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

hi, I remember selecting an option that limited my battery charging only uptill 80%. I cannot seem to find that option to undo it, any suggestions?

 

John,

I'm using Yamaha model NX-B02 bluetooth speaker with my VPCF11JFX. Works well, substantially better than F11's built in speakers, and installs/operates great. FWIW. Like you, I'm pleased with my F11 (no problems - bought new this May.)

Tom

 

Hit the S1 key or: Start > search: battery.

 

Check out the links in Mangosango's signature (look for his post at the top of page 40) for gaming benchmarks. The F can handle most games with absolutely no problems.

You can watch about one movie on the normal battery, one movie and a little internet browsing with the extended battery.

The normal (internet browsing, a few youtube videos) battery life is about 2.5 hours, 3.5 with the extended battery. Take half an hour to an hour off of that under load. This laptop is really not intended for on-the-go multimedia. It is made more for those who will usually be near an outlet.

 

Thanks a lot Tom! I asked a question about Bluetooth speakers but didn't get any responses. That model was one that I was looking at and it's good to know that it performs well. I realize that it's not going to sound like my home theater system but I just wanted something that sounds better than standard laptop speakers.

 

But since it's a single box, where do you put it? Behind the LCD?

What about stereo seperation? I would love a recommendation for speakers like those for example: Nokia Bluetooth Speaker. Quite small, check video here.

Meanwhile I have been using this Sony_DRBT101 Bluetooth headset ($37) since about 2 months & they work great with Skype etc beside sounding great while not audiophile. I have a big head & this is quite comfortable, small heads don't expect to use them when cleaning the house. They were instantly recognized by the F, a true turn on & play for a change.

3 cons:

- Don't see how the foams can be replaced easily (if spares are sold).

- When the battery is drained & it's connected via USB for charging, you can't use them.

- They are not foldable for transportation.

I would not hesitate to buy an other one if it was stolen or a dog would eat them (I don't have any ).



If somebody knows about a full size asymetric Bluetooth mouse similar to the Logitechs, that would be cool. I don't understand why Logitech sells one w/ their bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo but not indiviually.

I have a full size Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000 & that's the last symetric mouse I will ever buy.

 

So, this is mostly off topic, but I want to share my success story.

I'm enjoying a video game... Fable: The Lost Chapters, but it's not so compatible with Win7. There's a published workaround for it and several other popular games, but it's not working for me. So... I installed Win XP Pro onto my other HDD (learned how to slipstream SATA drivers, if anyone needs help with that), and got the other drive set up as another OS, but not as a dual boot. (side note... I think, in the end, I'll be able to have both Win7 and Win XP Pro in my machine on two different drives and have them boot depending on my BIOS settings)

Ok, so after getting it up and running, the NVIDIA Drivers were a total b*tch to install. There are no XP drivers for the VAIO using teh 310M. After 10 hours of downloading and troubleshooting, I figured out the file and changed the device ID for a different driver... and to quote Joe Bleau... "et voila!" It's working. Woohoo!!!!

 

Currently, you have to periodically check the Sysinternals site and compare versions between your system and the most recent official release in order to stay up to date. Here is a batch script which will detect and automatically update to the newest version.

Batch Script to Auto Update Sysinternals Tools :: Sysadmin Geek

I think I'll just remove and reinstall. The point is there are updates for time to time:

Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

 

sorry i did not add the quote to this reply. It is fixed on the next page

 

So you feel overall this computer is really good for gaming?

And hell if you can watch one movie that's great incase I may fly one day for work because i heard from some people you cant finish a dvd or blu-ray. What settings do you have? or those people are just talking crap?

Also have you had any heating or noise pitch issues? I heard this machine suffers from that? I am deciding whether to buy it from sony today.

 

+1 - I didn't see any reply to this since I posted it a while back - does anyone know of a way to do this with the Autimatic Brightness Control still on? (Searching the thread shows this question was asked before, much earlier - but I didn't see the question answered there either...) Thanks.

 

+2 I'd like to see the answer to this question too. I'm not happy with the automatic setting as the display seems too dark for my old eyes when the room is dark whereas during daylight hours it seems fine. I currently have mine disabled and set the brightness manually so it would be nice to be able to change the automatic setting so it's a little brighter at night.

 

Hey it's chowderclam from youtube

Most games (if not all, including crysis!) will run at 1280x720 with medium/high settings.

From my experience (this is just for me), the battery won't last for 2.5 hours while watching a movie. I've gotten maybe 1.5 hours (90 mins) while watching a movie (drained from about 95% to about 20%. I suppose if you drained it from 100% all the way to 0% it would go longer. Maybe 2 hours). Technically, that's long enough for a movie like UP, but it's cutting it close. But then again I've had my F11 for well over 7 months now and the battery has been drained through a few times, so chances are you will get better results with a brand new F12.

