Official Sony Vaio Fit multi-flip PC Owners' Thread

50%. Either they do, or they don't.

 

3) N-Trig is extremely unlikely to release a wintab driver so that the stylus will be pressure sensitive in programs that use currently use wintab (GIMP, photoshop, paint shop pro etc). Adobe is rumoured to be working on including n-trig support but I assume it will only work for their current supported software and not provide pressure sensitivity for older versions.

I just switched straight into tablet mode and there was no screen resolution change, but as soon as I flipped the screen into a different mode thats when it changed. Haven't had the issue before (as I only just recently switched back down to the 1080p resolution so I wouldn't have to keep swapping in order to use photoshop. Will have a play about in the settings and let you know if I find anything.

 

Received my UK Vaio Flip 15 SVF15N1B4E yesterday :- SVF15N1B4E | VAIO® Fit multi-flip

I suspected specification was to good to be true for the price and i was correct, specification had a 2880 x 1620 display and Stylus Bundled. I received a 1920 x 1080 Display and no Stylus.
The spec I received is the same as John Lewis where I initially was going to buy from which was £50 dearer so I'm not to bothered. I've spoke to Sony customer services about this and I've asked them to extend my warranty as a good will gesture but haven't heard back from them yet and don't really expect to, I'll keep chasing them.

I really like the laptop but have a few gripes.
1. Touchpad:- Tap to Click is very inconsistent, sometimes the tap doesn't work and have to click.
2. No 5Ghz Wireless
3. Keyboard is a little flimsy.
4. Picking the laptop up with one hand makes the laptop creak, doesn't fell very sturdy.
5. The two halves of lid are not perfectly flush with each other.
6. Its a bit heavy.

I'm just a bit fussy but overall the laptop is excellent, especially the screen, boot speed, overall performance, build quality.

I processed a few videos using Adobe Premier Pro CS4 the laptop did ok and is quit usable, the RAM was nearly topped out so a memory upgrade from 8gb to 16 gb might improve things? FYI I had to check "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" because when I dragged clip onto timeline the timeline got jumbled up and corrupted.

In Photoshop CC the Icon Scaling was just about usable so hopefully Abobe and Microsoft can get together to sort this out?

Can anyone tell me what ram I need to buy to upgrade to 2 x 8GB = 16gb?

Cheers

Nick

 

To "jptiger" - Hi Thank you very much for your answer. I decide to buy the device with 1920x1080p display. 80% of the time in front of display, I am reading text. I just preferred not to have trouble with some small sized text. My Friend is not a Student May be he can not use any discount. I will be happy if he can buy the device without sales tax Do you know where is the best place for that? I mean "On Line" or somewhere in California. He can not go in other states for this..

To "Everybody" - Sorry for this question (it is not relevant to "Sony" at all) but.. I can not find reliable information.. I would like to know, does the "Intel HD 4400" can play smoothly "4K" videos? Even if a video is with high Bit Rate? Which much is the "CPU" important to play heavy video files? Can "Intel I5" play this kind of video files or I need "Intel I7"?

Thanks for your replays..

 

Hey there fellow Canuck

The N-Trig question has already been answered, so I'll move on with the 2 others :

1) It depends. Which drive did you order ? If it's a regular or hybrid HDD then yes, it is a regular SATA drive with of course a regular SATA connector. If you ordered the Flip with a SSD, you may very well have one of those M.2 type SSDs ; if so, you wouldn't be able to upgrade the drive with a regular SSD.

2) No "N" support ? It definitely should have. "N" has been the standard for years. Your card wouldn't have 5Ghz (dual band) support nor the newer "IEEE 802.11 ac" technology.
Anyway, upgrading to a new card shouldn't be a problem because it is easily accessible, but not sure about warranty stuff. I would just keep the old card and stuff it back in if you need to send the Flip back for repairs/warranty work.
One possible problem has been mentionned here about getting another card. Say you'd like to switch to an "AC" dual band card, the swap might be easy but we're not sure about the Flip's internal antennas, whether they can accomodate 5Ghz or not. You could end up with a poorly performing card because of that. But the cards are cheap : Intel Network 7260.HMWWB WiFi WIRELESS-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2X2 AC+BLUETOOTH HMC Brown Box - DirectCanada

HTH

Mark

 

In regards to 1. Try turning off the touchpad delay. I found this solved the problem for me (although I mainly use a wireless mouse.)
Go to the charms menu (swipe in from rigt or pointer in top right hand corner) > PC Settings> Mouse and Touchpad
"To help prevent the cursor from accidentally moving while you type, change the delay before clicks work" Change this to No Delay.

