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

Before my CTO arrives, I can't help but worry about the palm rest fading. What do you guys think about this?

http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/sony-vaio-vgn-fw140e-cases-covers-skins-shields.php

Would it fit the F12?

 

My F11 has is a hard gray plastic and I can tell already it will never fade or wear. Or are you getting one with the look of lundstrom.emil?

 

Correct. Although after comparing pictures, it looks like that shield won't fit the F12. The trackpads are in different locations and the sides of the keyboard are slimmer on the F12.

Maybe I could just find invisibleSHIELDs for handheld devices big enough to cover where my palms would rest...

 

I do not think there is a need for one at all. I've seen plastic wear to a point in which the underlying white starts to show. This is a very hard material and I do not believe this will discolor, fade, or looked worn out in the least. Maybe Joe could have used one from the looks of the pot marks on his. How did he do that? 'Field work' I guess.

 

Now I'm a bit confused. I looked back at the pics of the F with the fading and it appears to have a smooth surface. But lundstrom's looks like it has a rough/textured surface. Is that the signature collection series? Because that's not what I ordered since the cost was much higher...



vs

 

Interesting:

Chromium Blog: Chromium Graphics Overhaul

 

Joe uses his under very extreme conditions. I can only speak for myself and the fact I've had mine for almost eight months. I see zero indication the 'stubbles' are starting to wear at all. Maybe others are having a different experience.

 

Or is it because that first picture is an F11? Do all F12 have palm rests like lundstrom?

 

In sweden it is only the F12Z (might also the F11Z) that has the rubber textured palm rest, which means in Sweden the most expensive non customizable modell. Do not know how things is elsewhere.

 

Well, it looks like USA has the smooth palm rests according to the F gallery on the USA sony style site. I guess I'll look into putting those handheld shields on it.

 

I have a 2-week old F12 (VPCF121GX) and my palm rest is textured like the first picture.

 

Is there any way to adjust the manner in which the Automatic Brightness Control behaves, other than simply on or off (via S1>Display>Automatic Brightness Settings - or otherwise)?

I like the idea of automatic brighness adjustment, but not the default implementation's brightness "curve". Here's what I'd like to alter - when the room is fully dark, I'd like the screen brightness to be a bit brighter than the automatic setting, even with the "manual brightness setting" (Fn>F6) full up...

Is there any way to do this with Automatic Brighness Control set to "on", or must I turn off the Automatic Brightness Control altogether and use just the manual Fn>F6 control?

 

So I just bought a brand new sony F12 laptop a few weeks ago. For some reason every time i turn it on after about 15 minutes the laptop freezes. I have to manually turn it off and then turn it back on again then its fine. Has anyone else have this problem? How do I fix it?

 

Now it won't even turn on. I'm using a different computer right now. I just bought the laptop two weeks ago.

 

Bad news here!

Last month, my hard drive make this squealing/squeaking sound, and my F froze, except for the cursor/mouse, which continued to respond to my controls.

Then, Windows gave me a message saying explorer.exe has crashed.
Before I could respond, I got a blue screen of death, paired with a buzzing sound coming from the speaker.

After a reboot from the crash, after the VAIO logo, a black screen with a message saying "Operating System not found_" appeared.

I shut off my F again and booted. This time it booted fine. Went on the computer, no files were missing or corrupted.

Until now the exact same process repeated again. All the files are still fine. (I have JoeB's clean install.)


I am using the aftermarket HDD I bought to replace my sh1tty OEM 5400RPM Toshiba. It is the Seagate ST9500420ASG 7200.4 16MB

Same as the ST9500420AS (without the G). The one with the G is the more power efficient version.
Is my hard drive really dying? I've had it for what.. 1 month?

Please shed some light on this. Not gonna loose 237 GB worth of stuff. I already backed up a system image with Win7's default utility, but that's not gaurenteed to work.

Could it be simply a loose SATA connection?

My hard drives read speeds are normal though, almost exactly the same as the speed's before the incident.

HD Tune Pro 4.50 says my HDD's health is OK (green).