 

yooo whats up dude

this is the model i am getting

VPCF1290X CTO

is the F11 or 12?

 

Definitely great for gaming.

Getting a full movie can be tricky. If I need to get a full movie out of it I usually turn the brightness setting way down and go into the Vaio Care power settings to throttle it down a bit. At that point I can usually get a little over 2 hours out of it. You probably wont be able to finish any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it's enough for most movies.

If you spring for the extended battery you shouldn't have a problem though.

 

VPC F1290X

BTW is your Shift key broken? Is that why you want to buy a new laptop?

 

But since it's a single box, where do you put it? Behind the LCD?

What about stereo seperation? I would love a recommendation for speakers like those for example: Nokia Bluetooth Speaker. Quite small, check video here.

Joe,

Speaker sits on rear of my desk (using AC power) behind & slightly to right of the F11. Speakers are stereo - firing left and right. Stereo effect is there but minimal.

BTW, used to service Casino in Palacio Hotel, San Jose a while back. Would drop by San Jose on way to Lima, Peru to service computers/servers for casinos/discos/mining companies owned by my Boss in Tampa, Fl. San Jose = beautiful, friendly city!

Regards & thanks for all the advice liberally shared!
Tom

 

Any backdoor trick for the slot machines you would like to share?

I sure hope you had the chance to visit some volcanoes or National Parks because the varieity of ecosystems & incredible biodiversity is what makes Costa Rica special with about 25% of the territory protected in one form or the other. Compare that to about 4% of USA or Canada for example. Some people argue but these country are big but the point is it's a small & not a rich place and they chose to set aside 1/4 of it for preservation. It's quite admirable IMO.

To make this post F relevant: Anybody has some small speakers recommendations for the road? Bluetooth or not?

 

How can I get into BIOS, what do I press?

Thanks!

 

F2 I do believe. If not, F3.

 

It's F2 - thank you.

I did try to press F2 F3 F10 Break during the boot lol but it would load to memory test.

 

Just a reminder. This forum is free to use and I believe in clicking onto an ad once in a while to support this website. You know this is how they get paid. I remember the old days when NetZero was the way to connect to the internet and if people just clicked onto an ad every so often it would have stayed free. Not that NotebookReview would charge, but it's nice to give support to things we use. Agree?

 

Pressing these keys when booting before the Windows animation appears: F2 BIOS, F8 Boot Manager (to choose Safe Mode for example), F10 Vaio_Recovery (Hardware Diagnostics, Rescue Data, Recovery, etc). Also when the F is turned off, pressing ASSIST boots same as F10. Unless you wiped out the OEM recovery partion and/or installed a generic Win 7 OS w/o installing some Vaio_related stuff then you may have only F2 & a limited choice in F8 w/ F10 defaulting to F8 or not working at all.

 

loll no i just want to make sure if im going to spend money thats its a good product and not a piece of crap like ::cough cough:: HP

 

Cough Cough: HP Ignoring Nvidia Chipset Problems? This scenario occurred to me and they never made good.

HP Ignoring Nvidia Chipset Problems?

 

Agreed. Actually, the ads here aren't that sketch (lol gamecopyworld has some really sketchy malware-infested ads that I wouldn't even think about clicking), but most of the ones here are from reputable companies, and I don't have any qualms about NBR making a few cents per click.

And netzero! Man, I remember dial-up (and when they put in that bandwidth limit for free users). Back when 56k was the shiz

Also, this is off-topic, but anyone remember how google used to look back in '99?:

Google!

Hehe that takes me back

 

Hopefully the 330M chip we have wont crap out. I wonder if it has died on someone.

 

Man, Search this Thread (top right of this page) & the previous ones, links found on page 1, post 1. There are thousands of posts & feedback. Should we re-write them again for you? Try: just received or feedback, etc.

Nobody EVER reported a video chip dying out in all 4 F owners threads as far as I know.

I was joking about the Shift key because this thread use an important convention: it's in English & punctuations & caps are part of the intelligibility of any languages. Many many of us are not native English speakers and we make an effort to keep the thread at a decent level of usability.

IF U CN RD THS U CN LRN TO RITE

 

Gracias por la ayuda amigo.

Translation: Thanks for the help amigo loll

 

I don't think so, even the people who have overclocked theirs haven't reported problems with the chip dying out.

