Official Sony VPC-Z2 (VAIO Z 2011) Series Owners' Thread

I'm primarily using this on the go. Having to tote around a bunch of extra hardware to set up everywhere I go kind of defeats the purpose of having an Ultrabook. If the speakers were even half way adequate, I would have kept it.

 

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Personally, I haven't heard laptop speakers anywhere that are decent enough to warrant me using them solely for everything. The best I've heard are the Altec Lansing HPs from some years ago but overall, all laptop speakers suck imo. Anemic in bass with muddy mids and excessive highs. I personally use Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 Pros for on the go. Interesting decision nonetheless to be looking at the 14z.

 

Yes, one review of the Dell XPS 14z said that the speakers were so good that it "filled the room with sound". I'm also considering the ASUS UX31, but so many other customers on that Owner's Lounge are having the time of their life struggling with ASUS build quality issues. It seems like some of the newer batches going out to customers seem to be much better than the earlier units.

 

They finally brought the price down to introductory pricing levels. Makes me wish I almost bough a Z21 at the time.

Regardless, the price is right, except Carbon Fiber is the ONLy color option. I want CF Gold.

 

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I wish I was able to purchase from the US and get service from the US Sony branch. Lovely pricing and a range of models available for immediate pickup/shipping. Only one pre-configured model here. Spend $2K and they can't be bothered to spend $10 on shipping materials. Pricing is absurd and the customer service as well as support is pathetic by Sony Canada.

2 days short of 3 weeks and I have yet to see my $2200 refund into my account. Calling in, after being transferred around due to a crummy phone menu (why is there no option to get to general customer service aside from technical support and sales who usually try to push you elsewhere?), "by the end of this week" they said. If they drag it onto next week, calling into Visa for a chargeback for my deserved refund.

Never going to order from Sony Canada online ever again.

EDIT: Finally got confirmation from the Office of the President that the refund just so happened to be processed today after my lengthy e-mail.

 

I am happy with all sony software but I found out that I have got only 69.6GB left in my ssd right out of the box.(128gb model) So, Is there a way to delete recovery partition without perform clean install? Anyway,I fall in love with Z just only 3 days of use.
Thanks,

 

Hello, I will soon be joining the owner page and I was wondering a few things...

1) What peoples opinions/experience with using external hard drives with their Z21's especially the 128gb model which I just read comes with ~70gb free???

2) My idea was to go with a 1tb, to hold my vast media collection sans music , usb 3.0 drive and leave it plugged into the PMD any one have experience with if doing that will hurt the hdd in any way? does it stay on while the computer is not docked?

3) Also anyone's experience with using SD cards and Sony's infamous memory stick duo also as added storage?

4) And lastly if anyone can point me in the direction of a link to a list of things (bloatware) one can remove upon receiving the laptop that would be great!

Thanks, very excited

 

Wow, and I remember when 10 meg was so much it didn't seem possible to fill the entire drive.

 

My answers are in bold below:

 

Hello, I've got WD 2TB USB3 hdd sitting on the desk connected to the PMD, and when computer is undocked, the HDD is off

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/611847-full-vaio-z2-review-useful-guides-resources.html

 

Ok, just had a scary 30 minutes or so. Long post.

I was out and about as usual with my Z21 today, using it less than usual but I suppose I used it for about 20 minutes on 2 or 3 occasions. Each time I would just close the lid (sleep / unsleep). When I got home I plugged it in to recharge as per normal (just AC adapter - don't have a PMB). About an hour later I opened it up and resumed from sleep and noticed that the battery was at 78%, which is odd because usually it charges very quickly, and the battery couldn't have been less than about 50% anyway when I first plugged it in to charge (estimated).

So I was using the laptop for a few minutes and decided to move to the other room, so I unplugged it and BLIP - laptop is dead. Weird. Pressed the power button - nothing. Mild panic, so I plugged it in again and pressed the power button - life! Booted up as normal, and I checked the battery: 78%. I carried out a hardware diagnostics on the battery and VAIO Care reported everything as fine. I took a deep breath and pulled the power plug again - dead immediately. Pressed the power button, nothing. But this time, I noticed a series of quick little "tick" sounds coming from near the keyboard anytime I held down the power button. Uh oh. I plugged in he AC adapter again and the machine booted up fine. I decided to leave it plugged in for a few minutes to see if the battery was charging at all; even though Windows reported it as charging, it was stuck at 78%. I tried attaching the extended battery and unplugging - dead again. Even though both batteries reported as fine in diagnostics. Could not power on the machine even with the extended battery attached; no AC adapter, no dice.

