Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *part 4*

For those who want a nice and good set of desktop gadgets, this OrbLog danish (I presume) site provide the best of them, IMHO.

I personally use this 3:



To properly show the core temperatures, the WinRing driver should be installed and the results seems quite accurate according with Everest Ultimate.


I'm still looking for a nice disk activity monitor, without succes.

Samurize is also a good alternative, but you must like to code and create your own scripts. And to get some data, you must have SpeedFan (that Joe Bleau hate so badly ) installed.

This is what I'm using right now:

 

Has anyone attempted to replace/install a aftermarket sound card?

Don't really like Realtek HD, common, it's a multimedia laptop I attach it to 7.1 speakers on my home theater so I need something better.

 

Got a few questions since i'm looking for a new laptop and the sony vaio F12 (i5, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, full HD) seems most interesting at the moment.

First off, what games and at what settings can you play? (i'm just wondering, i don't play that much games but it would be nice if i could play some recent games)

My sister bought a vaio about a year ago and the battery life is pretty short, is this still the case with the new models?

And last, why would you recommend a vaio (or why not)? I'm mainly looking for a laptop to replace my 5 year old PC. So it will be used for kind of everything, internet, movies, music, some games etc.

 

Joe,

I re-ran this a few minutes ago after my TRIM was finished (TRIM occurs during idle time and I was asleep!). My system memory speed was slightly slower and my sequential disk read was just a touch lower, but CPU data was the same, GPU data skyrocketed and overall video and disk performance increased.

Here are the results:

 

Here is my run.

 

+1 for your rep! Hopefully, others will run this and we can get a good idea of where we stand, if there are problems with our machines, and even how we stack up against others.

 

Now available at geeks.com. They just sent me an email.

2.5" USB 2.0/eSATA Aluminum External SATA HDD Enclosure (Black) - Supports up to 500GB & Power over eSATA! HE-2521B

Never knew. Their store is 27 miles from me in Oceanside CA.

 

I have bought several of those and they are great. Obviously, if you have read past posts, my SSD drive only ran at 125MB/sec in the enclosure, but perhaps that was a driver issue of some sort. I may purchase another one (or 3). They are great!

 

Just wondering if the kit includes the single power over esata cable for use with the F, difficult to tell from the website

 

All of the ones that I have purchased in the past have included the PoeSATA cable...about 2 feet long.

 

Slim universal charger replaces bulky power bricks by the end of the year.

YouTube - Slim universal charger replaces bulky power bricks

 

My contribution to this gathering of information.

 

My coworker recently purchased an Asus G73- i7 720, ATI 5870 graphics card and a 7200 RPM HDD. Looking at the graphics card performance this unit seems to smoke the F series.

 

Again, you find the best things!!!

That's definitely on my list.

 

True, that graphics card smokes the F series, but it should...it is the top mobile card there is right now and the G73 costs 20-25% more than the F series. In February, the G73 was my choice for my new laptop, but after hearing of all the problems, failures and weeks waiting for repairs or replacement, I decided to go with the F.

If I was a gamer, I probably would have gone for the G73 anyway. Because I NEVER game, the F series was much more attractive to me. The G73 graphics results are very impressive!

 

Anyone has experienced with the constant pop-up of java scripts update check with their F11 720QM 8G RAM European version? Mine has this message asking if I want to install the latest java scripts (jucheck.exe). I click yes a number of times and have the latest java installed a few times but it still keep coming up.

I don't want to disable jucheck in case of security problem. I don't think it is a virus becuase i have this for a month since the beginning when the laptop was brand new.

Recently I removed McaFee completely and installed Kespersky NIS. It was a big mistake! Immediately afterwards my laptop crashed and I encountered severe javascript errors while using IE and Firefox browers. In the end, I have done a complete system recovery using the recovery partition to restore the computer to factory installations. Now I still get this annoying java script update pop-up.

 

Looking at command lines with winsat -? I saw that you can run only the drive assessment that defaults to C: and looking at the report I noticed the -drive command so now I can run the assessment on the drive of my choice & what is really cool is that I partitioned the main drive to C with OS & most used files which by default is located on the outer part of the platter where it is faster & D for data less often accessed.

Comparing the 2 assessments, one can see that C is faster on some aspects. The numbers like 6.2 are WinEI index. One can shrink C & create D after the fact to speedup his machine and make backup of C faster & smaller, check this tutorial: How to Shrink a Partition or Volume in Windows 7.

