Official Sony Vaio Fit multi-flip PC Owners' Thread

Don't worry about your 500 gig. I suggest create a recovery USB and make that an external drive. If you want the DVDs send me a message and I can create you an ISO. I guess its about 6 dvd's? I got a 1tb Samsung SSD and its very fast. System is very silent. My two upgrades are the ssd and the wireless card. I've opened my laptop multiple times. Below is the chronological order.

1. Install SSD
2. Remove SSD sending laptop for screen blemish repair
3. Install SSD and change wireless Card to 6230
4. Remove 6230 and install original card.
5. replace original card with the new 7260 card.

 

Thanks. Quick and simple enough !

Thanks. I have also upgraded to a SSD, which is why I have the 500GB hybrid lying around. I was commenting on the fact I didn't think I could get much on eBay for it, if I ever decided I wanted to sell it. I created recovery media early on so I'm convered (I did the 32GB stick and also the 4 DVDs just for the heck of it. 4 disks instead of 6 in my case because of the Fresh Start option which reduces the size of the Recovery partition). I'm just keeping the hybrid intact until the warranty expires (November). After that, well, I might just keep it ; I could stick it back in if we were to sell the Flip later on, or whatever.

 

I've upgraded the 14A to a Crucial 480GB M500 SSD and it not a difficult job, if you have some experience around electronics/computers. The hardest part, or most delicate, is to get the case open. Once inside, it's super easy to swap the hard drive. As others have mentionned, there are teardown videos on YouTube.

For me, the SSD makes a big difference in overall speed and is well worth the expense. Speaking of expenses, Crucial has come out with a nice, fast and cheap new model (MX100) that you can get in 512GB size (don't get the smaller 256 or 128 because they are slower than the competition). The 512GB MX100 is as fast as the Samsung EVO and the Crucial M550, but somewhat cheaper. Just as an example, I bought the 480GB M500 last Black Friday (big sale) for $309 here in Canada. Today, I can get the faster 512GB MX100 on Amazon (Canada) for $229.
If you want a 1TB SSD, you can choose between the Samsung 840 EVO or the Crucial M550, which are equally fast and similarly priced (I've seen them well under $500 when on sale).

Just to compare with the 13A : we upgraded the 128GB SSD on a friend's 13A a few weeks ago to a 512GB M550. The 13A doesn't have a regular SATA SSD like the 14A and 15A, but rather a special "M.2 type 2280" drive which is much smaller, similar to a RAM stick in fact. The MacBook Air has a similar SSD drive. These are more expensive because demand is lower, and last time I checked, only Crucial makes them available to the public. The M.2 M550 in 512GB capacity sells for $329 right now (canadian) on Amazon. Saw them for the first time on NewEgg not long ago as well.

Now that I've experienced SSDs on my main desktop machine and on the Flip, I won't go back to HDDs ever again, except for storage because they are cheaper.

Edit to add : I did the install to SSD by using the Recovery USB stick I had created. Piece of cake. I am not that comfortable with cloning so I decided to go with this method. One drawback from installing via Recovery is that you get the system in factory condition (bare), so you need to reinstall all the updates and programs you had installed. Not a big problem when you do this early on when you have next to nothing on the Flip.

 

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Yes, I did a stress test for about 30 hours afterwards.

I find that my Flip 13A could stay at stock or even with a bit of overclocking for a much longer time, though I am not sure if that broke the fan profile though (not that it should), cause even it runs much cooler (sub 70C) the fan is on pretty much all the time.

Despite that, I might do a factory reset when I have time, since my Flip seems to automatically get the fan running whenever I have it running on AC, no matter the CPU frequency or fan profile setting.

 

I got my flip from eBay as I wanted the Flip 15 with the high res display. The operating system was in the initial mode of Click Accept to continue. I since then cloned the hard drive to the samsung SSD. Not sure if that is the best way but the system seems stable.

