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

IE9 runs the tabs to the right of the combined address/search box:

 

Yuck, you can't read what the tab is about. And who wants to have 20 IE logos in his face all day? Unless it was a bunch of New windows? And why is Home & Refresh so far away from the Forward & Back arrows?

The address bar is eating too much tab real estate. Be prepared to be amazed, check Organize Your Tabs (Panorama) and Stay in Sync in this FF 4 page (videos).

Who's ahead of who?

To download the latest FF 4 Beta in 39 languages with Win 7, Mac or Linux versions.

*****

 

Hi all my friend gave me an extra battery for my F12 brand new. Now both my batteries are calibrated with the help from joes guide.

What should I do with the extra battery? Do I store it in my closet with a 40% charge? I am using the other battery on my notebook with an 80% charge due to Sony battery care software. I would have stored both away but I heard that it is a dumb idea to do so even if I use the A/C adapter a lot.

Also I ordered the black vaio by it looks gray. I saw pics online and it looks pitch black. Is the USA version of black different compared to other regions?

 

lol Joe,

I'm with ya on this one (But I said that earlier), however I downloaded IE9 (and ugh, dealt with a few Windows updates. Ugh), and if you're already using Chrome or FF it's probably not worth the trouble.

However, it does support favicons the same as any other browser. You can also drag a favicon to the dock to quicklaunch (but meh). That's also the only way you'll see the colored back/front buttons that match the favicon...

I'm going to agree with you - I don't get why they went that far and left the buttons on the right below the window controls when they could've pushed them up and made the frame even smaller. And then they could've pulled an OS X on us and nixed the fat Aero window border altogether

I Kinda hope Windows 8's UI cuts back on the really fat window borders.

 

Firefox Panorama - just wow. This feature make so much intuitive sense it's a real revolutionary change in browsing. A big leap in tab organization.

YouTube - Firefox Panorama

They don't call it Tab Candy in this video. I guess Panorama sounds better.

IE9: And what???? An Explorer symbol on each tab???? Nicely improved look and you gotta stick some crass marketing into my face. Unbelievable Microsoft.

 

Oh, for chrissakes!!! Whine much? They were new tabs and my full screen accommodates 21 of them before arrows kick in, as opposed to FF4's 14 tabs. Also, relocated refresh/stop to make you happy.

You need to understand something. I'm not trying to proclaim to the world that IE9 is better than FF4. It probably isn't. Except for the HTML5 and the physics drivers and the utilization of the GPU for graphics rather than CPU, and the smooth map zooming. I could care less about converting all of you to IE9. I just happen to PREFER it over FF. It's gonna be ok. Really. LMAO

 

Wow! I like that! Thanks for posting it.

 

Wow, that is a sweet feature. Might have to try it out after I'm done playing with IE9.

The joke's on you. They didn't mandate all tab headins to be MS IE logos. They were new tabs. So.... I gave you all a new photo w/ 21 different icons. Unfortunately, I can't show the graphics improvements (with a few glitches, but that's beta), or the physics engine. A bunch of fun little games and stuff on the IE9 Test Drive site.

 

Have you tried manually turning TRIM on in the registry using disabledeletenotify ?

 

It's the same video as the one found in the page I linked above.

A BIG THANKS to anseio who pushed me to try FF 4! Wow for Panorama! I just realized that I had 69 tabs opened so it took a minute or so for the tabs' thumbnails to be created & you can also name the tab collections that you create.

Contrary to anseio's I9 screen cap, there are some words on the tabs and if you use Panorama to select a collection you have a lot less tabs, just the ones you need for a given task.

And you can use the address bar to search & switch to your other tab which I just did to find this one I was using to write this post with the kw reply which is really fast for tab browsing.

 

I did no such thing. You went there of your own accord and desire to be contrary.

And... if you recall, my initial praise for IE9 was its maximized viewing space for which you boasted that FF4's was so much better, which I disproved in my screenshots. You then moved on to tabs, icons, and addons; not to mention, the implication that I didn't know how to use FF, which is a browser that I don't use.