The winsat trick is: > Close all programs (disable or run in Silent Mode your anti virus) > Start > search: CMD > right click & Run as Administrator then type: winsat disk -drive D: & hit enter, replace D with the drive of your choice. It's much faster than running winsat formal (2 min.) but SSD owners: note that it's also running a write test!

So this is for the same main drive Seagate 7200.4 but looking at the speed of the two partitions: C vs. D.

C:\Windows\system32> winsat disk (defaults to C)
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 83.42 MB/s 6.2
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 1.33 MB/s 3.7
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 3.34 ms/IO 6.2
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 11.58 units 6.9
> Responsiveness: Long IOs 8.54 units 7.5
> Responsiveness: Overall 98.93 units 6.8
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Write 91.09 MB/s 6.4
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 6.667 ms 5.4
> Latency: 95th Percentile 63.813 ms 1.9
> Latency: Maximum 200.425 ms 7.3
> Average Read Time with Random Writes 15.053 ms 3.4
> Total Run Time 00:02:06.56

C:\Windows\system32> winsat disk -drive D:
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 69.95 MB/s 5.9
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 1.59 MB/s 4.0
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 3.69 ms/IO 5.9
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 12.92 units 6.5
> Responsiveness: Long IOs 9.54 units 7.4
> Responsiveness: Overall 123.34 units 6.7
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Write 70.70 MB/s 6.0
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 7.265 ms 5.2
> Latency: 95th Percentile 77.476 ms 1.9
> Latency: Maximum 499.444 ms 3.3
> Average Read Time with Random Writes 16.035 ms 3.2
> Total Run Time 00:02:13.02

Sorry, I did not find an easy way (yet) to post a table with columns side-by-side. If you run the test a few times, there are some variations.

If more people post their winsat formal, we could make a post regrouping the results for comparison. Either by screen capture or: To copy the data: right click the top bar of the CMD window > Edit > Select all, then right click again the bar > Edit > Copy & paste in Notepad or whatever.

*****

 

I do not know why it keeps popping up, however, this is something I do not keep in startup. Why waste system resources so Java can tell me a few times a year there is an update. Disable jusched.exe in autoruns and run a program update checker ( I use Filehippo) once in a while. http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/

 

I can stop it running. Besides the annoyance, now I have a major problem.

After the full system recovery, the same javascripts error has come back in the middle of me using the Firefox broswer; I cannot open my Hotmail messages. When I click my email, I see "javascript" at the left bottom corner of my laptop and also it causes instability of Internet Explorer causing it to crash.

I am really stuck becuase I tried previously updating javascripts and it didn't stop the javascript error.

 

Optimize your system with these free Win 7 Tools. Navigate to: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Performance Information and Tools\Advanced Tools OR > Start > search: performance information (for the lazies).

All are useful but I added arrows to my favorites. I use the free Microsoft's Autoruns > Logon tab to speed up startup. Beats msconfig by about 1 km IMO.



One can also run: ASSIST > Vaio_Care > System Care > One Click Care as the report links to some of the tools above.

 

Hi,
Do you know when F13 will be released?

 

Hey Penicillin. Don't Salk. It'll be here soon. Very fungi.

 

Send me $10 via PayPal & I will PM you my best guesstimate.

 

I'm ready to send $10 via PayPal if you give me an exact date

I heard that VAIO F screen is bad, I'm waiting for VAIO F13 hoping they will fix screen's viewing angles issue.

 

It depends what screen the F is equipped with, the Vaio Sreen is terrible and Vaio premium Screen is wonderful.

here is my winsat formal. Good or bad, you deside.

 

Just because it's you, I give you a PenaltyFactor of 6.0 so end result is: bad!

 

Pew, I got way easy

EDIT: Someone that have OC and/or UV the CPU?

 

I'm talking about VAIO F (US Version) with Full-HD, EU doesn't come with Core i7-820QM and is more expensive.

 

Are you kidding me????? NONE of you have found this response to be hilarious???

Fishon...I would give you a rep point if I could!

 

I don't know about that one but the deLock one that Joe recommended looks almost exactly like it and that comes with an eSATAp cable. I ended up buying one too and you pretty much get everything you need all in the package (including a tiny little screwdriver and cable ties).

