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

I picked up a Dell U2311H the other day since they were on a 20% off deal + no shipping and honestly, F series screen is nicer. The viewing angles are really alright for a notebook screen since the U2311H does this terrible thing where a black screen is never really black all over. Its not backlight bleed. The contrast shifts alot when you move around but I'm looking at it head on and the top left corner and bottom right corner are inverting so they look grey/pink. This in an IPS panel too. :X

 

Unfortunately that's really too bad. My wife did a similar thing with an eMachines laptop that she bought on sale last year and she complains about the terrible display every time she uses it. In my opinion, the quality of the display is about as important as any other feature as you'll see this every time you use it. If it bothers you enough, I would return it or you will be forever unhappy with it and wishing you had bought something else.

 

Iam getting indebted to you anseio. again i can't thankyou enough. Thankyou so, so much. This explanation will help me forever. Thanks a lot.

Now iam in trouble and i have another question. Does right clicking on an empty space in recycle bin causes windows explorer to stop working?

I have a brand new sony vaio f series bought directly from sony website. i got it in my hands on november 5. i never went to recycle bin because i had nothing to delete. yesterday i installed all the software that i use on daily basis like winrar, yahoo messenger, vlc media player etc so that i can start using my laptop. there were other softwares as well that i downloaded. later i didn't need it so i deleted some of them. i went to recycle bin and right clicked to empty recycle bin but instead of the menu that i usually get in my dell like cut, paste, empty recycle bin, restore, i got an error saying windows explorer has stopped working and the whole desktop went blank and came back again.

as many times i right clicked that many times i got this error and desktop went blank and black and came again. (there was a separate option for empty recycle bin, by clicking on that i was able to delete everything from recycle bin.) Here's the picture. http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x154/silver2ray/SH_01.jpg Is this normal? does this happen in all f models or have i gotten some defect model. Is there any way to repair it or should i return it?

 

Do you have Vaio Gate installed? If so, go to Sony eSupport website and download the Vaio Gate update under Drivers. That was a bug with Vaio Gate that has been fixed in the update. If you don't have Vaio Gate, then obviously some other software is causing the problem, but try that first if you do.

 

What if you were to use the Recycle Bin icon from your desktop? Right click over it. Does it allow you to empty it?

I, personally, have not run into problems like you've described with the recycle bin. It's not a hardware issue, most likely.

If you can't get it to work, I suggest restoring back to the clean install image you made and try the recycle bin as your first action. Install programs and let the recycle bin be your litmus test.

I went through several installs where one of my programs, I think Nokia PC Suite, would cause multiple instances of svchost.exe and a few other services. It was hogging RAM and driving me crazy. I eventually started over and installed Nokia FIRST to make sure the problem as out of the way before I did 4-6hrs of downloading and installing everything else.

 

im going to buy this laptop f13 but wat about the glossy screen??? is it a big problem?

 

I question your computer acumen. An eMachine?

 

The issue with the screen is its limited vertical viewing angle. Watching a video with a large swath of dark area, you get a dark blotch in that area. Not suitable for group viewing, but when viewing directly in front of the screen no problem. After monitor calibrations I find the screen is fine. Does not have a wow effect, but not a deal breaker by any means. Go to a retail store and watch a dark you-tube video, full screen, move side to side, and see for yourself. Also, some seem to have more light bleed than others. Mine is fine. Lots of discussion about it within the five threads.

 

thank u so much FISHON,,i cant go to retail store,,i live in egypt,,my uncle will travel to USA after 2 days and he will buy the vaio f to me(model..VPCF136FM/B) from bestbuy,,this is the link ( http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+...245308.p?id=1218240958342&skuId=1245308),,the resolution is 1600*900,,i need your opinion about this laptop because if it has issue(like the bad reflection) i cant return it beecause i will be in egypt and no international warranty

thank u so much i realy appreciate your help!

