Official Sony Vaio F22 2D Owners Lounge

There are three changes. That's one of them.

Second, there's also a 750 GB 7200 rpm HDD available, whereas it used to top out at 640 GB.

Third, they also changed the prepackaged software from the Adobe Bundle to the Sony® Imagination Studio™ Multimedia Edition. (Some Vaios come with the former, some the latter).

 

Thank you both very much; As long as they left the gorgeous screen alone!

 

I haven't seen anything that would make me think it's a different screen, but my F23 gets here Tuesday, so I can confirm then.

 

I've had a VAIO® Notebook Computer Model # VPCF226FM/B for a few months now and have tried 3 different solid slate drives but I'm still having issues. The people at SONY have not been helpful at all when I've called or tried to talk to them through live chat, so I figured I'd ask on here. I'm having issues with my computer freezing for 10-20 seconds at a time or the screen going black and the USB 3.0 ports when trying to connect my external hard drives.

I have a Patriot Wildfire 120GB Solid Slate Drive:

Patriot Memory

And I have 3 Seagate 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra portable drives.

Basic specs for my laptop are:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Processor - Intel® Core™ i7
Processor Speed -2.0GHz (with Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz)
Cache Memory - 6MB
System Memory (RAM) -8GB
Type of Memory (RAM) -DDR3
Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
Video Memory - 1GB (dedicated)

SONY did send me the 7 disc VPCF220FX Series recovery CD's.

After I used the CD's and finished all of my updates for Windows, I continue to keep having issues with my laptop freezing and sometimes when I turn it on it says "No Operating System Found".

When I plug in my external hard drive to the USB 3.0 ports the hard drive is getting power, but Windows is not recognizing the drive. If I plug it into the USB 2.0 port it works every time, but I'd like to have the data transfer speed from the 3.0 port.

The only software I added to my computer are:
Adobe Air, Flash, Reader
Google Chrome
K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 7.6.0
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
Mozilla Firefox
Quicken 2011
QuickTime Pro
Winrar 4.01 (64-bit)


I uninstalled all of the SONY software and for a day it stopped freezing then it started all over again.

I have a copy of Parted Magic to do a secure erase if needed. I tried that with the previous 2 solid slate drives I had, but they were both recalled which is why I currently have the Patriot Wildfire.

I was directed to go here from another thread for F Series owners.

What do I need to do to get my laptop to stop freezing and what can I do to stop having issues with the USB 3.0 ports.

Are there specific drivers that I need to install that are not on the SONY website? Do I have to make any changes regarding BIOS? Does it have anything to do with the Intel or Nvidia components?

Based on the spec's of my laptop, I was told that it could handle the hard drive upgrade from SONY and the Geek Squad technicians at the Best Buy store that I bought it at. I'd really hate to have to switch back to the Toshiba 7200 RPM 640GB hard drive that came with the computer. I keep hearing that having a solid slate drive is the way to go if you want to have a fast computer. I'm really only using it for accounting software for work and watching Blu-ray movies.

I've been learning more about computers since I've been trying to resolve these issues and I've gotten a decent foundation regarding the basic spec terms. I'm a quick learner too, so if someone could provide me with any information that I can read to resolve this issue I would GREATLY appreciate it.

Free financial consultation or 2011 tax advice to anyone that helps me resolve this issue!

 

Hi guys!

I have a really big problem. I'm the owner of a VPCF2290X series, but i maked something stupid. I brought this laptop from the USA, when i was there, a couple of weeks ago, but I'm in Romania now because i'm living here. I wanted to change my operating system (to W7 Ultimate X64). Yesterday I formatted all of the drives, I repartitioned, and because of that, I can't access the Recovery Kit, because I deleted it. I didn't maked recovery media disk, because i thinked that i can find everything in the sony-s webpage, and at the first start my laptop didn't asked if i want to make a recovery media disk. This is my first Vaio laptop, i didn't know the procedure about the drivers at the Sony. I was wrong, and i know i'm stupid but i can't do anything now. I can't order the Recovery Media Kit from the Sony, because they don't ship to Europe, and in Europe i can't get Recovery Kit for the US Version.
Please help me, this is my last chance, if you know something what can i do, please answer, or please somebody can do an image (iso) file from his recovery kit, and can send it to me online ? My laptop was 1,3k and now it's useless....

my laptop's specifications :

Product: US-VPCF2290X-LBOM
Component: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Component: Black
Component: 16.4" 2D Full HD LCD display (1920x1080) with LED backlight
Component: Adobe Bundle (Free - $448 value)
Component: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M (1GB VRAM) dedicated graphics
Component: Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30 Day Trial)
Component: 6GB (4GBx1 + 2GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: High capacity battery
Component: No Engraving
Component: Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (Click More Info for details.)
Component: No Fresh Start
Component: 500GB (7200rpm) hard drive
Component: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM quad-core processor (2.0GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.90GHz
Component: CD/DVD player / burner

 

With regards to the patriot SSD make sure that the firmware has been updated to the latest from the patriot website. SSDs are quite funny and do recieve regular updates.