The 3xx series is basically a rebadge of the 2xx series, which is basically a rebadge of the 1xx series, which is basically a rebadge of the 9xxx series, which is basically a rebadge of the 8xxx series (lol). What I'm trying to say is that the 330m is basically a tried and true formula and is probably very reliable. Couple that with some good cooling on the F, it doubt the chips would fail unexpectedly.

Mine hasn't failed yet I've had many nights of 6+ hours of gaming at a time (playing BFBC2, SC2 and Crysis), and I leave my computer on during most of the day doing design work in photoshop/dreamweaver.

I wouldn't bank on the chips failing, you shouldn't worry about that

 

Loll thanks man. You are always helpful.

What is rebadge exactly?

 

Hi all, i'm new to this forum so please go easy in case these are daft questions! My previous vaio is over 8 years old (it doesn't even have USB 2!) and while more than adequate at the time (grx670) it's now run it's course and i'm in the market for a new one. I've been looking at the f12 s1b (6gb ddr3, 500gb 7200rpm hd, i7-740) and, as i need it to last as long as the last one, i want to make sure it's the right choice. I run photoshop, lightroom and other photography software simultaneously and any slowdown drives me nuts so i really need something to stay on top of running multiple apps. I know of course that no sooner will i buy one that withing months (or weeks) it'll be replaced by a machine with better specs so i'm not looking for it to be futureproof but am looking for a capable machine. Should i wait for the USB 3 release? Should i wait for the i7 quickpath release or buy now with the front side bus controller? Does the f12 have space for me to add an ssd later on (in addition to my hdd not instead of)? Thanks everyone.

 

define:rebadge

 

Rebadge = same card, different name.

For example, the old nVidia Geforce 9600GSO was a rebadged 8800GSO. Same card, different name and stickers.

330M is pretty much a rebadged 240M only clocked a little higher. The main purpose of doing this is marketing by making old tech seem like its fresh and current when its really just the same thing. The nVidia Geforce 8800GT if you remember was something of a landmark high end single slot desktop gpu at the time which had a super competitive launch price and many variants like 8800GTO, 8800GS etc. The 8800GSO was the hamstrung version of this card and it got bad press because of that. It faded into obscurity and when nVidia were launching the 9000 series gpus they took excess stock of 8800GSOs, slapped new stickers on them renamed them to fit into the current lineup but designated them 9600 instead to reflect the fact that it was more of a mid ranger than than a high end card. It makes buying it a little more paletable knowing this time that you are getting a good midrange card, not a hamstrung high end card. Perception is everything even though its the same thing.

Both nVidia and AMD do this ALOT. So in case you were wondering if this is just an nVidia thing - its not. ATI Radeon 560v is a rebadged Mobility HD4650 for instance. Makes it look like its current with the 5000 series gpus but its actually the same card that the 5650 replaced (5650 is also better but shhhh!)

 

I don't think anyone here is in a position to say what you should or should not wait for and you appear to have answered your own question in either case. Alot of people like to feel that when they are spending alot of money on a laptop they are buying some immunity from planned obsolecense but in my personal experience with computers, it is simply one of those things where you can keep on deferring and deferring and waiting on the next big thing and you can be forever waiting. My humble suggestion is to get what you need right now and use it to do what you need to do right now. Theres no time like the present.

Its worth pointing out that Light Peak is already planned to make USB3.0 and various other high speed data connections obsolete. The nice thing about the F series is that you get a varied complement of ports so if you need USB 3.0 down the road you can always buy a USB 3.0 expresscard.

F12 has easy access to the 2.5" drive cage from the backplate. There is however only room for one 2.5" drive. At a later date you can replace the single HDD with a single SSD if you so wish.

F Series has an eSATA/USB2.0 combo port so if you need a mass data storage drive you can easily buy a good sized mechanical hard drive and a power over eSATA enclosure. This way you can use the SSD in your notebook as a boot/application drive and keep most of the unneccesary write cycles happening on a good old fashioned, supersized HDD.

 

The new F12 series have had some good reviews - the only thing I am concerned about is the noise. Reviews mention that it is quite loud, has a whining noise, and variable fan speed when idle.

I would expect some noise as its on i7 quad in in relatively small laptop (compared to 17.3'') - but is the noise distracting / annoying? How does the F12 compare to other brands 15.6 and 17.3 laptop, and even to Sony's E series?

 

Shopping: USB 3.0 expresscard/34.

How to: Secondary Hard Drive in VAIO_Optical Drive Bay

Everything is relative.

The soundscape of my F is perfectly normal considering the CPU & GPU power under the hood. Vaio_F11 noise emission compared to other Core i7 laptops made by 3 different manufacturers (comparing orange to orange, not to models with lesser CPU & GPU):





*****

John's F12_feedback, posted just a few pages ago (thanks John for taking the time to write that. ) +1 for your rep. (Come on cheapo/lazy, click on the weird icon if you find a post helpful or interesting).

