Official Sony VAIO TT Series Owners Thread

The TT uses a 1.8 Micro sata 5400 RPM mechanical HD that is made by Toshiba. You would need to use a 1.8 Microsata x18-m.

 

thanks for that clarification rachel. i guess 1.8" form factor just greatly limits my choices on SSD's. i'm specifically looking at the VGN-TT290PAB model, which according to THIS website says that it uses PATA and not SATA. is this one of the really older TT that does not have SATA yet?

 

The best way to check is to look in your device manager under disk drives and see what the part number is for the HD that you own. If you do this can you post back your findings. I would be surprised if it was PATA.

 

yeah if i get it i'll check and post back, but i would like to know beforehand instead of doing a $1700 experiment. i'm quite surprise to see two different storage interface in the same vaio line

also, are there any confirmed GPS add-on cards that will work with both win7 and vista? there is a spare open slot for a mini pci-e to add on this card right? could a WWAN along with the GPS?

 

Sony NZ have always been very slow to adjust their pricing. Have you thought of purchasing from Hong Kong or Singapore instead?

Correct re YouTube HD videos - I watch/download quite a few in HD (and HQ), and they play very smoothly.

KJ

 

Likewise, I'd doubt very much any TT used a PATA drive. Certainly the early TX's used a 50pin 1.8" PATA HDD but that was 3-4 years ago. 1.8" microsata drives are becoming more common. eBay usually has at least a two or three brands in various sizes up to 256GB. I'm quite happy with the 250GB HDD in my TT27 for the time being - perhaps in a year or so when SSD prices are more mainstream, I'll consider the change.

 

what is the model of 250GB on the TT27 ?

 

My laptop also comes with a 250GB HD and it is a MK2529GSG. When you buy this it is better to go with the SSD upgrade that Sony offers if it is not too expensive, it is a £110 upgrade in the UK.
This is a HDTune and a Crystalmark capture. I should get an SSD installed into mine in a matter of days. This is ok though although it clearly is not the best performer.

 

Same as the one in Rachels TT3: MK2529GSG

 

Rachel, here in NZ, sadly Sony don't offer such upgrades (small country of 4M people!). The size of Sony here is probably the size of a regional office in the UK! Still it means I get to pick my own brand and model of SSD later, the performance for which seem to be going ahead in leaps and bounds with each new generation I'm hoping that in 12 months time a 1.8" 256MB SSD will be down to a reasonable price.

KJ

 

Hey Kendallj, Rachel and other TT owners,

Any issues with the track pad that I have read about in the forums?

 

For me newer drivers from Toshiba then Win 7 Sony drivers fixed the issue I was kind of having.

 

There are 0 problems with my touchpad. It is perfect.

Edited to add:
I also voted in this touchpad problems poll
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=390113

 

Heavenly, it was the only thing on my TT that was immediately frustrating after the excellent feel of the track pad on a TX. It seemed to lack sensitivity and so I found myself automatically pressing harder to try to compensate.

Experimenting with different driver settings didn't help greatly. After reading through the TT forum(s) where others confirmed similar problem(s), I opted to try a suggested Toshiba R600 Alps 64bit Vista Driver, which had usable settings to adjust sensitivity. It worked well enough so that now I'm not aware of it 'getting in the way', so one 'happy camper'. Why only some TT owners seem to experience track pad problems I'm guessing is due to variation in ALPS manufacturing tolerances. It's a pity Sony haven't more proactive in providing a solution.

KJ

 

I'm having massive problems right now making my recovery discs. I'm supposed to be sending my laptop away tomorrow to have it upgraded.
I bought these and have tried 7 so far but so far have had no luck.
What discs did you use?
This is what i bought.
Memorex 868128-10C DVD+R Double Layer 8.5GB 8x
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000W07NTO/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
I have my computer running in performance mode also.

 

Hi Rachel

Personally I'm not a fan of dual-layer media for recovery discs. My early attempts with dual-layer media produced more far coasters than usable discs! Some burners look to be better than others, but it all seems too much of a lottery for me.

So it's single layer HP LightScribe media for mine and my clients' recovery discs.