Now Occasionally the system comes on and stays at 30% of cpu core for 15 minutes. I have run process explorer and cannot for the life figure out which ntoskrnl.exe process is taking 30% constantly. I'm contemplating doing a clean install again but that is a lot of work.

 

I'd like to thank everyone in this thread for responding so promptly to my gazillion questions! Here is yet another one:

The VAIO Update utility keeps showing a wireless LAN update, which when I try to update, goes on an endless "Installing..." cycle. This has been happening right from day one, and I was wondering if anyone else has the same issue.
I also went on Intel's Download Center website and let it scan my drivers for updates. I've installed all of the updates it recommended, except for two. One is for the Wireless-AC, which I did install, but still shows up in the list. When I hit the Download Now button, it asks if I want to Repair or Remove only.
The second is the HD Graphics 4400 driver, which, upon clicking Download Now, tells me that the file has been moved or removed. I manually searched for generic drivers on their website, and found this list: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProdId=3719
Which one should I be getting? I occasionally have trouble launching Sony Vegas Pro 13 because it freezes at the "Initializing GPU-accelerated video processing" stage, and some other forums suggested updating the graphics drivers. Maybe the problem is unrelated, but I figured it's worth a shot.

 

Have the same thing with some VAIO Care Recovery stuff, but haven't had it with any drivers. I've just ignored that whole thing... perhaps we could just get rid of it soon? I'm doubtful Sony will be pushing out any more updates for us.
The Intel driver - I would go for the latest official version (64-bit 10.18.10.3621 - third one in the list), don't really care for messing around with beta drivers. Get the zip file though. On mine the Intel installer would just tell me it was unsupported. Instead, unzip the file, open Device manager, find the Intel card, right click and choose 'Update Driver Software...'. Point it to the right location, and that should be that.

 

Has anyone tried adding a few layers of electrical tape to the edges of the fan to give it more breathing room? Does it lower temps at all?

 

The best of times is obviously already behind us and I think that there'll be only critical updates (if any).
Also: AFAIK you can install all updates manually, anyway. At least until now. Of course you'll have to check the service website manually...

To disable automatic update notices one only needs to disable the appropriate services in Windows -- or maybe even delete Vaio Update and Vaio Care - if you don't need the diagnostic and support functions. I haven't decided, yet, if and when I'll do that but I expect both programs to not survive 2015 on my Flip. ;-)

Vaio Control Center should be kept on the machine, naturally!

That's exactly my opinion, too.
Or stay with the official Sony drivers as long as you can, folks.
There are no speed increases to expect, anyway (at best they'll resolve some compatibility issues).

 

I haven't done that and I would be extra careful were I stick that tape to as the back cover will exert some pressure on that part.
A massive cooling element wouldn't be a problem, for example, while the fan case could be problematic.

 

I also have had no problem with the Samsung cloning software but I eliminated the recovery partition in the process. Not that I wanted to keep it but I didn't notice any setting to decide if I wanted to (I wasn't aware of the many partitions on such a Windows 8 machine at the time).

As I won't sell the Flip I don't need the recovery partition, anyway, so no harm done and I use the original hard drive for image backups via free Paragon software.

There may be services, for example anti-virus software or file indexing that periodically use the machine that much (although you should be able to see that in the task manager - or better: Process Explorer).
I don't think a clean install will help you until you have isolated the culprit - it could always come back...

 

I pointed the Device Manager to the unzipped folder (win64_153322), and it immediately said that the driver is already up to date. Which is surprising because the driver's properties say it's from 13th October 2013, which I'm pretty sure is around the launch of the Flip.

 

Hmm... trying to recollect... same thing happened here... you clicked on Browse my computer right? Let me pick... then Have disk. Browse to the Graphics directory of the extracted driver (I think) and go from there... did that help? Latest Photoshop had major hick-ups here with the old driver, but works nicely now.

 

Does anyone have experience using the Flip 13 with external USB 3.0 HDD Enclosures?