 

I have already changed that thinking it would help but made no different for me unfortunately, its very random usually happens in normal desktop mode. Must say I've sort of given up and am using a wireless mouse as well.

Thanks

Nick

 

A positive word on the n-trig pen. It DOES appear to be washable in a standard washing machine + dryer cycle. I let it dry out, disassembled, for ~4 days after the laundry cycle. It was definitely a tad damp on the inside when I took the battery out. oops. Tried it last night and everything seemed to work okay.

I really gotta remember to check my pockets before doing the laundry.

 

Is anyone else having trouble since upgrading to Windows 8.1 where the WiFi connection keeps changing to "Limited"

I've using a 13A with the 7260 N card connected to an Apple AirPort Extreme at 5Ghz.

I had this problem also on my old T13 laptop as well.

Assume its a problem with the Intel drivers after the 8.1 upgrade?

Thanks


Martin

 

I've noticed this in Chrome - occasionally it seems to "lose" the multi-touch functions of the touchpad and, occasionally, a tap won't quite register as a click (though a two finger does register as a right click). The loss of multi-touch was fixed with a restart of chrome. The tap I havn't quite solved, but it's not like it's a chore to press/click instead of tap. Some of the goofiness, I've decided, is baked into the Windows kernel (ex: why does Windows provide autocorrect when using the onscreen keyboard ONLY in certain core MS programs? Annoying)

Of course, the capacitance of your fingers will vary throughout the day, and varies from person to person. My father, for example, can't use many touchpads - his fingers just don't register well, even on touchpads which work flawlessly with other people.

 

Did you remove the screws under the small rubber feet? After removing them, i was able to lifte the cover between the two rubber feet and then it was possible to get off the cover at the power-connector.

 

I have the cover off now, thanks for your help. Just a couple questions about removing the hdd:

1. What and where is the "hardware disconnect/reset button", and why did you press it? Did you press it before or after removing the battery?

2. How did you disconnect (and reconnect) the cables running across the top of the hdd?

 

What are you using cor Cloning Software? Was using Acronis but it rejects the drive. I have a 500GB "straight" drive.

 

HI there Scrannel

I think we may have had ONE member post here about a successful clone for a Flip, and he used CloneZilla if memory serves. This was weeks ago and the member did not provide a step-by-step, but did say he needed a bootable disk (or stick) to clone the drive.
I was undecided for a while about which method I would use : cloning or doing a Recovery install. I chose Recovery. I did have a method for cloning that looked promising, but I obviously haven't tried it :
HDD Caddy – Add a 2nd HDD to your laptop » How-to: Clone factory installed Windows 8 to a new empty SSD
That is pretty thorough I think. Macrium Reflect Free can clone while in Windows, can shrink a partition if needed and does not require bootable media. Worth a shot ?

 

Yup, thanks. Just downloaded the Macrium. Appreciate the info.

 

Could you describe how you disconnected and reconnected the two ribbon cables running across the hdd? I'm reluctant to just prod at them because they look delicate. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

 

The connectors are a compression type. You slide back the top (sometimes you can pull from either side) and then the cable comes out with no force required. To re-install, push the cable back in and re-seat (push in) the connector tab. Here's a sample of how: Removing xbox ribbon cables - YouTube

It's easy, just don't force anything.

