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

its need for speed carbon, it doesnt cover the whole screen. Also some of my games had a black screen so i had to change the campatible settings, but i had to turn the laptop of from the power button, will this damage my laptop as i have done it a few times.

 

Have you overclocked your gpu?

You can get it to play in fullscreen by going into the graphics settings for that game and setting it to play in fullscreen. Most games should default to fullscreen.

For the black screen problem - if you press ctrl+alt+del does it bring up the task manager window? Try hitting the windows key or pressing alt-tab to exit out of the game window. alt+f4 closes the current running application, so pressing that might get your games to die when the give you a black screen. Also, try waiting. Games need a lot of time to process information - the computer may just need some time to think.

You shouldn't have to turn off yoru computer by using the power button ever. Not with Windows 7, since the OS won't crash if a program crashes (unlike Windows XP, which will stall waiting for a crashed app to start working again).

It won't "damage" your internals (at least, I don't think it will), but if your computer is writing any data to the hard drive at the time (i.e. if you turn it off while the hard drive indicator is on) you may get data corruption, which can sometimes stop your computer from booting at all. This is probably why I had to get my hard drive replaced (computer probably died while going into hibernate).

 

oh crap, i had to turn by power button when black screen came on, i couldnt get task manager up and i could get windows button working, just was completely black, its happened for a few games now, and i am getting worried, i hate swtiching it off from power button.

Also i cant find an option in need for speed to go full screen.

 

When you say it doesn't cover the whole screen, does that mean that you see your desktop outside the game playing area, or you have a black background around the game.

Either way, neither of these situations is really VAIO relevant. It's about knowing the settings of your games and of Windows.

 

ye its black background around the screen

 

Got my Canadian F1390.

oh-my-god, it is Gorgez!

most important thing -
the Premium screen is definitely NOT glossy ( this is what I was afraid of, but luckily it is not at all like those shiny displays of the "boombox laptops" in the consumer stores),
and the scree itself looks just wonderful - crisp, and at the same time not eye-irritating at all.

there are two usb ports, both blue, this is info for those who asked about it a few days back.

More impressions to follow

 

Webgraph /// Facebook Blocker Extension for Safari and Chrome and Firefox too.

 

Hi people...
So after going through two different E series notebooks and complaing, about both laptops, with regards to a high pitch noise caused by the processor limiting software in the BIOS (c3/c6 support) I decided to trash the E series, bite the bullet, and bought the new F13
Which, by the way, is SEXY

I love this laptop very much. I do, however, have one question. As this is my first VAIO what are peoples thoughts as to the normal fan noise emitted at different speeds. No matter what speed, there is always a constant whirring. Nothing terribly loud, but something more than just air moving. While the laptop is in idle mode, ie just performing normal undemanding tasks, there is no sound issue. However, while playing a game, when the fan kicks into a higher speed, you can really hear a slight resonance. THe pitch also changes as the fan speed varies. Like i said, it's nothing too loud, but def annoying.

The best way i can describe it is it sounds like wind whistling past a partially opened window.

anyways, is this a normal sound? I guess we can't expect the F series to be ultra quiet as it is a powerful notebook.

oppinions?

 

noisyvaio, i get really loud fan when playing a game, not sure why it happens to be really loud.

 

NOT glossy in Canada? Are U sure? Usually the matte version only in EU.

 

Hi there...
I had an E series and had a constant high pitched noise whenever the processor speed was limited. ie in idle mode. The only way to get rid of it was to go into the extremely limited bios settings and disable the "C3/C6 support" Vaio support said it would not damage the system by doing this but i figured i should have to put up with it so i went and got an F13

No more high pitched noise but the fan whines as it changes speed. kind of annoying but tolerable seen as it's a high performance laptop and needs good cooling. When i play a game the noise is noticably louder, but that's just because the system is running hotter... It's hard to determine what is acceptable and what it abnormal.

see me last post about F13 fan noise??!??!

 

I just bought the F13 in Nova Scotia and it's the glossy screen...

 

yeah it's kind of understandable that the fan is quite loud while playing a game. As long as other people are experiencing the same thing...

I would hate to have a lemon

 

ye thats true. Anyway my stupid brother has put grease on the leather palm rest and on the outside of the lid, anyway to remove it, or shall i get a replacement.

