Official Sony Vaio F22 2D Owners Lounge

Hi All,

I placed an order for sony vaio f23 series CTO notebook on 25Nov with exp. ship date 21Dec..

After a week, a got an email saying "you laptop is being built as per..."

Next day I got charged for the same..

Got another email "your ship date is rescheduled - 14Dec, due to parts not in stock"

Called customer care - "As per sony policy, i should be charged only when the order is shipped, She created a ticket and said there is some bug. My laptop will be shipped on 21st Dec"

Any comments, is this Ok ?

 

Now, were you actually charged or is it just a hold on your card? Every time I've ordered from Sony online, they will put a pending charge that sits on my card account for a while and goes away after a bit. It's not until the laptop is built and ready to go do they truly charge my card for the amount.

 

First time it was "Pending charge - at the time of order" which went away after 3-4 days.

Second time the transaction completed and charged.

When I check my order status online, it says - "completed"

But no shipping details, and no email ..

 

I'm kind of in the same situation as you at this exact moment. However, Completed status means the laptop is indeed built. Now you just have to wait for the shipping email to come, not much else you can do from here.

 

F23 2D recieves Editor's choice award and 4.5 out of 5 stars at computershopper.

 

niiiice
thats my model

 

I was enough for me to check the conclusion page here and to understand that this review was wrote probably by someone related to Sony
.
Not a word on a performance on this page (and I understand why ) but only on the softwares that came with the notebook ( thing that does not impress anyone ) and a laconic closing sentence "If you can find a better-performing notebook that can match these features at this price, go ahead and buy it " like the buyers are all stupid and think that Sony F23 has the best features for the best price , while in reality , the opposite is true .
What "best"features the writer refers to ? The bunch of softwares described on the conclusion page are "feature" ? And "at this price" of $1200 , you cannot go wrong - any other brand offers better features than Sony offers with this model .

Just my thoughts on the review ...

 

It worth a direct clarification with Sony's support .
I assume that since the end of the year is close , Sony as many other companies are interested to close their financial year as strong as possible , so it is very possible that they will charge as much as possible customers till December 31'th leaving the supplying and delivery as a secondary issue .
For sure it is not OK , especially if the order's policy is to charge the cost only when the product is delivered , and if it wasn't done this way , you have the right to ask for compensation on this mistake from their side or to consider to cancel your order .

 

IlanD,

Expressing your dissatisfactions once or twice is understandable. But doing it again and again and to try to make people believe that they have made a wrong choice and attack reviews just because it does not reflect your personal opinion is TROLLING.

Just my thoughts on your post...

 

OK , I got it . If it is what you think about my comments , I'll stop doing it .
Good luck to all .

 

I do NOT have this model but I fully agree that that reviewer told a lot about some software which I call bloatware and uninstall it all while he told nothing about ugly look of this VAIO. I believe this model lost its "VAIOness".

Sorry but just my thoughts after I saw comparing photo review F1x vs F2x.

 

I got email from SONY, stating the issue and they will update on it ...

 

another thing i noticed,

> during black friday weekend ( $250 off ) the F series estimated ship date was 21 Dec
> following next week is went to ( 5 Feb 2012 )
> I checked again this week, Now its showing Jan 2012.

Shows F series in stock .. no delays nothing... any comment ?

 

one more thing why the model number change so freq ?

> like F22 series.. then F23 series .. is there any real big difference ?

 

The F21 and F22 existed at the same time. The F21 was 3D, the F22 was 2D. This fall, Intel updated the CPUs slightly, and the F23 designation is used for the F-series machines with the new-gen CPUs (both the 2D and the 3D). In addition to a marginally-updated CPU, the F23 offers more hard drive options (including a 750 GB 7200 rpm HDD) and different prepackaged multimedia software (it has the Sony bundle instead of the Adobe bundle). But the machine is basically identical except for CPU generation, HDD options, and prepackaged software.

 

Ok, so I finally bought my new laptop, a Sony Vaio VPC-F23S1E/B. (yea, this is the F22 thread, but I felt it was the most relevant thread)

If we put aside the power it has within (well, except for the gpu, which is more than adequate for me), the comfy keyboard, and generally the fact that it runs ok - and most importanly silent if you tweak accordingly the vaio control center -, I'm afraid I can't say I'm too excited about the screen. :|
Actually, I'm more of concerned that it may be defective. I don't know if it's just me being picky (and have little to no experience with 1080p laptop screens), but it just doesn't feel right to me that I can see the "distortion" in the letters and shapes, little black spots all over the screen that look like borders of the pixels.