BTW - I restored my system from the Sony image on the flash drive I made (restore partition image). HOWEVER, my new drive was larger than the original. I don't know if this made a difference, but when I tried to do the same thing with an ASUS (Q501LA, if it makes any difference) I was unable to clone the 750GB HDD onto a 240GB Crucial M500 SSD. Note that this was even after shrinking the OS partition before imaging. There were a billion things that seemed to be against that install, though, like the SSD disappearing from the BIOS every time I tried a clean install. My advice: don't reassemble everything until you have a working system; you should be able to leave the bottom off and still run all the restore stuff, just be cognizant of ESD and keep yourself grounded with a strap (or regularly touch the metal body to dissipate any charge). There's no sense in messing with the cover more than necessary because every assemble/reassemble is a chance of weakening or damaging the plastic clips.

Let us know how your install goes!!

 

Hy to you all i ve received my flip 15 and ive a problem that when my pc is connected to the charger the touch screen doesn t work right it works partly and lags
But when i unplug the charger it back to works great
I ve did calibration i ve updated every thing my system is win 8.
If anyone can reply to me thank you from now

 

That's an odd problem I haven't heard of. First step is to try switching power profiles from whatever you're using to one of the other two (PowerSaver/Balanced/High Performance) - preferrably high performance and see if that fixes it. There are a bunch of settings which affect how the laptop reacts when it's plugged in vs on battery. If that works, then it's probably a setting buried in the advanced options. The power use optimizations on Windows 8 laptops create all sorts of problems and, unlike Apple, there are so many different vendors trying to optimize at once with their own drivers that there are regular conflicts.

 

Thank you for reply
I ll try that when get back home
I ve found that the pc is somehow is detecting my finger as the stylus for a while and reacting like pressing the buttons of the stylus when it s charging

 

Yeah, that's whacked. I'd un-install the drivers for both the touchpad, the sony touch app, and the stylus drivers, then re-install them all. Sounds like you've got a special kind of weird going on.

 

I ve found that there is some electricity in my chasis when i touch the aluminum i feel some buzz when it is on charge. If i put one of my hands on the chasis and touched the screen with the other hand whole problem is gone .
I guess there is a problem with the charger maybe ?

 

I think I have solved this problem by turning off smartsense in the synaptics settings, i've attached an image of the setting. so far so good:thumbsup:

 

Still with us Scrannel ? How did the cloning with Macrium Reflect go ? I am very curious, and I'm sure others will benefit from your feedback, good or bad.

Thanks

 

Thanks for the response guys!

Little iffy on opening the laptop in case it voids the warranty but I'm really itching to get started upgrading!

One more question, can we use official NVIDIA video drivers or are we stuck with Sony's outdated video drivers?

 

Just thought I'd add my report of a hdd swap and ram upgrade in a 15a. Many thanks to nbuserms and overzeetop in this thread and to cptwhite_uk at forums.hexus.net for helpful guidance.

In hindsight it's an easy procedure, but there were a few things I found tricky just because I didn't know about them in advance. I'll list those things here in case they may help others.

All positional references (left, right, front, back) refer to the upright "laptop use" position. So for example the hinge is at the back, and the power connector is on the left, etc.

1. Internal clips around the edge of the cover hold it in place: two on the back edge at the left hinge, one at the back edge at the right hinge, two on either side of the front-most usb port on the left side, and eight along the front side.

2. A key constraint in removing the cover is that it be clear of the headphone jack on the right side. The small ring protruding slightly from the headphone jack is attached to the motherboard, not the cover.

3. (cptwhite_uk) Because of #2, the easiest way to get the cover off seems to be to first free the whole left side and front, then lift the left side and push to the right to get the cover on the right clear of the headphone jack. Then the right side can be lifted and the clip at the right hinge released.

4. When prying around the edge of the cover, watch out for the two thin slots (non-functional?) near the front on either side - the plastic there is thin and it's easy to deform by prying.

5. When prying up the left hinge area, a lot of force was needed before the clips there released. (I was stalled here for a while because I was afraid of damaging the case.)

6. (from overzeetop) To release the two ribbon cables running across the hdd, flip the white plastic parts up and away from the cables (toward the black plastic parts). To re-connect them, insert the cables and flip the white parts back down.

7. (from overzeetop) To test without fully re-attaching the cover, I put just the two outermost front screws back in to hold the cover loosely on, and tipped the laptop up so that the screen was on the table and the base was vertical. I used the assist button to boot. This way I could test the ram upgrade, then swap the hdd.