 

Something stupid I've done here, you know VAIO always comes with those recovery partitions? I accidently cleared the recovery partition, and now it's ""unallocated". I do have the VAIO recovery disks though, so how can I reinstall the recovery partition

F11 here

 

How did you do that? That partition is protected & hidden & you can't delete it with Disk Management.

If you created recently a full system image with Windows Backup or some other utilities then you could use that to restore the drive including it's partition.

Or, I think you can create a backup of C, then use the discs to restore to factory state then use the C image to restore it to C only.

Could you give more details before attempting anything?

 

Yeah, what Joe said. Make a system image of C:\. Do a full system restore using recovery discs, then try to reimage C: from the backup image.

Regardless of what happens, be sure to backup your files (not an image) just in case that any ideas we have to help don't work and you have to start over from the beginning.

 

Yes you did by saying that I9 had some pluses because I am a FF fanboy. I would have not tried FF 4 Beta if it would not be for your I9 Beta comments hence the thanks.

"my initial praise for IE9 was its maximized viewing space for which you boasted that FF4's..." - FF 4 does maximize viewing space as shown in the screen caps. The tiny head room gain of I9 putting the address bar on the same line as the tabs comes at a huge usability cost for said tabs.

From FF 4 Under the Hood:

 

That, like everything else, is relative to your experience and preferences. It does not come at a usabtility cost to me. I don't need, nor have ever needed, supreme tab usability. I prefer the gains in viewing space to the gains in tab function. That has been my preference for the past 12 years. So, in that respect... FF4 may not be the best browser for me. It may be for you. That's cool.

At least you're not an apple/mac fanboy. They're intolerable.

 

I'm using this web browser. I find that it maximizes my productivity and is super fast

 

My understanding is disabledeletenotify only tells you whether trim is enabled or not, not if it's actually working. trim is enabled by default in windows 7, regardless of what kind of drives you have in your system. It does show 0. Line 169 of the Intel SSD Toolbox 'Data Set Manager Support' is showing 0. This equates to no TRIM. Any other input to this matter Will?

Yes, a rush to judgment. The bottom line is there are many exciting things going on with browsers at this time. Learn, tweak, get the feel for things, and don't forget to share what you find.

 

Yes, Win7 is supposed to be able to differentiate between SSD's and HDD's and change settings accordingly. ie: defragging. Oddly, my first Intel X25-M was not recognized as an SSD and showed up in the defrag schedule. My replacement X25-M is recognized correctly and does not appear in the schedule.

DisableDeleteNotify, to my understanding, is just to confirm that Win7 has its TRIM function enabled. It does not mean that the SSD will actually carry out the function when the TRIM command is sent from Windows. TRIM has to be enabled on the SSD, via firmware and therein lies your problem - Toshiba isn't updating the firmware. Ba$tards. Are you able to use optimization in the Intel SSD Tool?

It's been a fun browser, though the graphics can be a touch glitchy and some things cannot be clicked on. For example, I cannot click on certain articles on the Huffingtonpost. Those that can be scrolled across the top of the page. That it uses the GPU is quite an improvement. Some of the drive test features can utilize my GPU to the max. There's also a physics engine that's pretty sweet. And... the pinning of sites to the taskbar isn't just that. Certain sites pin with inherent attributes. Facebook can be pinned. You can right click over it and get links to your messages, news, friends... The browser is being designed to be more interactive with the hardware and software of the system, not just the user. It will be fun to see how it plays out over the long haul. The ability to use it with Aero Snap seems quite fun. Rather than having to open 2 pages in 2 windows and drag to snap... each tab can be dragged out of the window and snapped, then dragged back in when done. Nice for some side by side comparisons.