-------

Edit:

I have the F116FW (Asian VAIO, bought in Taiwan)
i7-720, 4GB DDR3-1333, GT 330M 1GB VRAM, 1080p Matte (Idk if it's premium)

 

An immediate hard drive failure is never impossible. My girlfriend upgraded to win7 from vista and did so with an upgraded HDD and she got such bad luck from going through to failing drives before she was finally fine. Just because you just got it doesn't mean it isn't a bad drive.

 

If I hadn't bought a customized Vaio I would return it.

 

Any new laptop from any manufacturer is susceptible to defects. I doubt every unit shipped from any other companies has been flawless 100% of the time. Seems like just some bad luck. Can't you just exchange it?

 

When you say that it won't "turn on", do you mean that you get the VAIO screen, but nothing past that? Or you get nothing at all? Meaning... are you getting past the BIOS stage of boot up?

If you are, download and burn Ultimate Boot CD. It's a compilation of a lot of different programs used for diagnostic and repair. You'll be able to use it to at least check the HDD for errors.

If you can get past BIOS, can you reinstall your OS.

If you cannot get to, or past, BIOS, you need to call Sony as there's definitely a problem.

 

when i turn it on i get nothing, just a black screen. it still technically turns on but it doesn't get past the black screen. then after a while the fan gets really loud.

 

ok after waiting a while the laptop was able to turn back on again. it appears every time i open internet explorer the laptop freezes. does anyone know what the problem could be? do you think i should uninstall IE and if so how do i go about doing that? i can't find it listed under "uninstall program".

 

Have you scanned for infections? (I know you've only owned it for several weeks but it couldn't hurt)

Personally, I'd rather keep IE for Microsoft based sites that aren't friendly with other browsers.

I'd try re-seating the memory and hard drive also. If none of that helps you might try reinstalling your OS like anseio said. If that still doesn't work I'd think it's a hardware issue and begin communications with Sony on a replacement unit.

 

yeah i have scanned for infections and found none. i used avast and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. if i uninstall IE i could always reinstall IE in the future if i ever decided i needed it.

i'm sorry but how do you go about re-seating the memory and hard drive?

 

http://www.docs.sony.com/release/VPCF12_series.pdf

Pages 102-106 for memory,

and replacing the HDD: http://www.monteverde.org/images/Sony_Vaio_F11/VAIO_VPCF_Hard_Drive_Replacement.htm (Credit to Joe Bleau)

The PDF has additional troubleshooting tips to follow.

 

No, this is not ok.
5.1.0 is lower than 5.1.2

 

Man... part 4 already? Sorry to barge in, but for those who care :

Gaming performance of the F11 *Part 3*
(parts 1 and 2: GAMING PERFORMANCE PART 1, GAMING PERFORMANCE PART 2)

I have an F11 with the Core i7 720QM, nvidia gt330m (and US glossy 1080p screen).

My video card driver version: 258.96
(Update your drivers from Nvidia)

-----------------------

PCSX2 emulator - Final Fantasy XII
Plays just fine @ 48-60 fps (60fps is the target for most emulated games).
Here are the settings for the sound and graphics settings:

VIDEO LINK: Final Fantasy XII

-----------------------

Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA 4)

VIDEO LINK: GTA IV Part 1/2, GTA IV Part 2/2

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Final Fantasy XIV (14) Online Open Beta

To illustrate my point about how poor the performance in populated areas is, here are 2 videos of the game on my desktop PC (Athlon II X3 440 + ATI Radeon 5770). Notice that the FPS in the city is similar between my much more capable desktop and the F11 (my desktop handles much better than the F outside of towns):

FFXIV Open Beta on 5770 Part 1/2, FFXIV Open Beta on 5770 Part 2/2

The only way I got this game to look nice and run decently was to OC my GPU to 730/915/1515 (Core/Mem/Shader)

VIDEO LINK: FFXIV Open Beta - Part 1/2, FFXIV Open Beta - Part 2/2

-----------------------

HAWX -
YouTube - Hawx Gameplay on Sony Vaio F11
YouTube - Hawx Benchmark on Sony Vaio F11

Game is fully playable. During gameplay average of 40fps - rarely ever dips below 30 (only on 1 mission - Typhoon, but that's because it's raining like crazy and you're flying over Tokyo).

The benchmark averages 36fps without fraps (much smoother than when fraps is recording).

