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

Hi guys,

I spoke with Village Tronic a little and it seems that they're going to build a mPCIe translater to be plugged inside laptops, the thing is that it'll be very little and the cable in question (for their standard C2) will be thick less then 3 mm.

Take a look here, it may be interesting:

ViDock | Facebook the post of the mPCIe translator and the pre-announcement

It can be useful for an egpu setup

 

I initially briefly thought it was due to contact, but as the other poster explained before it's a design fault caused by marrying a relatively insubstantial rolled aluminium top plate along with a carbon lower tub which - guess what, Sony Einsteins - flexes, like carbon does.

Aluminium on the other hand doesn't like to bend a lot - which is why e.g. you can never truly bend back an Air once it's been (all too easily once it encounters a bending or impact force beyond a surprisingly low level) bent, to an unbent state.

Basically that slot area is the weak spot as it has no reinforcement behind it. The more you carry it and open/close the notebook, the more that spot gets warped and eventually it will, I'm sure, crack. The SD card reader assembly has nothing to do with the problem - it's the alloy sheet cover. I really dislike the way aluminium has been incorporated into the Z2 - the way it's been done is the cause of a whole host of longer-term 'surface durability' issues, beyond even the minor but irritating issues I had with the '10 Z.

I still wonder if Sony designers are somehow completely separated from Sony engineers, and they're like brought together two weeks before the thing gets released. And then they run around teaching the warranty departments excuses to pin the inevitable outcomes of the design faults on the user.

I guess though I should feel lucky it doesn't fall apart on demand like the '08 TT's and Z's.

Putting on my philosophical hat, I guess it's also a yin and yang thing. Everything Apple gets wrong about core product engineering from a functional and 'commercially durable' aspect, Sony for the most part gets right. Everything Apple gets right about cosmetic design / look & feel, Sony for the most part gets wrong.

 

Grate. So Apple will/should be the one that ends up buying Vaio sooner or later.

 

If or when it happens I'm betting Hon Hai, or someone who needs a 'name'.

Samsung appears to be doing just fine by themselves by ripping off Apple and Sony DNA until their designers grow up and start having ideas of their own - which can't be that far away given their progression - backed up by at-least-a-slight-notch-above-Apple-grade engineering.

And Apple probably thinks - rightly, given the fact that they sell 99.99999999% of their stuff to people who don't know what they're buying - they don't need anything from Sony.

 

While we are on a roll with doom and gloom for Sony & Z2 here, anyone also has the unfortunate experience of having coffee spilled on his/her 6-month-old Z2? How did your Z2 fare afterwards and how much Sony charges, if you needed replacement motherboard?

My Z2 got caffeinated on Saturday. I immediately shut down, took battery out, drained it somewhat, then I tried to take it apart to see if I can wipe any remainder off. I was successful in taking the bottom plate off, but when I tried to take off the motherboard, the screw base on the top plate that holds the screen hinge screw cracked off a piece.

Thinking I had completely ruined my Z2 and rendering it a desktop only, I just let it dry off instead of continued the disassemble. I put it back on Saturday night and to my great relief I can still open and close the lid -- basically because Z2 is so thin the screw is up against the bottom plate and it pushes the screw in place. Probably why the screw base is so crappy in the first place. If I shake Z2 somewhat there is squeaky noise coming from there now, but other than that it's functioning.

Also, I did turn my Z2 on and, other than a couple keys that are some what "sticky", so far I haven't seen any problem.

Since I don't have accidental coverage, I am wondering how much this repair will cost? I expect it to be quite high, so I am planning on just to keep using it like nothing happened. Still, if anyone else has the service experience and can show me otherwise I might reconsider.

So, anyone?

 

Hi everyone,
Been a proud owner of a Z21 since December and was lucky enough to be just a "reader" of this epic board until now. However my recent dissapointment with Sony's service has led me to ask the geniuses of this board.
For a couple weeks now my internal USB 3.0 port (not the one on the PMD) has been malfunctioning. Any device, when inserted, presents a "device not recognized" windows error flashing in the notifications area. Since i mostly use my 3.0 harddrive in my dock i wasnt bothered by it too much and figured a restart would solve the issue. However it didnt, and after rigorous testing the plug is definitely not working as it should. I have (of course) reinstalled the renesas drivers, tried both the factory and the updated versions, with the factory drivers the port simply doesn't work, as if deactivated or powered off, and reinstalling the new drivers didnt change anything. FYI the USB 2.0 port works fine and all PMD usb ports work well too (so i guess the lightpeak connection is in tact?) In device manager I can see the renesas host controller and it has no error messages.
Sony Idiots recommended i reinstall the BIOS, which doesnt work because the BIOS is uptodate already. With my old laptops I was able to flash/reinstall a current bios anyway, and i havent been able to get this to work.
Finally Sony told me there is nothing left to do but perform a factory reset. Obviously i'm dissapointed with this solution as customization took ages (maainly using feedback from this thread actually!).