Now I just wish I could provide feedback, but I don't want to install the Windows Live login in order to do it. That's the kind of forced behavior that I frown upon. I HATE Windows Live. HAHAHA I've even finally made the switch away from Google.com until they change their stance on net neutrality. Will see how Bing is, unless any of you have some good search engine recommendations.

I digress.

I love my VAIO.

Oh, figured out how to delete individual system restore points, in case there's a favorite that you don't want to have automatically removed. Hmmmm.... that gives me ideas about how to permanently keep some restore points by moving them out of the folder and then moving them back in when needed. Oh, I could have system restore turned off for that matter then. Ah, too much work when it doesn't even impact SSD performance.

I digress.

I love my VAIO.

 

Hey anseio, FF 4 also has the combined address/search box by default: type a word & hit enter. You can change your default search engine by selecting the one you want in the Awesome Bar.

There is also this tiny addon Omnibar (first version came out in 2008) which lets you search simultaneously the multiple search engines you can customize in the Awesome Bar, all combined in the address bar.



Other cool addons: Tab Scope which adds instant thumbnail popups w/ navigation (including Refresh) to the tabs + you can customize the size of the two size thumbnails (via Firefox > Add-ons > Tab Scope > Options) which you can swap instantly by clicking the magnifying glass.



google translate shortcut.



Do you want a T-shirt?



*****

 

Fanboy!!!

 

Hello All F11/F12-Owners,

I am thinking of buying a F13Z1 soon (these should be available by the 2nd week of October in Switzerland).

Just one important question: (one of the main usage will be virtualisation using VMWare / XEN):

=> Did anybody figure out in the BIOS settings if both Intel
- VT-d ("Hardware-Forwarding to VMs") and
- VT-x ("Multicore-Processor Forwarding to VMs")
switches are present (must be somewhere in the processor settings), allowing these processor features to be accessible through the virtualisation SW to the running guest Virtual Machines?

P.S. I suppose that even for the F13, we won't get the back-lighted keyboard for the European market, or am I wrong?

Thank you for your feedback.

 

Ok Im having a rather serious problem. 4 more recovery dvds have failed to write. I have literally everything closed down, anti virus disabled, firewall disabled., nothing running except VAIO Care. I don't know how many more times I can do this before I waste all the dvds I bought today...

 

Try to burn something else from another program. Download DVDFab8 and copy a movie or something. See if the burn process completes.

 

Oh it can complete. I have about 3 recovery dvds but only the first disc. The second disc always fails.

edit: another disc 2 just failed. That brings the total to 8. What the hell...

edit 2: it failed again. I'm just about done here...

edit 3: I appear to be getting the same problem as these guys:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/332027-error-creating-recovery-disc-vaio-z.html

Sony.co.uk is down, trying to find updates for recovery center from sony.com but VAIO Update is telling me I don't need to install anything. VAIO Care still bugs me every time that I need to update though. This is infuriating.

 

Did you install any programs related to disc creation/ripping, etc? What is your anti virus? Did you try disabling it?

That's why I always suggest to create the discs out of the box.

What is the exact error description? Did you try ASSIST > Vaio_Care > Diagnostics > Hardware > DVD Drive? Did you reboot between failures? Can the discs be burned in Safe Mode? Did you check in your Event Viewer for error descriptions?

Did you try the suggestions in the thread you linked to?

 

It is out of the box. I haven't installed anything yet. I need to make a recovery disc before I can install the whole package on my Vertex 2. The only thing I did was put in my wireless internet password so I could go on the internet. Then I started making recovery dvds.

10th one failed. I'm out of dvd+r s again.

edit: diagnostics wont run on the dvd rom drive. I can put in any dvd and it gives me one of two errors:

1) disc is invalid. please insert a valid dvd-rom! (e-dvd-003)
or
2) disc is protected. insert a dvd-rom. (e-dvd-002)

edit 2: I can't play dvd movies or audio cds in windows media player. sigh. If it means anything I have the blu ray writer...

edit 3: can play dvds and audio cds now for some reason (I did nothing). Borrowed a stack of 10 dvd+rs from next door. Still failing disc 2 at exactly the same place (finalizing stage).