At this stage I was thinking a call would be needed to Sony to organise collection and repair. Bummer. I decided I would try to remove the built-in battery for s and giggles. So I removed the 6 annoying screws (need a coin for this) and removed the internal battery. I attached the extended battery (without the internal one) and pressed the power button - nothing except the series of tick sounds. Removed the extended battery again. I left the laptop without a battery attached for about 10 minutes. Resigned to my fate I decided to reattach the internal battery, connect the power cord and boot up so I could make another backup of my files before sending it off to Sony. I tried the power button one more time before plugging in the AC adapter, and voila; life. It booted fine on battery, showed the battery status at 73%, and even when I connected and reconnected the AC adapter a few times, everything was fine and the laptop did not die. Thank the Gods of mobile computing. It seems to be charging fine now, and is currently at 87%. Once I've hit Submit Reply I'm going to try pulling the plug again to see if that was just a once off; I hope to God it was.

Any ideas what happened? Is this likely to happen again? I'm obviously still under warranty with Sony but I would be fairly shagged without my main laptop for a week or two while they repair it...

TLDR; my Z21 would die everytime I pulled the power cord, wouldn't power on either from battery. Only by removing the battery for about 10 minutes is everything working again. Concerned.

 

Lost my Z1 (don't ask...) so decided to pull trigger on Z Gold Signature...

Hopefully it works out.

 

Thanks for all the info Dev1ant! i guess my concerns with lugging the HDD and whats battery life with it in like?

I will have to look into SD prices now, 128gb! amazing they can make it so small now, whens the 1tb coming???

 

jdbrookes, I would definitely give Sony a call because it sounds like motherboard has some issue with the power. Out of curiosity, which AC adapter did you use, the smaller and lower current one for Z2 or the larger and higher current one for PMD?

 

Awesome summary [tldr!], you should've written that at the beginning Sounds scary, but power-cycling is a common fix. If it happens again I'd say you have cause for concern.

On an unrelated note - Starcraft 2 works great on my Z2. I didn't gather frame rate info, but at full res (1600x900 for me) and recommended settings I never felt laggy. I think it might even run better on my Z than on my desktop.

It's almost unfortunate how well everything works on the Z2 - no complaints means nothing to tinker with.

 

Sorry, double post, but this is a good question - one charger has a 6.2 amp brick (meant for the pmd) and the other has a 3.3 amp brick, both 19.5V. Could one damage something or shorten the life of their battery by plugging the 6.2 amp charger directly into the Z?

 

No, you can use both. Theoretically it can charge faster with the 6.2 Amp one, but the charging circuits in the computer probably limits this anyway.

 

I see, I have the PMD at home so can test in the afternoon if I remember

 

yes with a mind blowing fast MFM or RLL interface

 

While 'easy' its not the safest. With constant on/off cycles, you are asking for a dead drive in short order. Also thats 2TB that you will trust to a single drive unless you setup online or another drive as backup and be up to date with that. I would highly recommend getting external NAS, even if a small two drive mirror (RAID1) this will be on all the time and available on your network when ever you need it. Pair with a small smart UPS to take care of power hiccups, critical data offsite online backups and you have a nice safe setup. I highly recommend Thecus NAS solutions although I also run Dell PowerVault as well for years with no issues.

 

I was thinking more along the line of say use the 3.3A one on PMD+laptop that may be too low power to re-charge the battery or maybe 6.2A one is defective and you plug it directly to the laptop.

You are right that if an AC adapter is in good working condition the current listed is the max. you can draw, and if your laptop doesn't draw that much it won't. I actually use the 4.7A one left over from my VGN-Z on my Z2 (without PMD, obviously).

 

The small 3.3A one wont work with the PMD, and it doesnt fit either because of the protruding tips on the PMD.

 

Anyone purchased a 3rd party AC adapter from ebay? Will one that is VGP-AC19V and lists the old Z work? I know the voltage is 19.5v and 3.3 or more amperes. But I'm not sure on the old Z plug fitting the new Z.

 

I've used both a Sony VPC-Z1 adapter and my old VGN-Z AC adapter (VGP-AC19V26) in my Z2, works fine.