 

well, at least my screen is LESS glossy than those glossy screens of the
mainstream laptops I was referring too.

probably a fair comparison would be either
with the EU version of Premium screen,
or with the screens of more refined Z series VAIOs.
I've seen a few of Z series screens on display in futureshop.ca,
and my Premium screen of the F series seems quite comparable ...

Though is it definitely "less matte", than my old-fashioned screen of
toshiba tecra.

 

is yours 1900x or 1600x screen?


'cause it seems that while 1600x screen is "mainstream glossy",
for the 1900x "Premium" screen in NA version Sony does employ some
trick to make it look less glossy
(though not fully matte, I suspect).

I've heard, from a Sony salesperson a few week back,

a term "semi-glossy"

 

Semi Glossy eh!?
wow that's new to me...

I have the 1600 screen. While having the screen off gives me a beautiful reflection of myself the screen doesn't reflect any light when on.

How's your fan noise? can you hear an obvious ""whurr""

 

huh! yes, that seems to be right, "semi-glossy"!
it looks like Sony used some cheap trick to make NA Premium screens
look a bit less glossy..

no noise at all so far.. quiet like a mousie ..
But I haven't loaded my lappy seriously yet with
some processor-demanding tasks..

I'll report here if there are any noise-related issues.

 

TO ALL PEOPLE THAT HAVE FAN QUESTIONS::::
// with the computer in an idle state the fan noise should not exceed 60dB
this is its nominal range. The youtube link doesn't work but you can just type it in the youtube search and it will come up

hope this helps

 

Yeah, glad to know he's the obtuse one. Good thinking though. Call Sony and see what they say. Keep us posted and good luck.

 

One more thing that is very noticeable in comparison to my 5-yr-old
Tecra S3 is the crappiness of the sound in F1390..

is there any way to correct this?

 

One more thing ... speaking about a proper cooler for this lappy.

how do you guys use "Notepal U2" with The Vaio F series?

I mean the following:

Notepal U2 blows the air down like this:





while (at least according to my first impressions) Vaio F1390 sucks the air up from below, and exhausts it on the left side of the laptop?

how these two things are compatible?

 

fishon are you being sarcastic or what, i am asking if there is anyway i can make it feel new again, doubt sony will give me a new one for a minor issue.

 

my experience with this tells me to try and remove as much as possible with a dry rag and light soap, then just leave it. Time will remove the rest.

 

this one is, actually, a very weird issue..

in ~5 years, why did not they (e.g. Sony ) come up with
a comparable technology to make a decent sound
in consumer laptops?

is this so difficult (expensive)?

Sound quality is the the last thing I'd expect to deteriorate
as the Moore's law progresses..

 

Yeah, being loud during gaming/video rendering is expected. If you want to know why this is read on

The core i7 chip (if you have the core i7 that is) alone has a max tdp of 45 watts!!. The core i5 i think has a tdp of 35 watts? Some of the newer core i7 6xx chips (like the ones in the macbook pros) have a lower tdp of 35 watts (I think some even go down to 18 watts). Anyway, my point is that a 45 watt chip in a notebook is pretty ridiculous. I think the absolute highest I've seen in a laptop chip is 65 watts(? might be 55), and thats for the core i7 extreme edition. Desktop chips, on the other hand go up to 140 watts+ for high-performance models. IIRC the Athlon II X3 in my desktop, which isn't a particularly powerful chip, has a tdp of 95 watts.

So what is tdp? TDP (Thermal design power) is basically the amount of cooling a component needs in order to ensure that you don't risk the components dying from overheating. Combine the 45 watts from the core i7 with the ~23 watts for the stock 330m and you have about 68 watts of HEAT energy you need to dissipate form the notebook at full load. So basically, at full load, there is the equivalent of a 60-70 watt incandescent light bulb sitting in about 3 inches of space in the top-left side of your notebook. If you've ever burnt your hand on a lightbulb before, you can probably see how this could be problematic.

I think that the fan on the F actually dissipates more heat than it really needs to, but I would rather have a cooler running computer than risk components having their life shortened due to heat.

 

I don't know about the Canadian screen, but the Premium screen on my US F is highly glossy. I literally use it as a mirror. I had a tiny eyelash in my eye this morning and I could see it plain as day looking in my Vaio screen. I've never seen a screen in my life as glossy and reflective as this laptop. It was quite a shock to me.

 

How would you describe the sound? - it might actually be some of the sound effects that are the problem.