 

Just doing a friendly BUMP. All this browser talk has completely flushed everyone elses questions lolllll

By the way firefox for the win woohoo. I tried ie9 I know it is a beta but it blows

 

Trying a clean install for a second time and again it won't work.
When I kill the process at the time Joe tells me to, windows tells after it has rebooted, that The install wasn't done properly and needs to be done again. I can only press ok and I tried to restart it many times because maybe what happened with anseio could happen with me (windows would just start up after a few restarts). I also have an extra program that installs before restarting driver, it's a driver for my Lan-card. After that installs the setup starts the installation of restarting driver. I Also have 3 recoverydisc's and only 2 of them are being used in the entire process.
Now I will try to let it install some software before I kill it.
Hope you can help me.

Jef

EDIT: I SOLVED IT, Instead of killing the process in the application tab of task manager, I killed the process in the process-tab. To bad I don't remember the name of it.
I have 54 process running and using 17% of my 4 gig RAM.
Thank you Joe for the guide.

 

OH MY GOD IT WORKED THIS TIME. RAWOEARAAAAAGH!!!!

edit: I never figured out how or why, I just kept on throwing blank dvds at it.

 

Has anyone ever had problems connecting the esata drive?
I bought a Samsung Story Station Plus and found that this type does not support 64-bit win7.

 

Did you check the samsung website? Maybe they have drivers for it.

 

Did you install a virtual disk like Power ISO, Magic Disc, etc? It's been known to cause recovery discs burning problems on the F but usually it will not even let you make disc #1. You tried the ODD diagnostic with a blank DVD, right?

Well from what you wrote it seems that you have a defective optical drive, a very rare occurrence in this thread. Contact your Sony_support for replacement (ASSIST).

Since it's new & if you back up all your personal data to an external drive, why not try one last time by recovering to factory state using the recovery partition? Turn off your F & press ASSIST (or boot & press F10). You could recover only drive C.

Good luck!

Edit: You posted this while I was typing but you should remain worried if it does not pass the Vaio_Care ODD tests & it's absolutely not normal that it took so many tries to burn the recovery discs.

Why not try them & do a recovery now to see if they are any good?

 

I did. Installed from 2x recovery dvds onto a new Vertex 2 SSD and it worked fine in the end. It just took many attempts to get that 2nd recovery dvd to not fail when it was being finalized but I think that may have to do with doing a restore to factory settings before burning the last recovery discs (the one time it actually worked). The blu ray drive appears to be working after the factory restore too. I'll try the diagnostics again in a minute.

If anyone is wondering what an SSD in a VAIO F is like then here are the benches:







Still tweaking away and putting all my stuff on it but I'll post up some pics and reviews in a minute. Also I need to rep a few people including you Joe. The funny thing is that you don't seem to display your sig anymore so I had to feverishly browse back a few pages to find one of your sig posts with matt800's colour profiles, the clean install guide and so on. That sig was pretty useful.

Edit: Doh. Just realised I can click your name and all that stuff comes up in your profile. <slaps forehead>

Edit 2: notebookcheck's review is very accurate. They are right about pretty much everything including the fan. It isn't loud but it does speed up and down *constantly* (the whining sound people refer to). I was using my shuttle xpc to type up the last bunch of posts whilst the laptop was burning through recovery discs and my shuttle is vastly louder (it drowned out the F12's fan noise completely) but I don't find it annoying because its constant. When I switched off my Shuttle I could hear the F12 fan and it was quite annoying because it keeps speeding up and slows down and you notice it. A similar analogy would be traffic noise which is very loud but you can zone out and ignore it as long as there are no sudden and intermittent changes in sound and volume. I guess what I'm saying is that a fan profile that has constant high rpm is preferable to me than one thats lower rpm but highly variable.