 

Hmm, when I put my computer to sleep and wake it up, it seems bluetooth doesn't wake up and I need to manually turn it on in the VAIO Smart Network icon by first change the slider to off and on again. Anyone know how to force bluetooth to stay on or fix this?

 

how do you turn off the surround sound (which I believe someone said helps sound quality?)?

Overall very pleased with new Z I just recieved... speakers are very poor though.

Otherwise the only negative was the high price.

 

go to control panel, sound, select speaker/hp and click properties, in top tab select dolby, click on the power button graphic...

 

Thanks fellow darius lol.

That makes a considerable difference.

Edit: nvm figured it out

 

not many people names Darius, are you from europe?

go to cp, mouse, tab - device setting, click on settings button, select scrolling

yes, they hide this stuff well....

 

thanks!, need to find a couple on ebay.

 

Just need a bit of help here.
I like the setup of the Z2 better than the Z1, just one question:

Is the integrated graphics card going to not let me stream 1080p (or better) videos over hdmi to my hdtv, all while watching youtube/editing documents/etc on my laptop screen? Will there be a way to use the hardware acceleration to use the cpu instead for better-than-hd videos in the future so I don't have to carry around the dock everywhere? Thanks!
Really trying hard to avoid the quad i7 mbp with a aftermarket ssd, I don't need the optical drive of the z1, and could use the faster ssd in the z2.

 

I run ripped BDs (using Slysoft/Imgburn/Virtual Clone drive) without any problem, 1080p using the integrated Intel graphics and the PowerDVD version that came with the Vaio, but only if the BD is showing on the Vaio's LCD. Display is the 1920x1080 one. Judging by the CPU usage (or lack of it) most of the processing is being done on the Intel graphics. My cpu is the i7 dual core 2620m.

However, I just tried an external 1080p HDMI monitor and no go. There is a lot of noise and flickering if I try to run the BD video on the external monitor, either duplicated screens or extended. No problem if it runs the video on the Vaio LCD and other stuff like YouTube on the external monitor,
except that I did notice what could best be described as "scinitillation" on the external monitor with a few flickering pixels that might be irritating.

Cheers, Howard

 

Picked up the base model last week to replace a 11inch macbook air. Wanted something with the same form factor as the airs but could play some games when needed (Star Wars TOR). Loving it so far, only minor gripe I have is the log on screen, its ugly. Anyone know where the picture file is so I can replace it.

Thanks!

 

On my Z2 I have disabled the logon background which reverts it to the original blue Windows 7 logon screen.

I believe I set OEMBackground in regedit to 0, you can also follow the instructions to change the picture to something else:
How To Change Windows 7 Logon Screen

 

Ok, this is driving me nuts: anyone know how to turn off the Authentec Truesuite web logon "feature"?

 

What power savings mode are you using? I used to have a similar problem when viewing Netflix HD movies. I changed to performance mode and the problems went away.

 

That's a good question as I hate it too. I don't want to uninstall it because I actually use it just for logging into Windows. I just hate the way it keeps popping up whenever you login to any website. What solved this for me was switching to Google Chrome instead of IE.

 

I use Chrome and it still happens.

The software is utter sh:t... can't even find an options/preferences area to disable it.

 

It's in the Control Panel, under Biometric Devices.

 

Try this: Start--All Programs--Utilities--TruSuite and then launch the TruSuite software. Go to the "My Settings" page. Click "Disable" for Touch Controls. Under Personalization Settings, uncheck the box "Website Log On".

See if that helps.

 

Bingo. Thanks.

 

I just got my VPCZ2! \o/

anyways: I'm selling my sheet battery. If anyone's intrested, just hit me a PM!

 

Quick question:
How can I make a backup of the recovery partition?

 

VAIO Care has a place for that.

 

^thanks, I've seen that option. Wasn't sure if that's the same as some users were refering to backing up the recovery partition.
If I got that right Vaio Care helps you making a backup of the system, but not of the recovery partition(?)

 

You can make recovery discs which basically functions like the recovery partition (you have to boot to the discs though)...

 

Just curious, how many hours are you guys getting out of your battery? Like during word processing / web surfing vs gaming / videos.

 

To attach the sheet battery does the Z2 has to be power down or just hook it up and keep on working..

 

^ No, but it is tricky to attach with the lid open

 

As Zoinks said, it's gonna be real difficult to turn over your computer and put on the battery while the lid is open. I usually just close the lid and go into sleep mode. You can remove and install the battery with no problems this way.