More to come later

 

Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows Features On/Off. From there, you can disable IE.

You may also want to try redownloading and reinstalling IE from Microsoft's site.

 

It does not matter for how long you own the laptop, what matters is the settings you modified or third party cr@p you installed. There are several troublesooting tools in ASSIST > Vaio_Care as well as wizards & help files. Start there.

You say the problem appears with Internet Explorer then the problem must be caused by it, no? Try this search, seems the problems are on several brands of machines: "windows 7" internet explorer freezing computer.

Try downloading the free Firefox or Google Chrome & see if the problem is still there when you surf.

Then, you could check in your Windows 7 Event Viewer, it should tell you what caused the crashing.

If you don't know how to troubleshoot your laptop, the ultimate way to find out if it's a hardware or software problem is to backup all your personal data and/or create a full system image to an external drive & restore your system to the OEM factory state. If all works fine then it's something you did/added to the F's original factory OS.

What is the name of the anti virus you are using as some are known to cause BSOD on Win 7 64-bit.

*****

@ Duna: Good catch, thanks! I was about to install Vaio_Care 6, guess will check if I can find an update to Event Service before.

 

The palm rest wear is not due to extreme conditions, I was using my laptop over the summer an average of 6-7 hours a day and the weather was relatively mild here (75 degrees on average). After the first 2 months of having my laptop, I could see a dark spot from certain angles. Now that dark spot is a little more obvious.

Thing is, I'm not a sweaty person, in fact I have pretty dry skin - I don't sweat much, if at all! I think it might just be that the heat is causing the paint to change colors (since that spot in particular gets warmer than the rest of the palm rest on my F11)

 

"my hard drive make this squealing/squeaking sound" - That's bad news. Did you bang your laptop while it was turned on? If so, the heads may have touched the platters which are spinning @ 7200 rpm so it would make quite a long scratch.

Both HD Tune & Everest report under SMART; Mechanical Shocks: value BF and Free Fall Event Count: FE. The utilities gives them different labels but it's the same thing. I have 2 Seagate ST9500420AS (also called 7200.4) and one shows 11 mechanical shocks & the other only 2 in Everest. Luckily, they were small & w/o consequences.



You can also use the Error Scan tab in your HD Tune Pro, do a full surface scan, don't select Quick scan. It takes about 1-2 hours for 500GB on the F. One can also check the drive's manufacturer's Support for diagnostic tools. In this case it's a Seagate so check the free: SeaTools for Windows. Or use Windows 7 CHKDSK (Check Disk), or Vaio_Care hardware diagnostics or boot & hit F10 or press ASSIST w/ the F turned off to access Vaio_Hardware Diagnostics before Win 7 boots for a faster scan:



It could also be a bearing problem.

In any case, I would not trust anymore an HDD that makes any abnormal sounds like cliking often, squealing, whining, etc. Backup your data & send it for replacement under warranty even if you knocked it as sometimes manufacturers will replaced a mistreated unit for good faith or pr reasons.

 

Now I'm thinking about ordering some of these and cutting them myself to fit the palm rest for the F. They're really cheap so it wouldn't be a very costly experiment.

Amazon.com: Universal Silicone Keyboard Protector Skin for Laptop Notebook: Electronics

 

This was discussed in the previous thread. See my post with photos for my F11_US black which has a thin layer of gunmetal paint on the palm rest. It's the paint that is comming off in my case, not a discoloration of the paint: Re: VAIO_F Series US Black Palm Rest Discoloration. I never cleaned my palmrest & suspect that the paint is sensitive to the fatty acid contained in human sweat/skin oils or it could be from often using my F wearing a jacket w/ metal snaps on the cuffs. Cleaning it weekly with diluted mild dish soap may have prevented that, dunno.

So far, it's have been reported ONLY for a few black US model. If your silver model has colored plastic or rubber palm rest then the paint can't come off, can it?

I contacted Sony_and they said send the unit for palm rest replacement. I don't want to do that because my machine is used every day & is in perfect working order. Why risk damages in the shipping/repair process for such a trivial thing? Maybe I will try to write to some supervisor and ask if they could send me a replacement palm rest (level 1 support said no: send the unit) that I could DIY replace just before selling my F one day, maybe. Anyway the warranty is good for 1 year & I had my unit for 7 months so far w/o any problem so it can wait for a real problem (God forbid!) & the palm rest would be just an other item to fix.