8. To set up the ssd I used Vaio Recovery from a usb drive, with the laptop still in the vertical position (so if it failed I could put the hdd back). This took a couple of hours, so make sure you are either plugged in or have enough battery to finish.

[aside to overzeetop: the ssd (250gb Evo 840) was smaller than the original hdd. I used the "advanced" recovery wizard, but with no special settings. The ssd was preformatted as GPT, NTFS.]

9. To put the cover back on, I first fit it over the headphone jack on the right side, so that the ring protruded slightly from the hole. Then the left side could be lowered over the left side ports, and pressing down all around re-seated all the clips.

 

Waiting on my new HD, will fill you in after I give it a try. Happy holidays!

 

Ah oops, yeah, cloning without an extra drive would be ah... difficult. Sorry about that

Happy Holidays to you, and to all !

 

I should clarify that: prying the cover off would be an easy procedure the second time. The first time was not so easy, because of all the unknowns, worries about damaging the case, etc. I just want those thinking about trying it to know what they're in for. Removing the cover was doable, but not trivial (for me anyway).

 

hi people,

i am not sure if we are allowed to share youtube links but i find a video that shows disassamble of Vaio Flip : Sony VAIO® | Flip PC gets the teardown treatment

 

someone did already post this video earlier in the thread. (i think i did too) it does NOT show the actual components of the flip 15. please take a look at the posts in this thread, someone postet pictures of his opened flip 15.

 

Correct, that model that Sony open up I believe is a 14a, a member here has a video for their 15a and another for a 13a.

I know the thread is long but maybe a search for video may come back with hits.

TS

 

Dear friends,

I have a question about the sony vaio 15A multi flip.. I have bought it last week.. Then i want to create a recovery data on usb. Last night I have done it but I dont understand it placed nearly 17gb on usb of total 32 gb..But
I read on this forum I think on 24.page , one of our friend said 4 or 8 gb usb flash driver is enough for this recovery... Please help me this subject. How can I create less than 17 gb? I want to use 8 gb flash driver..

waiting your informations..

 

It's less if you do not have it copy the recovery partition.

 

Welcome to the forum, mechan

The post you alluded to is this one (from page 24) : http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...lti-flip-pc-owners-thread-24.html#post9446873
Member audijan was referring to a Win8 (or 8.1) install disk size, not a Recovery disk. Windows fits on a single DVD, which is no more than 4.7GB.
@Scrannel : I think you mean that the install on disk can be lighter if you remove the Recovery partition once Windows is fully working. The Recovey disk or stick is the Recovery partition.
I don't think you can use a stick smaller than 32GB. My Flip came with the "Fresh Start" option, meaning virtually no bloatware (no antivirus trial etc...) and I still had just over 9GB of files on my Recovery stick.

=====

The Flip 14 was (and still is) a BIG hit in the household, following its unwrapping yesterday. Family were impressed, daughter can't put it down
I finally got to see what the digitizer can do. I know about the N-Trig vs Wacom thing and am not an artist myself, but I am nonetheless very impressed just by looking at what it does in ArtRage, One Note and VAIO Paper app.
With the Classic Shell program I installed, the learning curve for W8/W8.1 is a breeze for our daughter : she can go from a familiar Desktop with Start button and Start menu to Metro for apps and back seemlessly (she had never used W8 before, except on my laptop which also has Classic Shell). She loves the touchscreen and Tablet mode.
Now I'll have to beg for some Flip time myslef, to play around with the digitizer lol.

Hope all of you who celebrated had a great X-Mas.

 

Hey Mark,

When I set up my USB for a recovery "stick" (8.1) I unchecked the copy "recovery partition" option and my "stick" is only 8GB. Yes, have the 14" flip and it's a gas. Happy New Year coming!