 

Perhaps that's why those who use a notebook cooler (I use one) seem to find the fan noise less objectionable. My NZXT just produces a soft whooshing air movement noise and I don't notice the laptop fan at all as long as I have it on the cooler. However I don't seem to have or hear a whining noise that some have posted about even when it's off the cooler.

 

The other thing is this. I live out in the country where its stone dead quiet so you notice very small sounds and they can become hugely annoying if you start to pick up some kind of pattern to them. Like a dripping tap. If you can't zone out of it then it becomes a constant distraction that is always demanding your attention.

I commute into Dublin city centre and work in an office next to a server room with fan noise blasting at me all day and rush hour traffic outside. You won't notice the F12 fan noise in an environment like that because it will be completely drowned out by the constant racket outside and your ears will adjust to the constant racket outside quickly easily mostly because its constant and there is no noticeable or objectional pattern to it. Its also terrible for your hearing but I guess you get my point.

Its a very subjective thing and very different depending on your environment. I don't play acoustic guitar at home late at night for example because its so quiet out here that even lightly picking the strings makes a sound that is noticeable through walls. I played a wedding reception last year by contrast where the crowd noise was so loud I could barely hear myself playing when I was thrashing it. I needed an amp just to hear what I was playing and the guitar couldn't carry more than 2 or 3 feet before it was inaudible. Most people won't be living in an environment as noisy as that but you would be surprised at how loud traffic is if you live near a busy road. I imagine city dwellers will find the noise altogether more tolerable if theres alot of traffic going through.

Completely unrelated: the rubberised palm rest is awesome. I've taken to my turning my chair sideways and leaning my arm on it like I'm on a couch. And it kind of does feel a bit like you have a leather coach when you dont. One with only a single arm rest. Its weird.

 

Congratulations on getting things working finally! I was about to post that your numbers seem a bit slow, but then tried my own SSD again and they were similar to yours, only my seq read was much higher (254 MB/s), but your write speeds are much better. I remembered that my 4k and acc time numbers were MUCH better after some registry tweaks I had played around with that I decided I didn't like because a few of them reaked havoc on the turboboost feature and my cores were going haywire while trying to watch a blu ray rip file (.m2ts). So, I did a system restore and was done with that.

There are a few tweaks you can make to your system to help prevent wear on your SSD. After trying them all out, I definitely have opinions as to which ones I stayed with and which ones to not do. I'd be happy to share that with you in private message if you'd like (so as to not clutter this thread too much). You can also poke around here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...thread-benchmarks-brands-news-advice-682.html

 

Funny.....I live out in the country too where it's super quiet. But I like playing my guitar! Fortunately my wife likes it too so she doesn't make me stop!

I do get your point!

 

So you say that you did nothing to your F, the disc #2 failed 10 times but then you restored to factory state & it then worked perfectly?

Are you sure you did not install any cr@p that the restore fixed?

Your fan probably goes up & down because of background processes kicking in/out. Download the free Process Explorer to see them in action. My fan is virtually constant but then I have a clean/lean system and the F is propped up on sticks to help natural convection cooling. You can see in this graph that peaks in fan speed corresponds to peaks in CPU activity. You said that you would prefer a fan running at higher speed all the time but then that would consume more battery.



Thanks for the feedback on my sig.

 

I think its a system repair disc that needs to be created in order to boot from, to restore the whole computer from a full system image backup, as distinct from the recovery discs. (If that makes any sense )

 

That is correct. Like the recovery discs, however, the repair disc is only really necessary if Windows will not boot at all. You can initiate a restore from image via Windows Backup. At least I think you can. I'm pretty sure that did that on my last re-image.

 

Exactly but you can also restore only part of it. Windows Backup will remind you to create a System repair CD.

Search your own computer: Start > Help & Support > search: restore backup and compare to search: Vaio_Recovery.