*****

 

Successfully changed out my Optical Drive for my Hitachi HDD. Used the Fenvi caddy and the OEM VAIO bezel transferred over with ease. Drilled 2 holes to secure the HDD in the caddy. That was probably the most difficult part of the entire process.

 

Well done mate

 

Thanks for the feedback, glad the guide was useful.

I have 2 identical Seagate 7200.4 (including same 0002SDM1 firmware): one as the main drive & one that was in an enclosure that I now installed in the optical drive bay. Yesterday I benchmarked both & they perform both at virtually the same speed. The ODD bay SATA port is very efficient and both my drives acheive speeds similar to the ones shown in this review on legitreviews:



But here is the kicker: the same drive in my eSATA external enclosure is a tad slower when connected to the F via it's eSATA/USB combo port in normal OS mode but in Safe Mode it's as fast as the above. The real way to find out why would be to compare what processes/drivers are loaded in both OS states to find the culprit/differences. Maybe I'll do that on a really rainy day.



Note: I use the default Windows HDD driver & the Non-RAID Intel Rapid Storage Technology from this VPCF126FM esupport page ( Intel 5 Series 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller Driver). I suspect the IRST RAID versions found on Intel's site causes problems on the F as it does not support RAID. I tried it & the IRST console took longer to kick in when booting compared to the non-RAID OEM one, that's why I uninstalled it. As posted in the previous F owner's thread, a RAID JBMicron driver installed for a Expresscard/34 from the card's manufacturer's site caused Read Rates slowdowns on my F that was instantly resolved by uninstalling the culprit. My eSATA/USB combo port card works fine w/ the default driver that Win 7 automatically installed only when I connected an HDD enclosure via eSATA to the card then inserted the card in the F. If I inserted the card w/o a drive, nothing would happen hence why I looked for drivers on the manufacturer's site.

*****

 

The reports are sparse; out of all four threads two users have reported corruption and green artifacts partly resolved by underclocking the GPU. Ultimately they got the notebook replaced. A little over twenty users have reported complete (MB) power supply failure, in a couple of cases early warning was breakups in the picture.

It's impossible to have every unit coming off ANY production line being always perfect, but these rare reports of GPU problems with the F11 seem to constitute a far better record of GPU reliability than that of most other notebooks in this forum.

 

Do you have a memory chip in your head or keep a spread sheet or something?

I don't remember any "two users have reported corruption and green artifacts partly resolved by underclocking the GPU", do you have any links or something?

 

actually i remember those "two" i remember reading about those who overclocked too high getting green artifacts complaining about the gpu crapping out.

 

If a user overclocks & over does it then all bets are off. Same if one uses hacked or beta video drivers instead of the ones offered on Sony_support.

I am talking about users using the laptop as designed.

 

^ Mine also started artifacting when I was OCing to test the ceiling for my card. Usually for artifacting caused by an OC, toning down the clocks will get rid of the issues. If you OC too high and the card is damaged... well nvidia makes you check that agreement before overclocking for a reason

Anyway, gpu death isn't an outstanding issue in the F.... yet. Hehe. Based on usage, mine will probably die out before any of yours do (just got back from playing 4 hours of SC2 at 1080p while torrenting the FFXIV beta client, and 10 tabs open on chrome, streaming music from grooveshark . I don't even bother playing on my tower anymore, even though it's much, much faster (why bother when your laptop is fast enough ).

 

Im thinking buying some upgrades and parts to have ready when I recieve my vaio.

1) Is there really a HUGE difference between a 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm drive (I game alot)

2) Is it stupid to buy a cooling unit? I am getting the extended battery for the Vaio and I heard it puts the notebook at an incline for better airflow.

Newegg.com - Thermaltake Notebook cooler Model CLN0008

Thanks in advance

 

In my opinion the price difference is reasonable in relationship to the performance gain. I jumped from 5400 to SSD and would never go back. Of course it depends on your budget and what you plan to use your computer for. As for a a cooler, I have one and will notice temp reductions when maxing the system. But on the other hand, the F series runs cool and gets nowhere near dangerous temps. Will a cooler prolong the life of the laptop? Who knows? However, a cooler running system is certainly not a bad thing.

 

which cooler do you have?

 

NZXT :: Unique. Unprecendented. Inspired - Cryo LX Product Detail

NZXT Cryo LX Black

Newegg.com - NZXT SILVER Aluminum Notebook cooler w/ 3 120mm adjustable fans Model CRYO LX