Can someone please tell me if this is normal, and maybe I should start getting used to it, or I should check with the store I bought it from? It's just that the surface of the screen doesn't feel "smooth", not only on letters (I tried Cleartype on Windows, but it doesn't make much of a difference) but on icons and images too.
Thanks in advance.


PS: I don't know if it has something to do with the high brightness, which seems kind of disturbing to me even though I toned it down a little, plus the high resolution, which both of them make you focus more on the details of the screen.

 

At first clean it with the microfiber cloth if you have.
If you have lots of dead pixels and all is not smooth... send it back.

 

I don't have a microfiber cloth, but I doubt it will make any difference. It feels more like a color reproduction problem from inside the screen, rather than on the surface.
Just to test it, I moved the "CPUID HWMonitor" shortcut on the desktop to another position, but still the "W" letter for example isn't smooth at all.

Another weird thing is that when the screen displays some dark colors, there seems to be some kind of horizontal-straight-lines effect, like they're getting in the way of the actual colors or sth.
That happens when I'm watching a full-screen video or a background image, and it's really worrying. :|

 

That sounds EXACTLY like a classic Aero bug, a Glass window border is covering the whole screen. Reinstall the video driver and try a different theme.

 

The distortions aren't normal, but it sounds like MelodyMaster knows what's going on.

As for the brightness, yeah, the screen is BRIGHT. I rarely have it on full brightness. This screen gets exceptionally bright at full brightness except for some movies and games. The brightness is overwhelming with web browsers and word processors where most of the screen is white. Most of the time, I have it at about 2/3s brightness for plugged-in work and 1/3 brightness for battery work.

 

Thanks guys for all the help, appreciate it.

I'm starting to believe that it's just my pickiness and the screen actually works as it should, cause I did a little comparison with my old laptop's screen, and although the "distortion" isn't so noticable (mostly due to the lower resolution+brightness), it still exists. I guess I have to accept the fact that there is no perfect screen as I had imagined it in my mind.


@MelodyMaster

I'm planning to do a clean install of Windows 7 Professional, will that do the trick about the Aero bug?


@Mitlov

Yep, it's very bright. It feels like some old CRT monitor I had a when I was little, for my pre-historic pentium processor PC.
What NVIDIA settings do you currently use (brightness, contrast, gamma) ?
I find a good balance with 45, 37, 0.42 respectively, along with ~3/4 brightness.

 

Hi guys,

I have a Vaio F22.
I want to upgrade my RAM from 1x4Gb to 2x4Gb. I'm thinking about buying this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMS...1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1323727805&sr=1-6

I think it's easy to change RAM, but I want to be sure that this is the appropiate module for my laptop.
Now I have 1 module of 4Gb from Hynix ( Memory > Laptop Memory > Hynix HMT351S6BFR8C-H9 - Hynix 4GB PC3-10600 DDR3-1333MHz non-ECC Unbuffered CL9 SoDimm Memory Module Mfr P/N HMT351S6BFR8C-H9.

There's any problem upgrading this? Motherboard will support it? I've Win7 64-bit, so there's no problem with OS.

Any thought? What about Dual-Channel? I don't know much about it.

Thank you!!

 

I actually don't know; I use the "standard" color mode from the VAIO Control Center and adjust brightness as needed with Fn-F5 and Fn-F6, and otherwise have left everything with factory settings. It looks good to me.

 

wow, that's a lot of gamma then. I couldn't stand it for a minute personally.

Is it just me who finds it weird that you don't have an option for 1600x900 resolution, but the next available resolution after 1920x1080 is 1680x1050?
Probably a driver issue, not very important as I don't intend to use such a resolution, but I'm mentioning it in just in case.


I actually did some research about the whole screen issue. It seems that the term that best describes the condition is "grainy screen". But I can't be 100% sure that the screen is faulty, and it's not just me.
Anyway, I'll probably send it back and have it checked just to make sure. I think they'll tell me to replace it, which is something that will probably take some considerable amount of time, but oh well - I'm not so much in a rush anyway.