I was actually quite disappointed with the sound in my F at the beginning, but I turned off some of the sound effects (specifically the bass boost and the dolby sound thing) in the sound configuration panel and the speakers sounded much less muddy and more crisp. It gets a little better, but not much - I agree the sound quality on the F is a bit disappointing.

 

IIRC air is sucked in from the front, above, and below the laptop and exhausted on the left side. Since the U2's fans are moveable, I put them near the F's exhaust fan. This changes the airflow in the case. Now, since air is being blown out of the bottom and left side, air enters the chassis through the front and the speaker grille on top of the keyboard. Anyhow, I find even just propping up the laptop helps dissipate heat. I was getting a gpu temp of 79C under load before I got my U2. Now I'm getting about 70C under load.

 

sitting here surfing the web... god damn this fan is loud....

F13 owner

 

What is your CPU usage? You can always use or create a power plan that limits you CPU to it's lowest setting. Even at the lowest setting it will still have plenty of power for surfing and doing everyday things including watching movies. Won't be good for gaming though so will have have to switch profiles again for that, but it only takes a second.

 

I don't really think it's fair to compare the sound quality of a Toshiba to that of the VAIO. Toshiba is so far beyond any of the other manufacturers in this category that nothing really comes close. I had a 6 year old Satellite A25 that sounded amazing. The rest of the machine was ancient. I couldn't find any other brand to compete. Ultimately, I went with the VAIO, cuz I hated the keyboards on the Toshibas.

 

Hi Anseio and all,

I finally got it to work thanks to your tips anseio. Once I took the top off of the optical drive (which for future reference, is easily done with a small flathead screwdriver, doesn't require any removal of screws, just to press down on the release hatches on the side). I pressed the white switch near the button and it worked great after that.

Also, as with the CTRL+J, I meant those are the keys you can press in Windows Media player to eject a disc.

Any ideas on what could have caused this Anseio or anyone else (optical drive not opening problem)? Only long-term effects I should worry about?

On the day it happened, I was watching a blu ray disc and often pausing, wonder if that could have caused it.

Thanks for all of your help everyone and sorry for the late followup, I am in the UK.

Regards,
Alex

 

I can't speculate as to what the problem was, but I'm glad you got it worked out.

 

I did now that.. the bad quality of speakers in the F series is a bit surprising though, because it is advertised as a multimedia lappy, is not it?

anyway, overall it is a great laptop for the money, and I'm very happy with it so far..

 

p.s. what program do you guys use to do undervoltage
of the processors?

I bet one can increase battery life this way.

I used Rightmark CPU clock Utility in my old lappy,
but it has no updates since 2008 and I'm afraid to run it on the new lappy

 

So I just got my F13 in the mail yesterday and I'm loving it.
Unlike the majority of the people on this forum I have had NO fan problem whatsoever. I've been using it non-stop and the fan probably got a little loud once but that's it. I also played Grand theft Auto San Andreas last night for about three hours and it ran on MAX setting which isn't surprising seen as how it is an older game. Another thing I don'y like about it is the weight which isnt really a huge problem but bothers me a bit. The Semi-glossy screen is very nice though immediately when I stepped outside all I saw was my reflection on the screen. The speakers are somewhat mediocre but not really as bad as played out to be.. While the design of the inside of the laptop is sexy the laptop itself is still a bit thick and doesn't really match up to the inside. Besides that, so far so good. It's only heated up once and thats when I pulled it out of my locker because I believe I left it on.

 

The fan issue isn't really bad enough to classify it as an "issue" but there is definetely a mechanical whine that comes with it. Being is a MagLev fan, they're cheap and easy to replace. If worst comes to worst, replace the fan, no big deal.

Jester65 what's your battery life like if you're on power saver from a full charge?
I get about 2 hours or maybe, MAYBE 3

 

The fundamentals of recording and reproducing sound are fairly well understood at this point. The poor sound quality on notebooks has less to do with the technology not being up to scratch and more to do with physical limitations.

For example, we know what it takes to produce low frequency sound at high amplitude and we can do it cheaply but it requires a large amplifier driving a large electromagnet to move a large diaphragm in order to setup the pressure wave. It isn't a matter of using 'higher quality' materials or more expensive parts because it is simply a physical limitation. If you want proper BASS then it doesn't matter how much you spend, at some point you just need everything to be bigger and thats just the way it is.