Kendall

 

Thanks kendallj for your help.

I deleted my recovery partition by mistake yesterday night. It was such a silly error i made as well caused by me being just too plain tired. I was trying to work with these discs and i made a remote connection to another laptop. I got one disc to burn and then i was trying to empty one of the other discs as i used it, my laptop was also showing hidden files.
I ended up wiping my recovery partition before i could make the other disc.

I made a backup before all this happened, only of my C drive though.

I have contacted Sony in the UK to see what they can do for me. I also contacted Sony in Hong Kong and they said the recovery disc can be purchased from their spare parts centre. I just hope that what Sony charge me in the UK will not be too steep. If it is then i will try and track it down from Hong Kong. If i bought a recovery disc from Sony in the US it would not work although i could easily get one of those and get a friend to ship it over.
Sony UK would have to import my discs for me.
It is just one of those things, it is clearly not the end of the world lol and i can sort this out with time.

Edited to add:
What i may do as well is to try and order the discs from Sony in the US depending on what i'm quoted from Sony UK. They to would have to import them but it would probably be cheaper and i can get them as i mentioned before sent onto a friend no problem.

 

Would upgrade to win7 solve your problem? You wouldn't need the recovery partition since you will have the win7 on disc. All the drivers are available from Sony website.

edit: sorry, I did not see you already have win7. If you have it on disc, you really do not need the recovery partition.

 

Hi Rachel

Sorry to hear (easy thing to do when tired as I've found out myself often enough). Now your TT3, IIRC is an Asia-Pacific model? What version of Windows did it come with? It's possible my TT27 (which is also an Asia Pacific model) recovery discs would work since the TT2 and TT3 models are electronically identical (BTW mine is Vista Business x64). I've also extracted the individual apps and utilities from the discs, which is far more flexible than using the recovery process anyway. Anyway, if I can help I'm happy to airmail whatever you need to get things repaired.

Kendall

 

TZ300, thanks for your help. I am undecided if i will upgrade my TT to W7. It came with Vista Business 64bit and there are some things which i like about both operating systems. I don't like that some of the apps i use in W7 have been left out by Microsoft and i don't like what you can download free. They have dumbed down several things which i liked. I find Vista ok speed wise but W7 is a little faster.
If someone never told me that W7 was faster i probably would not notice it though.
It is always nice though to have your recovery discs.

Kendallj, thank you. I cannot discuss this on the board for the reasons that i explained to you. But i do have Vista Business 64bit with five language packs i think. I'm still waiting to hear back from Sony UK i'm hoping that what they charge will be reasonable although i do doubt that. Having a different model where you live can bring up these sorts of challenges. I very much dislike calling Sony in the UK because it costs like 75p a minute or something. I sent them an email instead.
I don't have any contacts in Hong Kong right now that can do this and can i really expect a friend to go a service centre may be out of there way and pick discs up. This is what i was told they would have to do in the reply that i got from Sony HK. So i guess that option looks like it is ruled out for me.

Edited to add:

Sony in the US won't help, i think they only source/help with US models. However, Sony UK do have stated on the UK website that they will help but the discs will be imported and i will be in for some wait which i don't mind.

 

I got my TT back today from Sony and the optical drive is working right with nothing else messed up or touched. Starting up the computer was a bit slow, but I am not going to think much of that. I brought it in to the Sony Store last Wednesday and got to today, so it was average. I think they could have easily had it back to me Tuesday or Wednesday, but its all good.

 

Okay so I installed some of the newer Win7 drivers that on the TT section of the Sony driver site and things have sped up just a bit, but it still a bit slower than before it was sent it for the repair of the optical drive.

 

It might pay to do a Windows 7 reinstall mate.

 

It might, but it is nothing to terrible that going to make be do a back and then a reinstall.

 

So, I went to Sony support site and for the hell of it type in TT250N instead of what I have and I check to see if there are more Win7 drives, which there was. So, after installing all the newer drivers I didn't previously install my computer is back to normal, opening some applications now feel a bit faster when loading(starting up windows was the issue so this is positive news). There is also a bios update there too, which seems like the one I got off the Sony UK site a while back.