(sorry for my bad english)

 

here is the right link(vaio VPCF136FM/B,bestbuy,USA,1300$)

Sony - VAIO Laptop / Intel® Core™ i7 Processor / 16.4" Display / 6GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive - Black - VPCF136FM/B

 

Highly recommend you switch out the HDD 5400 rpm for something else. Comes with backlit keyboard- cool. I cannot really comment of the 1600x900 since I do no have one, but here is a poll that may help.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/470768-sony_f_series-owners-display-lcd-opinions.html

 

I have the 1600x900 display and it's very glossy. I don't have a problem with it though, but others (in more sunny climates) may.

Note* the red tape is what I'm using to cover my light sensor so my keyboard stays alit. Will switch to black soon enough.

Also, I never have my lappy in the position you see it now. It's always 90 degress to the left, and I have zero glare from that position. The colors are sharp and the display looks great.

 

all my fears r about the reflection of the glossy screen,,,but i think i will buy this laptop and stop thinking day and night about the screen!!!

 

It's a good investment. Like Fishon wrote though, swap out the 5400RPM HDD for a 7200RPM, Momentus XT, or SSD if you really want to see your VAIO do what it's meant to do.

 

THANKS ANSEIO FOR THAT,,u realy helped me!!,,i will give my uncle the money now and i will have this laptop ,,,,your opinion is very important for me

 

Ha! Ok, now I don't feel so bad anymore. I put little pieces of electrical tape over my keyboard sensor and over my web cam. (I'm a little paranoid about programs that hijack your web cam and I never use it anyway.)

 

when i play games on the laptop some people tell me to play without the battery because games and hard work decrease battery durability and life,,or i let the battery in the laptop ??

 

So does your keyboard stay lit all the time like this (using the tape), or it goes off after non-use then comes back on once you hit a key?

I like those widgets BTW! (if that's what they are called - )

Thanks!

 

It depends what you set it to in Vaio Control Center. You can set it to stay on all the time or to turn off after specific times of non-use, like 30 sec or 1 min.

 

Use a piece of electrical tape and cut it with an exacto knife to get it small and square about the size of this:

Anseio, I see you keep your toolbar to the left side. I use to do this with Vista, but Win7 does not allow for double columns. If you put enough icons in the toolbar you do get the toggle thing, but I find one column a waste of space and less convenient.

 

I don't even think my webcam has the drivers installed. I have no intention of ever using it. This was a piece of tape that I use on my finger tip when I'm working on some projects. It's got a great curve, so sits nicely in place. Will swap out with black tape when I start using that roll.

VAIO Control Center offers a battery care function. Wou won't need to worry about taking the battery out.

I have it set to not turn off, but I need to keep the tape over the sensor to keep it from turning off due to ambient light.

The items on the left are Windows Gadgets. Bottom to top... Intel Turbo Boost Monitor, Intel Core Series from OrbLog, and the iTunes Windows Gadget.

Above the gadgets and everything on the right are Rainmeter skins.
Above the gadgets is a photo viewing skin that I customized to show 3x4ratio images. It scrolls through the entire deck of Osho Zen Taroh Cards. The gadgets on the right are Bhitman's weather from DeviantArt. Above that are all Enigma skins that come with rainmeter that have been customized to my needs. CPU/RAM, storage, network usage all in one. gmail reader, 2 different notes, and gcalendar reader.

I prefer it on the left. Would actually like it if I could make it even narrower. I kinda would completely replace it with Rainmeter, but I don't like having a hidden taskbar. As far as the icons are concerned, they're pretty dynamic for me. the first 6 are static as far as I'm concerned. The rest are swapped out depending on my needs. Right now, I'm making a bunch of icons for my movie collection. They'll be swapped out when I go back to scanning film blah blah blah. What I don't have on my taskbar, I have pinned to my start menu.

I'm not a fan of the toggle thing either. I started w/ my taskbar on the bottom, but it cramped my screen real estate. I've got it set to how my eyes function. I notice more on the right, so I have my rainmeter to the right. I hate reading widescreen, so my IE and programs are centered between my gadgets and my rainmeter. The taskbar seems a better fit on the left side.

 

While I stop blowing my mind XD

IPS screens are not known for perfect blacks - virtually all of them will get a purple hue on a black screen if you look at them from a strong angle.