I do also have a question regarding the F series, i am looking at the F23 with the Intel i7 2670, and was wondering if it was easy to upgrade the wireless card to the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 mini-pci card? Also is it possible to remove the DVD rom to install a 2nd HDD?

 

I had similar problem forgotting to make recovery discs. But after caling tech support/I'm from Canada - Sony Vaio VPCF2290S/ my call was transfered to tech support located in USA / they guide me how to make recovery discs.
Canafan - Canada

 

Does anybody know the ID of the Vaio Plus-Display?

 

You can't make recovery discs if the recovery partition is gone. Also Dabo is in Romania, they won't provide support to him there.

 

Hi, I was near BB today and took a quick look at their F23. My gf was there (and in a rush) and salesperson so I didn't have much time. The machine (black) looked thicker and may have had louder sound. The screen had good angles and 1920 x 1080.

As you indicated, few changes. I was surprised that the HDD was listed at 5400 rpm. It was 750.

Looked nice, I'll have to find out more.

Good luck with the new machine!

 

Any ideas guys? :\

 

^
Hey you can find all drivers and utilities from Sony US support page for your model VPCF2290X

 

Thanks for your answer!
I tried, there wasn't anything, for example the quick web access button and the ethernet adapter didn't worked.

 

^
Did u download Realtek® PCIe GBE Family Controller driver ??????????/

As for Quick Web Access I have no idea.

 

Guys are you 100% sure that the ID of Vaio Dsiplay Premium is CMO1601-N164HGE-L12 ?I have the feeling it's the Plus one with different matrix.

 

^
That is the Premium Display ID not PLUS.

 

The one I ordered has a 750 GB 7200 rpm HDD. The 5400 rpm one might be a slightly-cheaper option, or it might be a Best Buy special, but a 7200 rpm 750 GB is available.

 

It's here! Initial impressions.

OMG the screen. Sooooooooo nice. It's worth all the hype. Bright and vibrant colors, and great clarity. I had to boost text size to 125% to read menus and the like, though.

It's fast. I've recently set up a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E420 (Intel i3 laptop) and a Dell desktop machine (Intel i3 desktop CPU), and this thing powered through Windows setup and Microsoft Office faster than either, it seemed. Obviously it'd be faster than the i3 laptop CPU, but I was impressed how fast it was compared to a desktop.

The speakers are crap until you turn Dolby on. Then they're great. Be sure to launch the Dolby settings and turn it on! Haven't played around yet with the music, gaming, and movies settings, but will in time.

The keyboard is a true pleasure. Nice positive key action; no missed keys while typing quickly. Quiet too. Maybe detected the slightest squeak from the "O" key once or twice, but it might be my imagination.

The trackpad is unimpressive. I guess it has two-finger scroll, but it works so poorly it might as well not. The rocker-style two-button setup is annoying because you need to click on the outside of the bar, not near the center. Also, I've brushed the trackpad with the palm of my left hand while typing more than once. For fancy trackpad lovers, this is no substitute for an Apple. However, I'm generally happy to just plug in an external mouse and go with that.

Yes, it's big and heavy compared to most of what's on the market today, but compared to laptops from ten years ago, it's really not that bad. And I haven't gotten any weaker in the past ten years.

 

Without the recovery DVDs for your own system it will never be the same as factory-direct. Your best option is to buy Windows 7, downwload as many drivers as you can find for the laptop, and do what's known as a "clean install." It will take many days to get the system working right.. once it's done then back up the operating system. You essentially will never again have proper recovery media.

 

Congratulations! It sounds like a really nice machine. I may get one, too. (Skip Blue Ray and get a smaller HDD perhaps, but the same).

Good luck!

 

I skipped Blu-Ray as well. I need a bigger HDD, and I wanted a bit more RAM without opening up a brand-new machine, and I wanted the better GPU, but besides that, I went with minimum options, and I couldn't be happier. It's great value. $1249 not including Microsoft Office. To put things in perspective, that's $50 more than a base-model, no-options MacBook Pro 13, with a low-resolution 13" screen and no dedicated GPU.

 

Hi Gump, Hans & anyone else with this issue.

Yes, it seems to have been resolved and we noticed before they did

Just had this email from them:


Dear Sir/Madam,
Kindly be advised that the issue has been resolved from our side, please confirm if the VAIO update has been resolved or not.


Kindly be advised that “No automatic update programs are available” means that your VAIO is up to date and no further updates are available.
Should you have any further questions or queries, please feel free to reply to this email or contact us at the below numbers:

Doesn't really inspire confidence in their support system, but hey!