 

Hi Scrannel,

I did Recovery media twice and didn't even notice (enough to remember) that option. Thanks for the info. Strange option though and I don't quite get it ; that's Ok because I'm a little slow sometimes
I've looked around for some official info on how Sony Recovery media works but haven't been lucky, yet.
I understand why someone would consider this, as 32GB sticks are somewhat expensive, especially when you use one for this purpose meaning you write Recovery to it and never use it again (probably).
If someone else tries to write to smaller sticks, let us know how it goes

Happy upcoming New Year to you, and to all as well !

 

Scrannel,
I had 12 devices listed in my router's device list but I turned all of them off and only had the 15A and my cell phone connected when I tested... it didn't make any difference, I still had incredibly slow speeds.

In preparation for sending back the computer I ran the Recovery procedure and then tested my speed... it was back to 15-20mbps! I updated everything and it still ran fast. I was very happy and decided to keep my 15A but I'll buy the extended warranty because my confidence in the machine is not very high. It's been several days and I've had no problems. When I was still considering returning it I couldn't find another machine that had the specs of the 15A.

I notice that a lot of software can't handle the super HD screen but I'm learning to deal with it. A minor but very annoying design flaw is the volume control location... when the screen is raised you can't reach the control... good thing there's Fn controls!

 

Hi again really thank you for your answers.

Please explain to me what is important this recovery partition? I also downloaded and installed win 8.1 yesterday..it was win 8 when I create recovery usb.. what can happen when I use recovery stick in the future If I didnt install this ' recovery partition' ?
and next question: where can I find this unchecked when I create recovery usb ?

 

Hi again really thank you for your answers.

Please explain to me what is important this recovery partition? I also downloaded and installed win 8.1 yesterday..it was win 8 when I create recovery usb.. what can happen when I use recovery stick in the future If I didnt install this ' recovery partition' ?
and next question: where can I find this unchecked when I create recovery usb ?

 

and the other my question;

I want to set screen brightness to more light.. How can I set this? I think this brightness not enough for me..

 

After reading this whole thread and getting some answers from you guys (thanks again),I ordered my Flip on December 16th. Today I received an e-mail from TNT: delivery is on December 31th. So only 15 days between order and receiving it at home! My specs: 15" in black with 2880 resolution, NVidia with 2GB, i7 and 16 GB of RAM, 750/16 GB SSHD (will upgrade to 1 TB SSD later). I got 4 years warranty for free and found a 5% coupon online, lucky me

Martin

 

The official ndivia drivers works fine for me. Using it since i updated to win 8.1...
It doens't give much more options tho... Dont expect a full customisable panel... The only benefits i found was to have up to date drivers and also be able to download betas.

Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

Picked up the Flip 15 for my wife yesterday and have been doing the Update and file copy from her desktop since then (the Flip will replace her desktop). Had a few issues with the updates (wifi update really required the old driver be removed first before the latest would take cleanly). Wifi signal strength isn't awesome, but should be good enough and no drops so far. Keyboard is also a bit mushy (the whole aluminum top flexes in....a simple internal support would have gone a long way here).

She really wanted a 15" screen and it came down to an Asus unit, the Samsung ATIV Book 8 and the Sony. I actually went to Best Buy and purchased the Samsung Book 8, but never made it out of the store with it...I ended up swapping for the Sony (note: i7, Nvidia 735, 8 gig, 1920X1080, 1 TB w/ 16gig nand) as the Sony's screen is IPS and just seemed to pop a little bit more over the Samsung which is IPL I believe (much better than most non-IPS screens - so much so that I wondered if it was IPS).

The overall performance could be better (does not feel appreciably quicker than her old desktop), and the trackpad scrolling isn't as smooth as the Samsung. A Samsung SSD 840 EVO or Pro might turn this into a snappy little machine (not really sure - would be interested to hear from those of you that did the swap with regard to before/after "feel"/"responsiveness").

Finally, there is one huge ergonomic flaw...when the monitor/lid is opened the edge of the lid sticks down below the base (which has little rubber feet). That's fine on desk...no issue. On your LAP however, this LAPtop edge is a hard sharp edge and digs into your legs. I noticed it was uncomfortable after a couple of minutes....after 30 minutes, I kept moving it around, etc. Not fun. Now, this is a big unit but it would be nice to be able to hold the dang thing on your lap w/o having to put something else underneath.