So please, if anyone has any ideas for how to fix a malfunctioning internal USB 3.0 port please let me know and spare me the factory reset horror!

Thanks,
JS11

 

Since the Light Peak bits are presumably separate to the USB bits, is it possible that it's the port that's faulty?

 

Could be. I'm not sure if the PMD uses optics+usb3 or just optics. Either way how would i know if the port hardware is defective? sony diagnostics (in Sony Care) tells me the port works fine...

 

Did you try booting from that drive to check whether it might be only windows related? (is the usb 3.0 slot actually bootable, I never checked)

you could make a backup of your hard drive using a program like drive image. This would allow you a factory reset, this is a good move as this rules out any driver related problems.

If it does not work after resetting the bios and returning the laptop to factory preinstallation you now that it is a hardware problem.

If it does work you can return to your backup and start looking for a solution.

If you start looking for a solution based on your current installation this could waste endless hours if it's a hardware problem after all.

 

PMD uses just the light peak.

 

Great stuff! Thank you. No I haven't tried booting from the USB drive, need to find my memory stick first . A drive image! thats what I was looking for, that means I can restore to an identical state right? with all my non-data configurations still in place?
Thanks again Trabireiter! Let you know if I need more help!

 

Yes, a drive image is a 1:1 copy of the whole hard drive or partition. Obviously you need a spare drive to store that image to. You can then always return to the exact state when the image has been stored, including all settings, configurations and files.

 

Hi again,
I tried booting from the USB and this only worked on the 2.0 port, the USB3.0 remained broken and just didnt recognize that there was a bootable memory stick inserted... I followed Sony's advice and reverted to factory settings. Nothing good there either, port is still broken, which I'm guessing is now a definite hardware malfunction... Thanks to the amazing Acronis True Image i was back to my original harddrive within less than an hour... looking forward to Sony's suggestions, probably gonna have to send it in for a week or so, anyone else have experience with Sony hardware repairs??

Cheers,
JS

 

Does anyone else have problems with their touch pad's scroll function suddenly stopping during use? Occasionally it will stop and then I try two finger scroll and it starts back up, but most times it just outright stops wanting to work and I'm a little confused why. Any further insight would be great.

 

You're probably unknowingly going past the touchpad's actual touch sensitive range onto e.g. the buttons. They really should have some sort of demarcation.

 

Just been reading about the new Ivy Bridge, and an upgrade on the external PMD to a Radeon 7670M. No official word on appearance changes. It would seem for the "average" Z2 user Ivy Bridge isn't essential, however, does make me wonder about just upgrading the PMD and I hope it will be possible!

 

The "new" GPU is just the old one rebranded!

No need for upgrade

 

Has anyone tried to play Diablo 3 on their Z2 yet?

I managed to have the game open for 5 minutes before the whole laptop automatically shut down. The fans in the dock was going on full tilt...

Any ideas? I haven't touched the drivers since I bought it at launch, but I would've thought this laptop was powerful enough to run this game?

EDIT: I fiddled with a couple of settings and was able to play for 15 minutes before it again shut down on me... Extremely frustrating.

 

Install the newest drivers from www.leshcatlabs.org and tell if it works. I think the new ATI drivers have some Diablo III optimizations in it

 

Are all the drivers ( Unified Leshcat Drivers ) for the Z21? Should I just pick this one?

Catalyst 12.3 UP2 UnifL for Hybrid Graphics


I tried to download all the D3 files but it made no difference. Managed to play for about 5 minutes.

 

^What are D3 files?

And yes the 12.3 is the newest driver. Just make sure to select the 2559 intel driver as the newer one will make problems for the Z21.

 

EDIT: Installed that driver pack. Same issue. Dock gets super loud and shuts itself off. Very, very annoying.