 

Sony UK where no help about my recovery discs. I called them in the end and they said that they cannot import my discs for me. I have actually managed to get a contact now in Hong Kong to sort this out for me which is good

I sent my laptop away and i should have it back may be on Wednesday of next week. I'll be able to confirm about the HDMI port mod etc.
It is quite some extensive work that is being carried out on my laptop. The HDMI is being added, the wwan is being added and so is the antenna in the bezel. Also, as i mentioned before i'm upgrading to an SSD drive.

 

Hi Coldmac,

Hehe, it's probably the result of a creeping disease that infects all Microsoft Operating Systems. Essentially, the longer you operate them, the slower and more unstable they become. It's called 'Windows Clagg', and the only effective remedy is to re-install Windows periodically...

Seriously though, if you've trimmed out unnecessary software from booting (CCleaner is useful free tool), and made sure your hard drive is not too fragmented (MyDefrag is a good free tool), and you are still not happy, then I'd suggest investing in a Solid State Drive. Traditional HDD's are quite a bottleneck on boot performance and application loading.

KJ

 

I ended up doing just that over the weekend. I got sick of the nags and pop-up windows using PowerDVD 8, and so removed it and tried to put back PowerDVD 7 without success. Also the SonicStage Audio Filters had somehow stopped working with Media Player 12, so it was time to rebuild.

Originally I'd used Vista x64 drivers, but this time I went with Win7 x64 TT4 drivers from the Sony UK support site. I got a 100% strike rate with everything working as it should (with the exception of the touch pad - it was no better than the original Sony Vista driver - instead I'm trialling a Dell ALPS x64 driver that gives me the needed sensitivity control plus some additional gestures).

KJ

 

I guess you didn't read the subsequent posts.

 

I guess you might be right (my sincere apologies).

 

So i heard about the status of my upgrade job on Monday. I heard that it all went well.
I got it back today and everything is perfect. The HDMI port works, i have tested it and connected it to my TV.

The wwan also works. Lol, judging by my TX WWAN upgrade efforts some people might have thought this was fruitless as well. I'm far from though the first person to have done this upgrade to models that did not come with wwan built in.

The SSD drive has also made things a little more speedier as you would expect. I notice that it is more quiet now.
I'm really pleased.

It is so nice as well to be able to shut the lid and not worry about marks on the display. I usually have to ship Sony laptops away with a cloth to protect the display. I don't have that issue with the TT.

Also, i tried playing a DVD and the Vaio DVD software is set for Asia. It only gives me 5 times to use it on another and that is Australia only. I need to look into that. The WMP seems to be ok though.

Coldmack, did you ever see if using the silent mode with power saver increased your battery life?

Also, those that have upgraded to W7 64bit have you noticed any changes at all in your battery life?

Edited to add:
I'm so pleased. I just ran HD Tune on my HD and it is a good drive that i got. The seller advertised it as having 100/80mbs speeds. They didn't know what they were selling as i expected. This was my first HD test and really you should test it a few times but i don't have the time right now. The CMark test was also my first test. I doubt i will bother with RAID now.

 

Rachel, thanks for taking the time to post feedback on your upgrades. Very interesting.

The NZ TT models don't appear to have ever been offered with WWAN - although we have two mobile broadband carriers, one offering state-of-the-art WCDMA (plus a parallel older but still good CDMA network), the other IIRC is based on older GSM standards (don't quote me there - I'm no expert on mobile broadband!). I have a USB CDMA mobile broadband device that serves me well when I'm travelling around NZ - it's useful to be able to swap it between laptops and PC's as needed.

As you say very good results on your Samsung SSD, thanks for posting - I read on one of these forums that the downside of going the step further with RAID is a noticeably increased boot time. Good to see Samsung have continued to improve well the performance of their SSD's - some of their earlier models seemed hardly better than HDD's. Is the Samsung a Sony supplied part or did you obtain it yourself from a third party?

Re the VAIO DVD software region code, I'm curious since I always assumed that the region setting was read from the optical drive - normally the '5 times' is for the number of times you can region-swap the optical drive before it becomes permanent.

