on my BlackBerry which is $50 it would be useless. So I'll just have to deal with the F series for now.

 

i don't have one yet, but I can't imagine such kick performance machine with more modern features than any other laptop will disapoint me because of some minor noise comming from wherever. I also had pleasure playing with F13 at BestBuy store,although it was much downgraded machine than what i ordered. Mine is coming next week. Right now i'm hearing my old Dell's 8600 model processor squeeking and its falling a part, and so is my HP 17" at work very much up to date with usb3.0 ports! But i still apreciate them as desktop replacement. I also work on macBook pros 15" and 17" every dayat work. They are so boring and limited in variety of capabilities. You must be an apple fan to enjoy it nowdays. NO OTHER WAY!

think abut it:

F13 is a POWER LAPTOP / DESKTOP REPLACEMENT

1. You can close it and move it from room to room as easy as moving your butt frm room to room.

2. It has serious data port/optical drive capabilities that won't be lacking anything for the next few years !! (let me know if you think i'm wrong on this

3. It has great video card, bus speed, and processing power, which YES eat up battery, and make some minuscule noise (noise subjective, and unconfirmed in all F13 variants)

4. It has great display (if you get 1920x1080) and HDMI out, as well as optical port for digital sound output if you ever want to hook it up to pro audio device.

5. Price is amazing for all that you get ! As a matter of fact, find me ANY laptop today that has all the latest ports/drives/features that can come anywhere near $1900 (before tax)

my point:

If you are so picky, and want flawless, silent, lightweight laptop (without USB3.0, Blue ray burn 6x, and Express card expansion portr) get MacBook pro, for $2200 starting price 15" size. (F13 $999 starting price 16.4")

AGAIN I ASK you, whats is other choice, besides F13, for under $2000 fully loaded,for such device? a DESKTOP! that will be immobile and 10x noisier !!

cheers all, and enjoy the F13

 

Hey guys just a question, my F12 has a terrible squeaky keyboard, can I get that replaced through warranty?

 

The display is one of the things I love the most, so that's never going to be an option.

 

Yeah I hear you. The main attraction for the F series to me was the nice matte 1080p screen. If it didn't have that I would have shopped elsewhere.

 

I don't have the option of matte screens here in the US, but I definitely would have purchase the full HD were it not $600 more than what I paid for my current lappy.

 

That's a great narrative on the features of the F series and why it's a better value than anything else out there! An excellent point you made that I don't believe I've read before in this thread is that desktop computers all make much more noise! +1 rep for you

 

I got my Vaio FW some days ago as a replacement for the whining F12, and I'm fascinated with the machine. For me it's the perfect laptop (given that they're all compromises these days).

I wonder whether all the EU premium displays of the F series have the double lamp technique. I owned an F12 for weeks and applied different color profiles, now compared to the glossy equivalent in the FW, it really lacked color strength and contrasts. I didn't even bother to calibrate the FW screen and the colors are very rich, and there are grey columns on websites that I hadn't even noticed before with other screens because they lacked contrast. Also, viewing angle is better than on the F. Maybe this is all due to the glossy finish? Any other users that saw both screens?
I used to avoid glossy screens, this is my first one. I was surprised that the FW's screen almost doesn't reflect at all, and though it's much more difficult to clean, I really like the strong black the finish generates. There's lightbleeding, at the bottom and on the sides, where the lamps are mounted. Unfortunately, the screen has about 4 black pixels and one green. This seems to be an FW issue that was solved with the F series - I haven't read about dead or stuck pixels in this thread? But as I'm really tired of the laptop bothering, I'll just stay with it now. Any experience on this with F notebooks?

More F comparisons (to stay on topic): The Core Duo shows no inverter whining, which means: the one in my notebook - Google knows other examples. (I strongly hope it won't start after I submitted this post!!)
Of course, the machine is a little sluggier than the i7 740 F12, but for everyday use it just means that I can get this one to more than 20% CPU load. More noticeably, the HDD is 5000rpm instead of 7200 - I got to replace it with an 128GB SSD asap.
I prefer the aesthetics, it could become a classic, just like these old typewriters. But the built quality is higher than on the later F: The screen lid is more robust, the bottom plastics is of better quality, as is the BD drive (it even has a blinking light integrated in the button, ha). Don't know whether the magnesium chassis is an advantage - funnily, the ad sticker downright lies and states that it has a "magensium case" - it's plastics, except the lid outside! The color of the palmrest plastic isn't as durable as the F's, I fear. Got to apply a Zagg shield to this.
My FW (final model) actually uses the same fan as the F, but it doesn't turn that high and droning, and it turns off regularly and for quite a while each, so everything stays pleasant and one's ears can relax. I made peace with that guy. Finally I can read my text databases in silence. Still, there's no heat noticeable. I prefered the F12's keyboard, as it was even "harder", but judging after user feedback, this may be production variance rather. But I'm happy that the numpad is "gone".
The webcam, declared to be 1.3 mp, actually hasn't a better quality than the F's. After first use, I suppose they both have effectively 0.3 megapixels!

PS: Watched my first blurays. When Harrison Ford almost dropped from the Paris roof in "Frantic", I instinctively grasped my bed frame.

 

Thanks and +1 for this perfect advise, I got all the stickers removed without the slightest residues. I wouldn't have made it without this idea - at first try, the 1080 sticker left its whole glue on the palm rest! By the way, depending on what built you have, avoid to use alcohol, it will probably get blind. I saw some horror photos of the F and FW at flickr.

 

thanks John Wa,
and Thanksv gr-fan for writeup.

F13 has 1.3mp camera acording to sony live support.
As for bD capabilities, it will be one of the first things for me to check. I already have DVDfab and bought Verbatim 6x BD-R ten pack.

cheers

 

Can anyone tell me where to download these from, i cant find where there are.

1. Magic-i Visual Effects
2. Vaio Hardware Diagnostics
3.Vaio Peripherals Metadata
4.Vaio Help and support

Got to see this is a brilliant laptop i LOVE SONY products. great matte screen especially for EU guys. No light bleed as far ias i know, like people in the USA. But guys just wanted to ask any way the screen can be better, as it goes dark .

 

Many of us have had a squeaky keyboard. By use it will go away soon.

 

Hello to all, I´m really thinking about buying Sony Vaio VPCF13Z1E/B. But there are two things I would like to ask:
1) is there backlit keyboard available in Europe for some similar model?
2) is it possible to silence the keyboard? Especially Spacebar, Enter and Backspace (big keys) seems to be very annoyingly noisy... I don´t mind some how-to do advice too

Many thanks for replys