 

how do u do a drive image? I have a spare 500GB HD can I use that? My HD is only 128GB

 

Same issue with the auto shutdown... might not be the issue with the drivers... more with PMD?

 

Yeah. Might be an issue with another driver. Dunno really. Given how obvious the issue is, I doubt there is anything wrong with the actual PMD.

I would be extremely grateful for any suggestions.

 

i have tried using the original drivers before updating. same issue in both cases.

 

Ok, I've been lurking around here a little bit and was hoping some Z2 owners could help me out.

I've been looking into buying a Z, and was waiting to see what IvyBridge might bring to the lineup. It looks like they are going to get an update, but that the Power Dock wont be seeing much of a difference due to the limitations of bandwith accross the connection between the dock and the laptop. My understanding as well is that the only change to the dock will be the graphics card, which is really just a rebrand of the previous card, so no real upgrade.

I've managed to price out a current custom-built sandybridge i5-2450m Z2 with the options of Blu-Ray for the PMD, Fresh Start (and the required Windows Prof), 8GB Ram and 128 GB SSD for $1,599US before tax. I know refurbs in the outlet can be had for a pretty good price (especially if you're looking at Summer '11 builds) but due to past bad experiences with refurbs I'd like to stick to new.

My question to owners is, do you think at that price the system is "worth it"? I'd wait for IvyBridge, but again I don't think I'll see enough of a cost benefit to waiting. Your thoughts? My main reason for wanting the Z is style, speed, and portability. I don't plan on taxing the system too much with any heavy gaming, but would like it as a general all-purpose machine.

 

hi... im new to the forum and i like a lot of the new vaio z... what i want to ask you guys is if the vaio z is well made machine and resistent... im owner of a fw series and it is very well made... another thing that i want to ask is:

is the laptop good for cad (solidowrks catia) or 3ds max even without the dock?

thanks a lot and sorry for some mistakes... im portuguese.. XD

 

^Dropped my one yesterday by accident....nothing has stuck out to me at the moment as wrong....and I hope it never will! I wanted to cry when it dropped.

Has the Diablo issue been fixed? Was thinking of getting it but if it's not running correctly...

 

If you were buying now I think the IGP in Ivy Bridge alone would be worth the wait in that it'll be even more of a general-purpose machine without the dock.

 

Thank you for the opinion, I too think the IvyBridge will make it more powerful as a "stand-alone" machine, especially as you note with regard to IGP performance. The question I guess I have is, will that benefit be worth an extra $500 over the currently offered SB processors? I'm looking at purchasing within the next month or so (current setup is really on it's last leg) and I doubt Sony will be offering any incentives or price reductions with the new IB models. Other than that, doesn't appear as if Sony will be making many other notable changes to the machine (drat, as I was kind of hoping they would ditch, or at least improve upon, the PMD).

 

Hey guys,

What do you use in order to build an image incase the computer crashes?

 

Has anyone ever experienced the following battery bug?

"98% available (plugged in, not charging)"

Tried to un-plug and plug the AC adapter, tried to reboot, nothing worked.
Couldn't find anything here in the SONY forums either.

 

RE: the $500 discount. It's over inflated. I purchased one while it was still a 300 discount. I just reconfigured the same machine and its the same price.

In regards to the 98% battery message. It's a setting that stops the battery from charging at a user (slightly) adjustable percentage. It's supposed to extend teh life of the battery some how. I wish I could give you more detail but I actually returned my system to wait for the Ivy Bridge revision.

EDIT - Actually I have to make a slight revision to my first statement. I didn't log into my EPP account when I configured the system, and it came out to the price I paid before. However, I logged in, and saw EPP members get an additional discount that actually does come out to a $500 savings.... To bad the sites shady and didn't say that not everyone qualifies and you wont even know if you don't.

BTW, The phone sales people will tell you anything to get you to buy. The website explicitly states the RAM is not upgradable and fixed to the board. When I called them I asked about RAM upgrades, and they said it would be no problem, I just had to have a Sony Tech from the Sony Style store install it or I would void my warranty. I asked 3 sales people, everyone of them in one way or another told me the site wasnt referring to the Custom build and that the system was upgradable. Patently false. I stopped by the Sony Style store just to confirm and they were kind of shocked the direct sales phone reps would say that. They didn't believe me and kept asking if I really bought it from Best Buy or something.