How do you find the WinDVD HD that Sony bundles with the TTs - I went off WinDVD back when I got my TX1 four years back, after finding it had audio leveling permanently turned on. Since then I've stuck with PowerDVD and not tried the newer WinDVD versions.

Kendall

 

Hi kendallj
I got the SSD drive from a third party.
I normally just stick with whatever DVD software i get free lol.
I have got the Vaio DVD software to work properly now i think. I think i prefer to watch movies through this instead of WMP. Watching movies is just fantastic with the TT. I've not seen anything quite like it before.
May be give the software a go again and see what you think. Power dvd though is rated very highly.

Mobile broadband seems to have taken off in the UK. I prefer the internal wwan modems, i think they look neater. This one has a sim card slot and is unlocked so i can use any carieer that i want really in the EU. Of course as you know it may not be the right choice for everyone.

 

@rachel yet to try silent mode, but I have lowered power usage a bit so its getting a bit better there. Also, where can I get this Vaio DVD software?

 

coldmack, it is called InterVideo WinDVD for Vaio. You should really have it. If you don't may be it is on your recovery discs. I've had a look at the Sony US and Hong Kong website and i don't see it listed so it does not like something you can download.

 

Ouch, I since I moved to 7 I thought I really had no use for a Vista recovery disk.

btw any have a link to the full version of Vaio content exporter?

 

Coldmack: The US Sony Support Site has a 64 bit version available here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNTT299P&upd_id=5141&os_id=49

Some of the VAIO apps that would normally be on the recovery disks might be found here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNTT299P&SelectOS=49

Kendall

 

I think WinDVD is now under the Corel brand. Odd. Which is is better all around windvd or powerdvd?

 

A few years back I did a comparison with the then current versions of each and found the visual quality was similar, but audio quality to my ears was noticeably better with PowerDVD. Of course both have continued with new iterations, so I don't know how they compare now. The OEM PowerDVD 8 bundled with some DVD burners works well but annoys with pop-up windows including one that requests ratings for each item viewed. Whether this annoyance disappears with the paid upgrade versions I don't know. I've recently gone back to using PowerDVD 7 on my TT (working great).

KJ

 

check out the hong kong sonystyle web page below :


http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/vaio/index_3_e.jsp


The black only Vaio TT47 (blu-ray version with HDMI out) pre-installed with windows 7 professional 64 bit can be ordered for HK$13,980 (US$1,800)

 

Goodness - identical spec to my recently purchased TT27GD/X, and a fraction of the price. Silly me for not waiting 7 weeks!

KJ

 

Hi KJ and others who upgraded to Win 7 64-bit. I have several quick questions regarding drivers.

I did a clean install of Win 7 Pro 64 bit on my TT130 and installed all Sony-provided Win 7 64 drivers I could find. (Had to search the higher-end TT and even Z series support sites to locate them all.)

In the end, everything seems to be working except the following limitations:

1. Automatic brightness control does not work. I can do manual control using F5/F6 (fn keys do work), but I distinctly remember how the auto ambient sensor function worked in the original Vista Business 32 OS, so this is disappointing, although not a deal breaker for me. Has anyone successfully gained back the auto brightness function? I'm attaching a screen shot of the Vaio Control Center menu that shows this function but is obviously not functional. (The check box doesn't do anything, and the % bar is always showing 120%. I remember there were a lot of features in the old OS.)
2. There's an unknown bluetooth device without a driver. ("Bluetooth Peripheral Device," which I suspect is "BCM2046" according to "Devices and Printers") Again, not a big deal but just annoyed that I couldn't find it.
3. Vaio Recovery Center is missing. I read somewhere Sony doesn't provide this as a download. Again, not a big deal but just something I noticed.
4. My bluetooth headset, successfully recognized and paired, is not found in the playback device list. So, it's basically useless as audio can't be sent to it.
5. Mouse utility is missing. I can just use the Windows "Mouse Properties" tool, so no problem. Just missing.

All in all, in the 3 days I've used Win 7 64, I like it, although the main reason I upgraded was to be able to use all 4GB of memory by going to 64 bit. But the above "loose ends" are just a little annoying.