Cheers

Matt.

 

Hello to everyone,

I just purchased a new VPCF226FM/B from Best Buy and was wondering if it has the “premium” display? I have read in some earlier threads that all the matte panels are premium panels.

Using AIDA64 I found my panel is a Chi Mei N164HGE-L12 which is made by the same company as the panel in my Samsung except the Samsung panel is a 1366 x 768. Why I ask is I find myself a little disappointed in the display at the moment, which is strange after reading all the glowing reviews about how good the F22 panel is.

Compared to my old Samsung RC512-S02 the colors are flat and seem too warm. The white balance is way off. I use this machine with Photoshop CS5 and Nikon Capture NX for photo editing.

Blu-ray playback seems to look good, but web pages and photos look rather poor with poor white balance

I tried tweaking the settings some in the Nvidia control panel and it helps a little, but they still look poor. I tried the windows color calibration routine and white balance still looks poor, but I do not have one of the electronics devices to do accurate calibration.

One other thing I was wondering about is if anything can be done to increase text size in some applications. When I open up CS5 the menu bar text is really tiny, even after increasing the size from the default of 125% to 150%. The icons and other items are enlarged but the CS5 text seems to stay the same. I tried different resolution settings other than the native 1920 x 1080, but the results are rather poor.

One other question is why did Sony disable the on board HD3000 GPU? My Samsung has GT525M with Optimus which allows me to choose which GPU to use for different applications. Most run under the power saving HD3000 unless the GT525M is needed.

Sorry if I have asked any redundant questions, but I have tried to read all the threads but my brain is fried trying to read them all.

 

The ID of the Vaio-Plus display is CMO1600-N164HGE-L11. I checked it today on the model VPCF22M1E.

As long as I remember the optimus technology had some issues with some games etc.So my guess is that they didn't put it in order to not have those issues.

 

Hi, how good is this display? I know the BB display is 1920 x 1080. Is this the best 1920 x 1080 found in the F22/F23? I liked the display in the F22 when I look ed at it for two weeks about 6 weeks ago. Was I probably looking a this? Tx!

(Yeah, I think optimus was left out for operating simplicity/reliability; it's pretty much a desktop replacement anyway.)

 

Here in Europe the F22 and F23 series have Vaio Plus display and Vaio Premium display.The Premium one is the best and both of the displays are matte.I also didn't find any big differences on them,maybe they aren't calibrated.Also both are full HD,the difference is that the premium one has better colours,brightness etc of course you got to calibrate it.

 

If you're in the United States, then the 1920x1080 on the Best Buy model is the same one you'll get from Sony ordering it online. It's not as good as the F-series 3D's screen, but except for that, it's still basically the best screen you'll find on a consumer laptop.

 

A quick update to my poor color question. I found that my calibration profile was not "sticking" when applied. I modified a few settings in the Viao and Nvidia control panels then rerun the calibration and now my screen looks awesome!

 

The keyboard and screen on this machine are so good that I'm actually sitting at my desk at work, ignoring the desktop machine my work provides me (complete with very respectable screen and keyboard) and using my own laptop, because I like the screen and laptop better. Seriously. Not bad for a laptop.

 

^
So have you thought of something to show off the screen in your Youtube video review ?

 

I was going to do that video this weekend, if I have time. I think I've spent enough time doing enough on it to be able to give a good review. Hero seems like a no-brainer for showing off the screen. Maybe the scene above the lake during the "blue" segment, maybe the leaves scene during the "red" segment.

 

Hi people,

i am new here and want to thank you all for the nice reviews on this great laptop.
I got mine about a week ago.I must say that i love it.Been using mostly DELL laptops in the past,this Vaio is pretty amazing i must say.
I have a few questions,though.

I noticed that when i turn on the laptop and windows has loaded it takes a while,while the keybord is lit.When it lits there is a color change in the display itself(it might be because of this controlled ilumination thing),but it's like it goes from "cold" blue to more "warm" redish.It's all being cool by now,i guess this might be pretty normal but would really like to hear some feedback on this one.
May be you could recommend some good settings about the display or i don't know,just hope it's all cool with this otherwise great laptop.

That's that for now,thank you in advance and take care you all.

 

by the way,the past 2 days i've been giving the blue screen which is definitely a problem.I've tested all the hardware via Vaio Care and it says there's no preoblem with any of the hardware components.I've done a couple of system restore and all that could be done via the windows repair section.

I'm starting to get worried so please,if any of you experienced that sort of problem,let me know what could be done.

Thanx again.

 

What are the Arcsoft webcam settings people are using? I'm having trouble getting accurate colors for video chatting. Colors are coming through muted and a bit sepia.