 

The unbranded Delock 42465 is back on Fleabay for $20, just search title & description HE-2521B and they ship worldwide for $34 total. I got one of those since 4 months, stays cool & works fine.

For people in the US, Geeks has it here for $14 + shipping = $20 total. With their shipping rates to Costa Rica, the one on Fleabay was cheaper.

See my old post about it here w/ more photos: VAIO_F Power Over eSATA Port & ext Enclosures Benchmarks



Just ordered 2 more as a US friend told me tonight that he is coming to Costa Rica in 8 days so I got 2 for $37 shipped to him, beats the Startech S2510PESAT @ $32 + the missing separate eSATA/USB combo cable for $8.

*****

 

Itn't there a similar premium screen in US?

 

No matte, only glossy 1080p in North America. See bottom of: Vaio_F Series Monitor Calibration and Users Created Profiles Roundup for more explanations.

 

Those are nice gadgets, at the moment I'm playing around with Rainmeter and I really do like it . To give a couple examples, this is a suite that you can customise what you have Kotoko and this is an example of a desktop EveryDay & a very nice one JSMorley's Desktop. So yea just to show you all can get some custom things with your desktop without harming performance too much .
Mine is attached below.

_________________

Fishon the universal power brick looks very promising if it can deliver a high power throughput , thanks for linking all these finds!

__________________

My F12 is sitting at a depot somewhere I'm guessing near me ¬_¬ been there for 3 days now and somehow I can't get it delivered yet, modern world huh.

 

Original post here.

I must say this is goes to show the failings of running a technology company as a business. You get what you pay for in staff and training... but who on earth could really pay enough to provide proper support for the few of us with proper questions that aren't the usual. You should have reached level 2 support faster or something I don't know but that kind of transcript is very sad...

As far as my opinion goes I don't think Sony_can just go and say to you yea go upgrade the HDD when they have no instructions for it so fair enough they want to protect themselves so if it goes wrong they can say well your fault. Then again as Joe says, why allow upgrading RAM... Ah well, for those who want to upgrade their HDD I agree with the others just make sure you have your old HDD and if you need to send back your Vaio_then just put it back in wipe the drive if you used it as an external and really how can Sony_ever say you swapped HDDs and voided the warranty? They can't .

 

Hi, I just received my F12 (VPCF12KFX/B) a week ago from sonystyle(US). Does any one have the same model b/c the model code at the left bottom of the screen only says VPCF1. I know the previous ones like F11 had the whole code written.

 

Any feedback you would like to share after using it for one week?

 

Just a quick tip I've seen mentioned a few times PS3 streaming and just wanted to give a link to the software I use to stream .mkv and such to my PS3 it just works and I love it because before I had to transcode HD videos which was just annoying if you have to do it in bulk. So if you stream to your TV via PS3 then I'd give it a go, the link is to the googlecode page hope this helps a few.

PS3 Media Server

 

I've used my F11JFX/B to encode MKV files from M2TS since May. For last two weeks, Handbrake STOPS encoding (no error message) at about the 0.5% encoding mark. Has happened on 4 different BlueRay discs.

Anyone else having similar problems? W7 - all updates - nothing strange or new - Handbrake version 0.9.4. AnyDVD current version.

Interesting: Run SAME m2ts file on my HP desktop and it encodes that same file fine with W7 and same Handbrake version.

Appreciate and suggestions. I'm scratching my head!

 

Can no one answer these questions?

 

In the very first post on the very first page of this thread you will find the ability to answer most of your questions, including gaming here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...-lounge-part-2-a-post5986590.html#post5986590

You asked "Can no one answer these questions?" Well, can you not research and read?

Feel free to join in the discussion here. This is an Owner's Lounge. Most of us here either own or have ordered an F-series machine. Not only are we discussing the workings and shortcomings of this series, but several very kind people have been good enough to find most of the topics discussed and compile them into a very useful guide.

There have been many, many thousands of posts...so many, in fact, that this is the FOURTH thread in this series. The search feature of this forum works very well, but in all honesty, a post such as yours is sort of a slap in the face to those who have come before you and assembled vast knowledge of this series into one area.
Please take advantage of the knowledge that Irudyk, Joe Bleau, Melody Master, Mangosango and many others have provided in one area at the very beginning of this thread. Perhaps then you will not be upset that nobody has answered your question.