Has any of you gentlemen and/or ladies had similar problems?

Any insights would be sincerely appreciated!

Peter

 

Hi Onum

I originally had a similar problem with the ambient light sensor after doing a fresh install of Windows 7 Ult x64. After experimenting with driver sets from different Sony Support Sites, this set of drivers/apps worked perfectly for me:

http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/downloads/preinstalled/index.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VGN-TT4

So it would seem the listed drivers for the TT4 series are fully compatible with my TT27GD/X. However I don't know if the TT1 series is electronically identical to the later releases.

IIRC, from my experiments to get the Ambient Light Sensor to work, both the Video Driver and VAIO Power Management needed to be installed. Some in these forums have stressed the importance of installing the various VAIO system drivers in correct sequence. I don't have a specific comment on how relevant this is other than I followed their advice for a 100% success rate.

My Bluetooth device shows up as an ALPS BCM2046. Seems to be working ok using the driver from the above link.

Re the recovery centre, I assumed I would never need it again since Win7 Professional and versions upward have a full hard drive image backup facility. I changed the computer name each time to meaningful tags (eg 'TT-Win7-No-Drivers') before each progressive image backup. That way I could easily restore to a known condition while experimenting.

Not sure what you mean by the mouse utility missing. Is there no 'Mouse' icon in the control panel? BTW for the touch pad driver I'm using a Dell Win7 ALPS driver to overcome lack of sensitivity with the stock Sony Driver.

Hope that helps

KJ

 

I was looking at Onum's capture and i noticed that i don't have any HDMI settings in the control panel. Since i upgraded and added HDMI in i would like to change this. I need to hunt around various Sony websites and see what i can find for 64bit Vista. It still works but i would still like to change it, it may make things more seamless.

Sony is selling the TT45X in the EU but the drivers they uploaded is not even complete. Luckily if i want to upgrade there are 64bit W7 drivers for my model. I might give it a go again in next few days. I experienced a quite noticeable decrease in battery life with my SZ, i hope that does not happen with the TT. I would do an in place upgrade.

My boot times with this SSD is sub 40secs which is ok for a semi clean install in Vista. My 2.5 Samsung in my more powerful SZ gets sub 30secs.

 

I would think just installing the HDMI drivers, then installing/reinstalling the latest control panel and the related files it should bring it up?

 

Thanks Coldmack, i have tried a few of the different drivers, one for the model that Kendall owns and one for an EU model. Both times i get something come up informing me that my laptop does not meet miniuim requirements for this software. The HDMI drivers are contained within the graphic drivers. I have connected my laptop via HDMI output to my TV and the Sony HDMI resolution settings do come up giving me the different res options for HDMI.

However, without the drivers it might not be working correctly and i still cannot detect it in the control panel. I think i probably would need to do clean install to rectify this. Right now i doubt that things are working as well as it should.

Edited to add:
I finally got the chipset drivers and graphics card drivers to install and i installed the updated control centre and utility application but it didn't change anything for me. I definetly do need to do a clean install of W7 or try and in place upgrade first and see how that goes and then apply all the updates.

 

Hi Rachel,

The TT4 drivers are not complete in the way that some don't have install executables - I'm pretty sure everything needed is there, just some require manually pointing the device manager updaters to the appropriate parent folder (having already uncompressed the downloaded drivers).

KJ

 

Thanks Kendall, it has everything for models that do not come with WWAN, it is a little odd that they never added this seeing as they do sell the higher end config to order TT4 in the EU with WWAN. Hopefully, this works flawlessly with the smart network. You can still get the drivers from the Option website if you can find your IMEI number but it just makes life a little easier.

 

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying that. I understand what you mean now!

KJ

 

I have installed Windows 7, it had to be done. I still don't see the HDMI settings in my control centre. I have got everything working and it is marginally faster booting up 32-33/37-38. It is working though the HDMI and the drivers are installed so i won't worry about that. Battery life is about the same if not slightly better.

I'm not sure if i noticed this before but i only seem to have 3 power management settings now which are Windows built in ones.