Also, the resolution seems low for video chatting, even though on paper it's the same resolution as my MBP 15. Do I need too make changes for it to display sharply?

 

Yeah. The keyboard on the F series is a pleasure to use. I was curious to compare it with the keyboard on MacBook Pros and it felt that the keyboard on those were cheap. I was really surprised because most of the time, Apple hardware are always top notch.

There's 1 thing i noticed though.. it seems that the vertical viewing angles on the MacBook Pros are slightly better. Though the horizontal viewing angles on the F22 are much better. The F 3D however, is in a league of it's own, providing IPS like viewing on both horizontal and vertical

I hope they make the viewing angles on the F 3D as standard for all future F series. That'd be great and will be my next laptop

 

The light sensor will affect the brightness of the screen and not the color change you mention. That change is usually the result of loading the screen's default color profile into the display system. This is done by Windows when you boot if you checked the 'Use Windows display calibration' in Windows Color Management, or by a third-party start-up application (usually installed with a color calibration software, assuming you have installed such a software).

The delay you mentioned most of the time is caused by one or more start-up applications which access the hard drive a lot, or they use a lot of CPU. It those applications are desired ones (like antivirus loading the virus signatures, ...) this is normal.

I don't know about the keyboard light, but if the default config is sent by the Sony software on start-up, then you encounter that delay for the same reason mentioned above.

 

Do the F22 series come with preinstalled Evernote for Vaio?

 

Not if you do Fresh Start. Don't know if it has it if you don't select Fresh Start.

 

How you select Fresh Start?

 

You include the free Fresh Start option when you buy the computer. Otherwise it's not available to you.

 

When you configure-to-order, select Win 7 Professional on page 1 of the configurator, and select fresh start on page 2 of the configurator. It's the only way to get it.

 

If it's any help, the F21 came with Evernote. I can't imagine they removed it for the 22 or 23.

 

Hi all I fave a 2D f22 i7cpu has anyone noticed that when on battery power the cpu is locked at about 800mhz according to cpu-z I know you can change power options under power plan like 100% for cpu on battery power but this makes no difference. I even tried a clean install thinking sony may use software to limit the cpu on battery but this made no difference. There are no settings in the bios either to change like speed step etc. Dont get me wrong the performance is ok on battery especially with a crucial ssd, but applications run faster when on mains power reboot time is 38 seconds on battery 21 seconds on mains with the ssd. Running p95 fans spin up and get full power on mains on battery no fans needed as low cpu clock and no heat. I also have an acer aspire i5 the cpu clock speed goes up and down on either battery or mains. Any ideas please.

 

Yes, all VAIOS with i-series CPUs are locked at lower clock speeds on battery to improve battery life. This is old news.

 

Hey MelodyMaster,

I'm new to the sony side of the forums, and I'd like to know if you can link me to some information on this subject. I just purchased a Vaio F23, I didn't know that Sony locked in lower clock speeds on battery. How does this work, can you elaborate if there aren't any links for me to read?

 

The information is all over the place. The main gist is that the current drawn (up to CPU TDP) by the i5/i7 when working hard completely exceeds the sustained current capability of the battery. Also one would get battery life of less than an hour. The power supply is rated at 120 watts or more, the battery just 50 watts. Some Dell laptops run full speed on battery, and that causes many complaints. http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony-owners-lounge-forum/487213-official-sony-vaio-f-series-i5-i7-owners-thread-part-3-a-252.html#post6524047

 

Thank you for your quick reply. I will read up on it.

 

Not all VAIOS with i-series CPUs are locked. See my post on the Official Sony Vaio F Series Owners Thread *Part 6*: F13 - No CPU Speed Limit on Battery vs Battery Life

If the multiplier is not locked in BIOS, the same limitation can be achieved - if desired - by setting the right value for the processor power management's "Maximum processor state" and "Minimum processor state" in the used power plan. In other words, there is a choice for max battery life versus max power, and all the cases between. I personally prefer to have a choice and do it as I wish.

 

I have a VPCF22M1E/B which is the UK version and it comes by default with the Vaio Plus screen, does anyone know if I can replace this with a Vaio Premium screen? The VPCF22M1E/B never came from Sony directly so it has the default Vaio plus screen which in my eye is not good at all, having owned an AR51-SU. Any thoughts on if a direct replacement is possible?

CH

 

Ok thanks for that thought my Vaio might have been faulty, thanks for the info I guess it must be bois controlled then. We should as customers have the choice if we want to flatten our batterys in 30 minutes though. Funny thing is I also have an acer aspire laptop with i-series CPU that is not locked at lower clock on battery and the battery life is better on that one and more responsive as you need a quick boost when opening apps. I agree if I maxed out the CPU all the time then it would not last long, but surely that's what the power management settings are for, to customise your personal choice. Sony should at least give you the option to override.