I have not yet upgraded to Windows 8.1 as I wanted to make sure everything was working as expected with Win 8.0 first.

The jury is still out on it at this point. Best Buy's return policy is pretty limiting so I told my wife she has a few days to decide if she wants to keep it or swap for the Samsung. I think the screen is a bit better on the Sony, and I prefer the black case (and white keyboard letters) on the Sony to the harder to read silver on the Sammie. The Sammie feels a bit snappier though. Neither laptop is perfect.

I am having one issue that perhaps you guys can help me with. When I flip the screen to tablet mode, the on screen keyboard does not pop up automatically whenever I need to enter text into a text box. I have to click the little keyboard icon in the tool tray, enter the text, and then manually close the on screen keyboard. I've looked for a setting on this, but nothing is jumping out at me....what am I missing here?

p.s. Both the Samsung I owned for 30 minutes (never left the store) and the Sony were "open box" specials under $900...so no complaints on the price!


Love this forum!

 

Hi Everybody,

I also got a 13A and after reading all teh 110 pages, I did a clean Win 8.0 install based on audijan's guide from page 25.

Looks o.k. except: one thing: My device manager still has one unknown device: Intel(R) 8 Series LPC Controller (Premium SKU) - 9C43. That means, the Intel Chipset..
I tried INDCHI-00302428-0082 (Intel Chipset Driver), but nothing changed.

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks in advance for your help

Cheers from good old Germany

 

mechan, to be honest, I created recovery data with and without the partition. USB without and DVDs with. Here's a link that should give the simple version.

Windows 8 Tip: Create Recovery Media | Windows 8 content from Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows

 

hey other people with the 13A hiws your battery life been? mine barely lasts 4hrs on balanced (just browsing). does power saver make a noticable difference in battery life?

 

You can use FN + F5 to lower brightness, or FN + F6 to raise it. If they do not work, try deselecting "Adaptive Brightness" as it overrides the FN key when on battery.

 

A member posted earlier that the Lexar Twist-Turn 32gb usb stick works for the recovery (some do not, I had to return a Sancruzer usb stick), and it does. It also costs only USD 14.95 or less. Here is one link from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-JumpDrive-TwistTurn-Flash-LJDTT32GASBNA/dp/B0021AFXMC

 

Hi mechan

As Scrannel explained above, you can use Fn+F6 to Up brightness but you probably mean something else. Adaptive brightness not only comes into play on battery, it activates at night too (no matter if on battery or wall power). When adaptive brightness kicks in, you have 30% brightness and cannot adjust it with the regular controls (they all say 100% which is false). You need to go into graphics settings and turn the feature Off ; I have a French machine with Classic Shell so how I get to settings is very different from how you'll get there. Ask if you can't find it, others here can help I'm sure.

Welcome to the forum, landfall

Yeah I'm the one who posted about the 32GB TwistTurn. It is a cheapo USB 2 stick and works well for Recovery. There are surely other cheap sticks that work also. Perhaps some can even get away with doing Recovery on 16GB sticks, but we need to confirm that.

=============

@cabland : welcome to the forum

A few quick comments :

I have swapped a 500GB hybrid drive for a Crucial M500 (480GB) and the Flip really flies now. It booted super quickly with the hybrid (13-15 seconds from cold) but overall disk read/write are much faster with the SSD. Note : it is a 14 model with 4GB RAM and the Core i5. The EVOs and PROs from Samsung are great drives too (of course).
The open box price is amazing (lucky you !)

I can't really help you with the final decision because it is very much about personal preference...

=============

Just a general comment about Recovery media (after reading a few posts) : when you create Recovery media, you are basically copying the content of the machine's Recovery partition onto removable media (USB stick, DVDs if you have an external burner...). This Recovery media - and the Recovery partition on the machine - are there if you need to restore to factory condition, meaning reinstall Windows and all the Sony provided software (including bloatware) as they were when you first installed everything. This means that for most of us here, Windows 8 would get reinstalled, not Windows 8.1. Those who later purchase Flips that ship with 8.1 will then have Recovery to 8.1 because that's what Sony installed at the factory.