I created only 1 set of Recovery Discs but refresh the system image every week. I keep 2 sets of system images of the past 2 weeks on an external eSATA drives & replace the older one every week. I also have a system image copy at a friend's house in case mine burns down or something else. Years ago, a cinematographer friend & I spent the night bar hopping in Montreal and when we got back at his apartment at dawn, a backhoe was tearing down the last remaining walls of his building. So in case of a problem like a dead HDD, the most I will loose is 1 week of work/updates/tweaks. Worst case scenario if the most recent image fails: 2 weeks old complete system & files.

BTW, after using it for a day I can say that Firefox 4 Beta is noticeably faster & cleaner than 3.6 & the awesome integrated and encrypted Firefox Sync feature works seamlessly when logging in on an other computer & back again on the F so I don't use Xmarks anymore to backup my bookmarks, tabs, passwords, customizations & history. That feature can also come in handy in case the browser crashes as an extra protection besides the crash proof feature to recover all your opened tabs, which did not happened yet in my case.



*****

 

Well, Fanboy, I do have to say that the load time of FF4 is nicer than FF3, like you said. I like that things are developing to be cleaner and simpler.s

 

Good! Did you decide on the color of your T-shirt?

 

I have an Sony Vaio F Series computer.
My fan is really loud when Im doing something like playing SC2.
Hell, it gets loud when I'm playing Runescape.

How do I fix this? Will my laptop overheat at all?

 

1- Don't play games.
2- Wear headphones w/ the added advantage of having better BOOM! sounds.
3- Prop up the back of the F about 2cm or use a laptop cooler for better ventilation & lower temperatures.
4- Get the free CPUID's HWMonitor (or an other utility) and log the temperatures to see if there is any overheating. CPU max is 100c, GPU max is 105c. Data is from Intel & Nvidia.
5- Get the most recent video driver on Nvidia.

NOBODY so far in these F owner's threads 1, 2, 3 & now 4 reported an overheating F. Now if one over-overclock's then that's an other story.

Any other feedback on your F besides the fan? Like, dislike?

 

Your fan is going to be loud on SC2. That game has high demands. Get a high quality laptop cooler to help take the load off. I recommend the CoolerMaster Notepal U2. JB recommends a wooden block. Both will help you out a bit.

JB - Haven't chosen on the shirt. I don't wear black and refuse to wear orange, so perhaps you'll want to send me a blue IE shirt?

 

Nope. Like I said, first priority was to make an OS/install disk so I could then remove the toshiba HDD and slap a fresh Win7 install on my Vertex 2. There was never any intention to install anything on the toshiba HDD. VAIO update was ballsed up from the word go. After reinstalling the OS from recovery discs, it updates fine now and VAIO care doesn't bug me about it.

Do you remember posting that list of VAIO software where you flag the ones that are useful and the ones that are pretty much just junkware? I wouldn't mind dredging that post up.

I did follow the clean install guide but its different for the F12. Somebody else posted the amended procedure on his F12 but his one is different to mine. Well they were the same except that his didn't install all the mcafee/norton crap. Mine did.

As for the ssd benches. This is the last one I'm doing for the time being because ultimately its just a bunch of huge and pointless writes:



The ATTO benches were in line with what I expected. 4k reads and writes are a little lower than I expected in both AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark but I'm not bothered. In normal use its noticeably much faster than any hdd I've ever used and I don't think its worth it trying to crank up some synthetic bench numbers by disabling/defeating all the power saving features/cstates that make my computer run cool and give me what little battery life I can get out of a multimedia notebook. I never expected desktop PC figures either way (like 30mb/s 4k reads 75mb/s 4k writes. Not on a PM55 chipset.)

4kqd32 writes are still well over 10 times higher than the old Indilinx drives which should put things back into perspective!

 

Alright, thanks. I also dislike how sometimes when I close my laptop, theres this kind of cracking sound on the hinge.

Is this the cooler your talking about? Notepal U2 W/2x 8cm Fans 14in & Under 15in-16innb Cooler: Amazon.ca: Electronics Thanks btw.

 

So I presume that it's not your team that won the 2010 FIFA World Cup?