@ QuePasa87: The F's palm rest is confortable & cool compared to some other i7 laptops & maybe the texture helps so I rather have cosmetic wear & tear than the sweaty feeling of a plastic film. I will always remember that old aunt that had her sofa covered with plastic & me as a little kid wearing shorts, having my legs' skin sticking to it.

 

I will always have a heavy, sweaty feeling regardless of protection on the palm rest or not because my hands feel compelled to be sweaty almost all the time. As such, I prefer to have protection on the finish since seeing discoloration would both drive me crazy, and probably hurt my re-sell value when that time comes. Plus, I'd rather prevent anything from happening rather than deal with shipping anything anywhere later on. And no, I did not order a silver model, I ordered black.

Any cosmetic imperfection is trivial only to someone who perceives it that way. For anyone like myself that is obsessive over the sort of thing, it is more than trivial. Everything is relative.

 

Yes, it's all in the eyes of the observer & his position relative to...

Anyway, notebook palm rest protection returns a ton of results like those for example. I would rather go w/ one that has textile on the top finish instead of plastic or silicon film:



Edit: Hey, that gave me an idea for yet an other DIY project: get a $1 mousepad with textile finish & foam base, cut to desired shape, glue with my daughter's craft silicon adhesive (easy to remove): eh voilà! I might actually try it for fun. If you try that @ home, just make sure that when the lid is closed, it does NOT contact w/ the LCD's surface! Edit2: noticed that if it's too thick & shaped so it comes in contact with the bezel or it's small rubber bumpers, it prevent the LCD's lamp from turning off automatically when the lid is not fully closed. Since my lid action is set to: do nothing (via S1), I always use the convenient Display Off key above the_F11/F12 keys.

*****

 

Nice to know you are still out there and might continue to contribute to this thread. Have you been lurking? For the new posters out there, Mangosango is the gaming information extraordinaire for our F model. Bow down.

 

I found this upon using those search terms and it appears to work pretty well for appearance/lack of residue/feel of use. Perhaps I could order a sheet of carbon fiber vinyl and trace it around only the trackpack and out to where the palm rest meets the edges of the laptop.

YouTube - Wrapping a netbook with 3M carbon fiber-look vinyl

Like this, except not going around the sides of the keyboard.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/480839-review-skinit-mbp-cf-vinyl-palmrest.html

 

OOOOOOOHHHH... AAAAAAAHHHHH

I've got the 310M GPU, but haven't successfully tried the PS2 emulator (that is.... with a good game). Got gamecube working a while back, but a bit slow. Will have to set up the PS2 again and give it a go.

 

Neat trick, works great on my F as by eliminating the stupid white border, the thumbnails are the same size but the images are bigger. I 'regedited' manually but there are some easy scripts on the page: How to Change the Thumbnail Previews Border in Windows 7.

"The default border for thumbnails in Windows Explorer is the Photo_Border-2 image below". Before & after:



Now my "Extra Large Icons" really are.

 

lmao about the sofa Joe XD

Yeah my dark spot is closer to the trackpad, but I do clean my laptop pretty often lol. *shrug* The computer definitely does NOT run hot! Weird eh? Weird.

 

Haha thanks I've just been busy lately and haven't been able to keep track of this thread (since when did the 3rd thread get closed?!). Anyway, I'll keep posting new games as they come (hopefully some new ones before the fifth thread starts...).

Yeah, the Gamecube emulator is surprisingly good. The PS2 emulator is nice, but a bit more picky in what it wants to run. I'm trying to get Shadow of the Colossus to run right now and the only way I can get it to run at a decent speed is causing the audio to desynchronize Buuut I guess everything worth having is worth working for

Thanks SO MUCH for this Joe!!! I've been wanting to do that for a while but just haven't had enough motivation to find a way to do it.

 

Great tip. Thanks!

Ultimately, the only reason I want the gamecube emulator is to play Eternal Darkness. That was such a great game.