 

Just a couple of general comments... The F2 is supposed to be quieter than the F1, that's why it's bigger, for smoother airflow. I looked at an F22 in Best Buy and first of all, while thicker than an F1 it i still a very handsome machine, and the screen is gorgeous! Even in the unfriendly surroundings of a busy store this is obviously one of the best displays on any laptop, I can't understand the hating.

1 gig is perfectly adequate for gaming on a single display at 1920X 1080. More detailed textures take up more memory, but also require more work by the GPU. More memory does NOT reduce the workload on the GPU and decrease heat, it does the opposite. My Q9450 gamer uses two ATI-branded HD4850s in crossfire with 500 megs memory (paged between cards) and it runs all games just fine on a 1920 X 1200 screen.

The fan on my F11 is perfectly quiet except when rendering. For all office and field work it is unnoticeable. Even my IBM T23 Tualatin is noisier. The F11 used to be noisier with a bit of a whine, but it's quieted down. The laptop MUST be cleaned out every two months.

Feature for feature, and considering software and the relative lack of bloatware on the F22/23, the Sony is a better deal than any Asus, Toshiba, or Dell laptop, and looks nicer and is better built and has a display to match Asus's, once the leader on good displays on cheap laptops. And I'm an Asus fan with an Asus being my first choice before I settled on an FW then F11.

You can get two drives in some other laptops, but you pay for that. I have two HDs in the F11, with an external BD burner. There appears to be space for a second HD on the F11, but I guess an engineering decision was made to allow for better airflow instead. I havent seen a disassembled F22..

 

Hi eehpeehthreeh << "I got the shipping email finally."

Can anyone tell, Is there a way to create a installation disk (OS only or OS + drivers) from restore partitions. (I don`t want extra applications.)

I got one app. "vLite", but not sure of how exactly it will work ?, Since i do not have any OS-iso file.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite_and_vLite

vlite is for Vista, but I guess it should also work for win7..

 

When you do a clean install with the restore disk you create through Vaio Care, you can pick and choose what goes back on. It's not like the restore disk forces to to put on all the bloatware and programs.

 

Hi Mitlov,

thanks for the insight..

1) after creating the restore disk.. should i delete the recovery partitions to gain disk space.. (is there any cons ?)
2) Can u suggest some good brand for 4G Ram ?
I saw your video review.. it's nice..

 

Yeah, the con is, if your restore disk gets lost or damaged, you're out of luck and won't be able to make another. I'd keep the recovery partition. Even the smallest HDD option is spacious, so it's not like removing the partition would make a night-and-day difference.

Maybe someone else could chime in...I've never upgraded ram myself.

Thanks!

 

Got mine in, surprisingly quick. I saw it leaving China yesterday and this morning it was in Texas out for delivery.

 

Hi when did you order ?

 

I ordered on 11/24, Thanksgiving morning. I just now realized that I forgot to clarify, but I ordered an SE and not another F.

 

OMG what do you do with those many laptops ?

 

Has anyone bought the model VPCF2390X CTO or VPCF23JFX/BC (see link below)? If you did, is it possible to replace the DVD drive with an SSD?

VAIO F Series PC | Sony | Sony Store USA

 

Most of the F23 buyers are first going to the F1 thread. It's time to add F23 and ALL F2X laptops to the topic of THIS thread.

All modern laptops can use a docking adaptor to mount a hard drive in the slot used for BD/DVDrom, there are no exceptions. The rails are taken off the BDrom and mounted on the hard drive dock. Also there are adaptor cables to run the internal-mount BDrom externally. My F11 has an SSD boot drive in the hard drive bay, a mechanical hard drive in the BDrom bay for data, and has the cable for occasional use of the UJ-240 BD writer which I otherwise keep in a Kindle gen2 pouch (perfect fit for the writer and cable) in the laptop bag.

 

By docking adaptor, do you mean the mount that comes with most SSD? Can you please link to an example of such dock adaptor? It's my first time doing this kind of "mod."

 

Oh, this one is actually for a friend for Christmas. I am starting to see that I probably don't need all these Vaios; it's bad realizing that I've come to possess four 2011 models.