That said, I am using an Apple IPS screen right now that absolutely destroys my Sony's 1920x1080 when it comes to viewing angles. Sorry to hear about that luck with the 2311! It's soooo odd.

 

Stupid question guys, but im about to pull the trigger on this beast, and was wondering... does the F (1600x900) use a matte screen or a glossy one?

Thanks!!

 

European premium offers matted and all others are glossy.

 

Hey Gents! Long time since I've browsed/posted...I hate to say it but I have a small issue!

I just did a brand new clean install of windows and was installing all of my drivers...seemed to do everything correctly as everything is working beautifully except my backlit keyboard. It's stopped functioning! The Control Center is set up properly...but the backlit isn't coming on anymore....issue somewhere?

 

Does the backlighting come on at all during boot, before Windows loads? The backlighting is independant of the OS. The control center settings only tell it when to turn on/off, but not whether to function or not.

 

European matte is only 1920x1080. 1600x900 are all glossy in Europe.

 

not at all. I had only mattes screens before, and I was afraid of the glossy one too, but it turns out not bad at all, and overall it is a great laptop
I have Canadian custom-built model with Premium screen.

 

I have a question about this. how useful this function really is?

I mean what it does - it simly restricts the charge at 80%,
claiming that it will improve battery life in the long run,

but other sources on the net
(google)
or the guidelines to another proggy someone suggested earlier

BatteryCare


- they all say that lithium batteries do NOT deteriorate simply because they are being kept at 100%

what kills them is an excessive heating from heavy use. which will be the same no matter 80% or 100% charge it is.


are there any experts around to explain please!

 

Yesterday using Vaio care, hardware, hard drive test, when looking into my hard disk drives, up popped an H drive- then it just disappeared. I assume this is my recovery partition. Correct? How can I view this drive again without doing the same test?

 

guys i had a problem, so i had closed my laptop lid for 1 hour 30 mins with te laptop turned on. But when i tried to turn my laptop back on, it crashed and had a black screeen, i had lost all my work and had to press the power button. what caused this to happen. Im so ANNOYED.

 

I think that one way to find out could be to go into disk management and pick one of your other disks, like the DVD rom or something. Right click and choose the option to change drive letter/path. If H: is available as a drive letter, then it make sense that your computer temporarily assisgned it. If H: is not available, then it's in use by some disk. Recovery and system partitions don't have letters assigned to them in general. This will be interesting to find out.

My carnuba wax arrived today. Applied it. Taking a nap. Will buff it out when I wake up.

 

How can I get information on the fan rpm? Can't find this info anymore, sorry.

 

Everest Ultimate. There's a free trial you can download.

 

I don't have an answer for you, but I ran the quick hard drive diagnostic in vaio care (don't have time now to do the extensive test) and staring at it during the whole test, no other drive came up but my C drive. I also did what anseio suggested and looked in disk mgmt and when trying to change the drive path to another letter, I found that Q was a missing letter for me. I'm denied access to drive Q when trying to cd to it in command line. Not sure what Q is being used for but in disk mgmt it shows no letter associated with the recovery partition.

 

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I saw that over the summer Sony Style was offering their F13 series with a 256GB SSD and I see that the SSD is no longer offered. Does anyone know the reason why and whether they will offer SSD's again with the F series?

I'm looking to upgrade right now and I would like the performance an SSD. I;m wondering if I should just wait for Sony to reintroduce the SSD or move on to something else?

Thanks in advance!

 

The F13 (in the US at least) was never offered with SSD. The F12 was and that would've been what you were looking at over the summer. I don't know why they took that option away but you can do what it seems everyone who wanted SSD did on this forum even with the F11 and F12, which is buy your own SSD cheaper than Sony offered it anyway and use the HDD that comes with the laptop as a secondary or backup drive.

 

can anyone please anwser my above question, will the laptop crash and give me a black screen in the future if the lid is closed for long hours.

 

This is more of a question of Windows 7, I think. Long term sleep has resulted in crashes and BSOD's. I have them on occasion.