Right now, I'm playing my way through Fable: The Lost Chapters, which is a PITA with Windows 7. DEP issues that the workaround doesn't solve and crashes. But I love the game so I'm trying my best to deal with it. Also very much enjoying Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. A few other games in hibernation right now. PS2 will be fun if I can get the frame rates high enough. I had tried X-Men Legends II and it was awful, so I bought the PC version. Will give it a shot again soon enough.

 

Increase the size of Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Been using this one which increase the thumbnail size and the speed of which the thumbnail appears. I will try the above as well. In conjunction may be the way to go.

 

Here is an oldie but goodie:

http://i.imgur.com/CJETR.jpg

 

Theo Kamecke - Fractal Sea

 

Thanks Joe, that was very useful......looks like that was a popular post!

 

Hey, that's cool! Best of all, it's a small standalone so no install needed & it does not add any processes.

I applied this to mine quite a while ago but yours is easier + the bigger size thing:

BTW, thank you Fishon for all these odd links you post once in a while to interesting stuff like the oldie by goodie above. Nobody ever thanked you for those.

+1 for your rep. (Come on cheapo/lazy, click on the weird icon if you find a post helpful or interesting).

*****

 

+1, that's fantastic!

 

I have had my VPCF121GX (i7 740QM, NVIDIA 310M, 4GB RAM, 1600x900 glossy display, back-lit keyboard, Blu-Ray Drive) for just over two weeks now and have not had any issues at all. I had been following this forum for some time while trying to choose between this and an ASUS that I was considering. I picked the Sony in the end because I am familiar with and have had good success with them previously and also because I have been swayed by the number of people on this thread who seem to like this model and have said that it is a good value for the money. I sought your opinions here as I am really not a computer techie type and wanted to see what others had to say about it. I am a (mostly) retired architect, don’t play any games and bought this as a desktop replacement to use primarily at home for nothing very demanding……I just like having a relatively fast full-featured computer.

I purchased it from Costco on sale for $1049 and it is the base model, not one of the upgraded CTO or modified units that a good number of you here on the forum seem to have. Since it is a desktop replacement, I only occasionally remove it from its adapter in my den for short periods of time. Whenever I’ve done so, my internet connection still appears very fast and battery life is not a concern for me, though I haven’t really taken note of it thus far. In addition to all the standard specs, buying it from Costco also gave me Windows 7 Professional, an additional year of warranty from Sony, technical assistance via Costco’s 24/7 concierge service and a 90-day return policy if I’m not happy with the purchase. In addition, I purchased Office 2010 Home & Business, an NZXT Cryo LX notebook cooler and a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. The only other purchase I am considering at the moment is a set of speakers, most likely Bluetooth since I like the fact that they don’t require any physical connection.

The F12 is super-fast compared to my 3-year-old Sony notebook and my first experience with Windows 7 has been very good. I like its features and I have done a couple of the tweaks that have been posted here to improve its usefulness. The Vaio Control Center has been a very useful tool for me to personalize all my settings and I thought that the Vaio User Guide was informative enough whenever I needed to find out more about how to do something. The Bluetooth mouse was very easy to set up and use and the NZXT cooler is great and keeps my F12 running cool and quiet. Because of the placement of the feet under the notebook and the location of the plastic grilles on the cooler, it did seem like the space between the cooler and the notebook was too tight; so I did place two ¼” tall stick-on rubber feet on the cooler to lift the front edge of the notebook higher so the air could circulate better. I believe that someone mentioned earlier that they removed the plastic grilles for the same reason but I haven’t been able to locate that post. There have been a few owners here who have posted about annoyances such as fan noise and whine, squeaky keys and a couple of other small things but I have been fortunate not to have any of these issues with mine. Overall, I am very pleased with everything that I’ve purchased and I want to thank everyone on this very active owner’s forum for their informative and helpful posts.

 

Hi all I just got two question. I was looking at the sony vaio f series, asus g73 and macbook pro.

I am leaning more towards the vaio as the price is good and has less issues or none compared to the other two.

1) how good is this notebook for gaming?
2) the battery can you watch and entire dvd or bluray without the battery dying?

 

i was going to but the system thinks that I have already given Fishon to many and I have to give som rep to other first.

@Fishon: Alway count 1+ rep from me.