 

This has been discussed so many times I didn't realize you wouldn't know of them.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/388625-diy-adding-ssd-hdd-storage-using-optical-bay-caddy.html

SATA 2nd HDD HARD DRIVE caddy for 12.7mm Universal CD/DVD-ROM Optical Bay DV25A | eBay

Note for the VAIO Fs there's no difference in speed between the HD and DVDrom slots (despite what has been written otherwise) but the DVDrom slot does tend to run cooler, so that's the best place for mechanical drives.

Another note, the DVDrom slot IS hot-swappable, no special software is needed. In rare cases the DVDrom may have trouble running as AHCI without a forced reinstall.

 

The problem with these heavy docks is that if I want to carry a sony F23 or F22 laptop to my work place , the overal weight will be near 4.3 kg ! what a hassle !

2- Another great surprize is that none of these new High end models comes out with SSD in firts place , and you must place an order seperately. and this will raise the whole price to near $5000 ( in F237 case for example )!

While the raw price of F226 model with 2720 Qm Cpu is now near $2000 , isnt it wiser that some one pick up a F226 and then add SSD to it ?! I think this way some benchmaks especially those relying on calculation power will be more desirebale than a $5000 F 237 with core i7 2860 QM ?
as far as I know other specifications are just the same such as Full Hd , blue Ray , premium screen ...etc . so why not ?!

I say this since I saw that most of new Sony Z benchmarks ( with dual core core i7) was supperior than new F series (2d or 3d) models ' .!! and when some one asked the reason , Authors has replied that it's because of SSD on Z seies .

 

The HD dock is a piece of tin, just an internal adaptor, it doesn't add weight at all. We're not talking about a dock for the whole laptop. When I ordered my F11 the 250 Gig SSD was only a $216 option over the 500 Gig mechanical, hardly pricey.

 

thanx for your reply , dear melody master ,

Let me ask again : Is it worthwile to buy a $4000 F237 HG/B without SSDs or a F 226 with SSD (2500-2700$) instead ? ( for a seroiuse chess player).
which would be a better choice ?

 

Thanks for the info and links. It seems there are two different ODD's sizes: 9.5mm and 12.7mm. And since you listed the link for the 12.7mm, so can I assume that the F23's ODD has that size?

 

F237 (3D model) with 640GB 7200 rpm HDD < F226 + SSD in performance

Since you don't need the 3D screen then I would say save money and get the F226/F236 instead. (Preferably F236 with i7 2760QM)

 

Excellent response !
you got what I was asking concisely.
Unfortunately the price tag of new F236 is 3000$ ( without SSD)!
also it seems that most of these models are 3D!
They have a new technology bulit- in called exmor which improves the sony HD video quality ( not usefull for me)!

 

Then get the F226. It will still beat the F237 in terms of performance.
And the EXMOR feature has been available in most 2011 Vaio models. Its nothing new with the F23X. F226 models also have the EXMOR webcam.
And yes only the F237/F217 is 3D model. Rest are 2D.

 

Yes the optical drives are 12.7mm. The adaptor itself will handle either standard thickness of HD. Mine has a quickmount for the drive, it snaps in, rather than requiring screws, but the faceplate/escutcheon from the BDrom can NOT be used, unlike the one in the link, I believe.

 

Thanks again! One more question, will I get SATA II or SATA III speed through the ODD?

 

The same as the HD slot. The adaptor caddy MAY limit the speed, I don't know, but Sata 300Mbps is plenty fast enough.

 

Just a reminder: I cleaned my F11 about six weeks ago,.. Today I ran Furmark and Prime95 and temps were reaching 95 Celsius. I took off the bottom, lifted up the fan shield and blew into the exhaust vent, a small string of cat hair came out; put back together, and now maximum stressed temperatures are 70 Celsius, a reduction of 25 degrees!

There's no problem with the heat sink compound, nor generally with the GPU driver.. if your VAIO is overheating it's due to dust stuck against the inside of the exhaust vent, every time!

 

Thinking of purchasing the following Sony VAIO VPCF232FX/B Laptop Computer - Intel Core i7-2670QM 2.20GHz 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, Blu-Ray Player, NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M, Backlit Keyboard, 16.4 Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Black at TigerDirect.com Is there a clean install guide using the recovery disc for this model?