 

@ omaroo

http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=5362381

I have used the forum search function to narrow down the threads to look in
If you don't figure it out by reading those threads , post your question in the windows section
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/
And report back in this thread when you figure this out please
I am curious

 

Please don't ding me for being a non-computer techie type......that is why I come to this forum for advice. I've said more than once on this forum that I know very little about the technical side of all computers and I've always just used them in my work as tools to do whatever I needed to do. As for what my wife chooses to buy, if you are married, you must know that your own vote or advice on what she wants to buy doesn't count for very much!

 

And never walk away from a computer without saving your work Omaroo. Heck even the cat might step on the keyboard's "delete" key, ..let alone power failures and crashes. No, Resuming doesn't work well in Win7. (nor Vista, nor XP...)

 

Thankyou jpride. when the crash happened i looked into the details and it said something about vaiogateshell. And then i read your advise and followed it. installed the updated version of vaio gate and now iam getting those menus and windows explorer stopped crashing. Thank you very much. my old dell had given me endless pain in the past four-five years of it's usage so when i saw that my new sony also gave me trouble i really didn't want to endure it and i was thinking of returning it. so thanks a lot for the help.

Thank you anseio, I was able to empty recycle bin right from the desktop but i only remembered this option after you mentioned it. i had updated the vaio gate by then so the problem was gone. i was going to restore my laptop to the factory settings but i needed an external hard drive to do that so i couldn't do it. now i have to buy one. i think eventually i will have to format the hard drive and start new. that would be good. like you said it would get rid of all the applications that run behind and hog memory. i was trying to avoid the format but it seems i have to do it in the future. drivers can be downloaded but iam afraid of losing the softwares. i wonder if there is anyway to backup softwares like drivers.

 

Glad it's all fixed. As far as the last sentence, if you mean the software that came with your laptop, you can reinstall that from the recovery disks. If you haven't made recovery disks, you should do that ASAP - there's always the possibility you could erase your recovery partition when re-formatting (some people purposely do that but I wouldn't recommend it). If you go into Vaio Care and click on Recovery, you will see an option to reinstall apps and drivers. You will have the same thing on the disks.


If you meant other software you have installed that did not come with your laptop, although you can buy some program that will back them up, I would recommend against it. It is better to reinstall your programs fresh in my opinion after re-formatting a drive.

 

Myself, I purchased an F11 in January of this year. I knew some but not all that much about SSD, made the leap and I am so very happy to have done so. OEM SSD is still a Toshiba I believe and if I had to do it all over again I would have gotten a 5400 RPM HDD and switched it out for an Intel, Vertex, Samsung ( consider a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB SSD/HDD 7200 rpm) SSD. Very easy to swap it out. The Toshiba is okay but not strong with I/O applications. Still, my laptop boots under 30 seconds, Adobe programs open in 8 seconds, and everything else opens in a snap. Also, you get improved battery life, it's quiter ( no moving parts) and it's sturdier. You don't need a large capacity SSD, use it for your OS and other programs, for storage use a HDD- I have an external hard drive using eSATAp. By all means, if you can afford it, get a SSD. They are not perfect, they will slow down over time (check for TRIM, GC and capacity limitations) but for my OS and programs, I will never use a platter again.

As to why they are not currently offering a SSD, see jpride's comment.

 

How is the 1920x1080 screen on the Vaio VPC-F12M1E ?

Are the blacks really black?
How is the contrast ratio?
Viewing angles?

How is the build quality of the laptop?

 

Build quality is superb, especially the quality of the keyboard.

 

Agreed. Top notch keyboard. Can type so fast on it.

 

tomcat the first link doesnt work. Anseio and melody is this problem with all laptops, i thought it was specific on the f series. Thing is i always leave my pc on for long hours when im not on it and its vista and doesnt crash. Are you telling me i cant put my laptop lid for couple of hours without it crashing, if thats case that is poor. Dell XPS doesnt crash when lid is down for over 3 hours.

 

All I'm telling you is that it's a possible known issue, and not related to Sony VAIO F. I know nothing more on the subject, as I don't make my lappy sleep very often.

Here's a bing search:
windows 7 BSOD sleep - Bing