You can get fairly low bass with tiny speaker transducers such as the ones in some headphones or in ear monitors but they can only do this because the amplitude of the sound produced is very low. It has to sound in the ear canal or flush with the outer ear for you to hear it.

Even so theres a component of bass which is intrinsically linked to the movement of the fluid medium. Sub bass at high amplitude is felt more than heard for example and this is not something you will experience with headphones. Several years ago I was at one of Dillinja and Lemon D's infamous Valve Sound events and the subwoofers they had there were absolutely massive. If you stood within 3 metres of the diaphragms the movement of air can part your hair and it makes pint glasses dance off the edge of tables.

Thats not to say that some notebook speakers are not better than others. The Dell/JBL speakers are much better than Sony's offerings but thats because they are built by a company that actually makes its name by selling speakers and they have a 3rd driver (they call it a subwoofer but its too small to produce sub bass frequency at an amplitude where its audible without distortion). This 3rd driver is probably a little bit bigger than the other 2 and its sole purpose is to reinforce the lowest octave that the other 2 speakers can reproduce.

I don't really use notebook speakers because they have absolutely no bass. But I have a pair of pretty good headphones (Shure SE420s) and a pair of powerful desktop speakers (Dynaudio BM5as) either way. If I need to move around I'll be on headphones. If I can stay at home, I can always plug into the speakers. Shrugs.

 

I actually use Balanced when Im off the charger... But I got about 1:50 mins I believe today. Which isnt bad for an i7 quad core on a laptop.. I wasnt really expecting much so I didnt get my hopes up. I have a charger on me the majority if not all of the time so thats not really an issue.

 

Sony Apple Merge?

Sony shares rise on Apple buyout buzz- Top Stocks - MSN Money

and this is the latest.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69P0FX20101026

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It's free

I use Adobe's free cloud word processor Buzzword from time to time. Very nice and clean look.

http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/

Yep, Apple Killed The CD Today

How Long Does a Flash Drive Last? - Josh's Blog

Training - Microsoft Office

Provides an easy solution to search within Adobe PDF documents located on your computer, company network, and company intranet

Adobe - Acrobat : For Windows : Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

 

I'd be interested to know the different dB levels of various fans of the f series
I downloaded a free dB meter app for the iphone and measured between 55 and 60dB while my laptop was at an idle state.

the phone was placed ~1inch away from the fan exhaust vent.

 

I'm not sure if this has been posted here (probably has at some point), but for the new owners - I just realized that the Microsoft Office starter that's included actually contains working copies of Word and Excel. I was just about to delete it, along with the other trial software, when I decided to open it up first and found that out. So, there are a few functions like file protection and tracking changes that are disabled, but otherwise these are functioning, non-trial versions, of the programs.

Thought I'd post in case anyone else was uninstalling bloatware and might want to keep that. I've used OpenOffice, in place of MS Office, but I really don't like it myself, so I'm keeping this on my computer and will only use OpenOffice when necessary. But for anyone else who is not purchasing the full MS Office software and has never used OpenOffice, you may want to give a try. Even though I don't personally like it, it is free and you may have a different opinion than me about it.

 

Please advise the soft for:
1. Fan control in the notebook
2. Temperature of CPU
3. Temperature of GPU

Or may be widgets?

 

Real Temp - CPU temperature monitoring

http://www.techpowerup.com/

No one has been able to control the fan with any software.

 

I would definitely NOT try controlling your fan - that is asking for damage to your laptop.

You can use something like hwmonitor to see the temps. (this wrongly reports my CPU as an 820 but the temperatures seem accurate). You can use Everest Ultimate (as someone else on here kindly pointed me to) to see fan speeds and CPU, but you won't see the GPU temp unless you use the paid version.

 

I mean how can I see RPM of the cooler.

 

If you want to see fan RPM look into Everest. Theres also an Everest widget which you can put on your desktop so you can see the fan speed with Everest minimized to the system tray.

The fan is small so the rpm is high. Around idle it spins between 2800 and 2900 rpm. At 3400 to 3700 rpm I get the tell tale whistling noise. At full load its around 4600 to 4800 rpm.

 

Thanks. I install Everest.

 

in my machine, Everest randomly exits after the laptop is brought up from standby or hibernation. Does anyone else experience this problem?

p.s. for me fans speed is between 3300 and 4600, and no noice