 

Wow i thought it wouldn't be a problem to answer a few simple questions but apparently it is...

I have searched but i couldn't find much info/reviews about the laptop i'd like to buy so that's why i came to ask my questions here, and the post about gaming you linked is with an i7 processor, mine is an i5.

Anyway thanks for your help, guess i'll go ask on a more friendly forum.

 

I'm going to Computer Greeks.com retail store this weekend and am planning to buy it.

 

Two out of the three questions you asked can easily be found with a little searching. This is a friendly forum and Willscary is one of the most generous posters. Some of us have taken time out of our lives to help others and we appreciate a little research from newbies before we answer another question for the umpteenth time. There are many reasons people have purchased this unit. With the F series, most feel you get the best features, appearance, and brand for the price. If you read some national reviews they will disagree with this, and recommend a HP Envy or Dell Studio 16 or 17 instead, saying the F is too high priced. I adamantly disagree, but remember, while many features are objective, many are not. For example I love the look and feel of the keyboard, but what 'price' do you put on this yourself? The Dell Studio 17 has a plastic feel to me and the keyboard as too much 'play'. I have had a very bad experience with HP, but this may be of no consideration to you. You should get approx one and a half hours of battery life maxing the unit and maybe two and a half going easy on it. Sony offers a 9 cell as well. I cannot recall anyone here that has the i5 and has posting gaming info. Mangosango is the gamer extraordinaire, so look into his postings, but he has the i7 720 I believe. I hope this helps.

 

Imageshack - imag0143.jpg
Imageshack - imag0144y.jpg

taken with camera like 10 cm away from screen.

that is the problem i have as i wrote about earlier. the colors is a little bit dislocated so to speak.

 

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. Faster searches, smarter predictions, instant results:

Google

about:

Google Instant Use the link above. In my area the link from here just got me back to regular google.

 

I've a i5 and games works great. Empire Total War, Napoleon Total War works on a maxed out settings (not full HD but slightly lower resolution). GTA IV runs smooth but the settings are lower than those of the games previously mentioned. Counter-strike Source runs very smooth on completly maxed out settings and on the Full HD resolution. Football Manager 2010 is a CPU taxing game and this also runs very smooth with several other programs running and with I'm using a very large database (uses a lot of ram, you get it when you are familiar with the game).

Sorry I didn't replied on your first question but I looked over it. There are a lot of post like yours.

 

I remember, you are the one who had a perfect display & exchanged your F because the fan was whistling on occasions. Maybe others can chime in but my F was doing that but it does not anymore, maybe a question of break-in period.

You posted a link to a video where one can hear the whistling:

So you exchanged the F and now the screen is not as good as the other one:

The ClearType Tuner (found in: Control Panel > Display > ClearType Text Tuner) screen shots you posted does not work for testing as the point of this is to tweak the type focus through 4 panels with 6 choices each where the user subjectively selects the box that seems the most in focus. It's a great tool, I used it but not for testing your problem. BTW your second image is completely out-of-focus. There is also a Moiré pattern created by the relation of the LCD's pixel grid & the grid of your camera's sensor.



Eizo makes expensive high-end monitors and have this free utility (multilingual interface): EIZO Monitortest

It's small, standalone (means no install needed) and towards the end of the test, check for the Convergence Tests which seems to be your problem with the blue slightly misaligned. Especially telling is the panel with the tiny white dots grid which are created with RGB (Red, Green & Blue colors) so if your display is misaligned then they will not be pure white. Same as the following panel with the 8 points white type on solid black backgroud. If you could take sharp macro photos of those, you can post them here & also chat with Sony_support & give the link to the analyst which can reply live to your concerns after viewing your images.

In my case the colored crosses panel does not seem to form a perfect straight line but the rest of the tests results is next to perfect.

I know it's too late in your case but for others: if your machine is perfect except for a small problem, weigh for yourself if it's worth the risk to exchange it for an other machine that may have worst problems. Kind of like changing queue at the bank or supermarket.

*****

 

Here are the winsat formal scores for an European F11 with an Intel Core i5 520M, 4GB RAM and a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT:

 

Using the last test, the 24/24 view angle, and adding some color, you can really see the deficiency in the screen. Still in my mind this the greatest shortcoming of the F.