There desperation to make a sale can work both ways though. I got a couple 20% coupons off of them and the sheet battery for $100

 

I use the backup and restore feature of "Windows Home Server" (WHS) running on my server.

The Vaio Z2 64bit drivers (or any 64bit drivers) aren't supported by the current version of the recovery disk/software. But it's still possible to recover your system, it just requires a bit more work.

 

That's totally normal, it will charge after it looses some more percent.

 

anyone has issue playing D3 using PMD?

 

Thank you very much! I haven't noticed that habit ever since.

 

Hi,

As a pretty happy VPCZ21C5E owner, I'd like to know more about engineering around it. I read many topics about it's LP implementation, the bottleneck it's supposed to be for the PCI-E card inside the PMD and so. By the way, I wonder if performances depend on whether one connected an external screen to the PMD instead of the internal screen, with the internal screen still on, or an external screen connected to the notebook HDMI port or no external screen. In fact, I wonder if the LP bandwidth is split from the techs it carries or can this bandwidth be split on demand (still from the techs using it). I think this notebook is a fantastic piece of engineering and I hope there are many things left to know about it (I'd like Sony to let consumers have full control over it, like enabling full BIOS options).

 

Hi there,

I have a Z21 and just bought a slice battery for it. When connected, the computer recognises it, but will not charge it. It says Battery 1 80% charging, battery 2 0% not charging. Even when I charge the slice externally then it just increases the percentage from 0% on the second battery, but it just says 'not charging' after it.

Is there anything obvious I am missing to charge the slice battery?

Many thanks

 

Sounds like it should work. Perhaps the battery slice is bad. I'd also suggest making sure you have the most current bios loaded.

As the machine and battery are still under warranty, I'd call Sony and let them figure it out.

 

Thanks for this. Bios updated, and the battery is now charging.

 

Did anyone have any luck replacing sony SSDs with aftermarket ones?
What form factor are they?

It seems that for the price they want for 256GBx2, you could get 512x2 online, unless it's some odd size that is shooting the price up.

Thank you.

 

Does anyone know if it's possible to wake the Z2 from a bluetooth keyboard from sleep mode? It's annoying that I always have to open the lid when it's connected to the dock

 

I'm considering the same option. When the ivy bridge configs come out, what kind of price are we looking at for the base model? I'm assuming the current offers on the sandy bridge aren't going to continue. If the base ivy bridge is going to be something like $1900, I'll have to go for the SB instead. I'm also starting to consider an ivy bridge Samsung Series 9 for $1400 instead.

 

The Bluetooth radio isn't on when sleeping. So no possibility.

 

Are you sure that it isn't possible to enable it while sleeping? Of course the battery consumption will be higher, but that wouldn't matter to me.




According to a Bth FAQ from Microsoft I found it could be possible:

Here is another kb entry from Microsoft: How to enable waking of a Windows Vista computer using Bluetooth HIDs


The problem is - I can find the vid_pid from my bluetooth via the device manager easily, but there is no entry for it in "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\"

 

I am also considering the same options. My Z1 is getting slower, freezes quite often now and I found an interesting refurbished offer at the French Sony site for the Z21 with i7, 3rd gen 256 SSD. Prices are much higher than in US, but for France at 1400€ it is almost half the retail price. This price is without the PMD and I was wondering if I should add it. I almost never need the speed mode at my Z1, but I use multiple screens with Display link and I have a ton of blu rays.

I have 2-3 days to confirm the offer.
On the other side I could wait a bit more with my Z1 and the Samsung could also be an interesting alternative. Very good screen, super light and thin and fast enough for my needs. Only advantage I see with the Z2 is the slice battery.
I could also wait for Ivy bridge and Win8.

Any ideas?

 

you don't need a new laptop, just need to restore it like it was from the factory. i can't remember which button to press during boot up but it was one of the F1-F12 keys at the top of the keyboard. there's no message on-screen which one it is but if you google it you can find out what it is. that's what i did.

 

Crazy question here... Does anyone think it would be possible to upgrade the CPU in the Sandy Bridge Z2 to the new Ivy Bridge CPU? The new CPUs are supposed to be backwards compatible. Has anyone torn apart a Z2 enough to be able to see if the CPU is replaceable? I'd be willing to purchase an i7-3612QM, and give it a shot, if the CPU is in-fact accessible and replaceable.

I'd really like the extra cores, increased performance, and potentially better battery life.

Edit: NVM, looks like it's soldered to the motherboard...