I am using a Dual Bay USB 3.0 HDD enclosure and it kept disconnecting and then reconnecting, without any pattern whatsoever, though mostly during large file transfers (i.e. sustained high speed read/write).

I have tried using two different of such enclosures and they both does the same thing. However, it only happens to my Flip 13A, not my S15, Fit 14, X200s (on USB 2.0) or Samsung Series 5.

 

That worked beautifully, thanks!
For anyone else trying this, make sure to point it to the .inf file in the 'Graphics' folder...the one in the root of the folder doesn't work.

 

I have the exact same problem with an USB 3.0 memory stick while other USB 3.0 devices work totally hassle-free.

From what I could find out on the web it seems there is a compatibility issue that is apparently bothering quite a few people - with different devices (and PCs/notebooks).
The reason is according to some posts that the energy saving profile of the device doesn't work with the USB controller in the PC/notebook. The controller then simply disconnects the device.

I haven't found a solution to that, yet, but I very much suspect that we are out of luck as a) nobody will exchange the hardware for free and b) nobody will write new firmwares for the device controllers.
In consequence we are forced to buy another device (memory stick, drive enclosure, whatever...) if we want something that works - unless you we return it for warranty reasons etc. (which in my case doesn't work as I own the USB stick quite some time).

 

New owner of a flip 14a. Best Buy had the refurb sale (1yr geek squad warranty) for $494 after the 10% movers coupon plus another 10% back in points brings the price down to $450ish. After using a 14a at a store, I was impressed. One Note with the digitizer screen is awesome for grad school and work. I did have a yoga 2 that I ended up taking back after using the flip. Added a 240GB PNY Optima SSD and currently dual booting windows 8.1 and ubuntu 14.04. I also bought an intel 7620 ac wireless card. The refurb from geek squad had one small scratch on the base but otherwise was in new condition. I really love the screen on this - I think it looks better than the yoga 2 pro's screen.....

 

Unresponsive and irresponsible customer service

I bought a Sony Vaio Model SVF15N16SHB and its serial number is 54643258-0000203 from a Sony Center in Ubon Ratchathani on June 28, 2014.

Unfortunately, the machine has a defective part since a part of screen emits a brighter spots in particular on the white background. Technically, as I searched on several web sites, it is caused by a damage of diffusion thin foil layer behind the screen.

Thus, I decided to send the machine for repairing after I had used it for a month. The Sony Center received my Vaio on July 27, 2014. Since then, I have never heard a word from Sony Thailand. I have tried to contact them and what I got was “We will check it for you and call you back”. Nobody calls.

Now that it passed almost 1 month, I was informed to contact a Sony service center by myself. They told me that they have just received the machine this week and waiting for a spare part. Where has my machine been for 3 weeks? Is there any more damages during 3 weeks of delivery? It is very frustrating and disappointing.

Warong Naivinit.

 

One of the main reasons I chose the Flip over the competition and then specifically the 14A was because of the 750GB HDD. I do a lot of video editing and I prefer having all the raw files on one device rather than using an external drive. After reading the comments in this thread and based on recommendations from others, I am considering getting an SSD installed too. However, 512GB won't cut it for me and 1TB may be a bit excessive (and expensive). Based on your recommendations, the Crucial 512GBs are selling for $250 on Amazon, and the 1TB for both Samsung and Crucial for $429. Is there something in the market compatible with the Flip14 that falls between these capacity and price ranges? I wouldn't mind waiting a couple of months to hit the Black Friday sales.

 

I don't know about the prices in the US, but you have the 750GB Samsung EVO which should fall somewhere in between.

 

I disabled all the USB port power saving features on my Flip 13, in addition to disabling USB charging.

This seems to help my external dual HDD dock to be more stable. It now disconnects less often, though still not enough for me to do anything critical on it, like repartitioning and such.

Are you on a Flip 13 too? or 14?

 

I did take a look at that and it's actually $530 on Amazon, whereas the 1TB is $437. Given the original off-sale prices, it's a full $100 more expensive. What am I missing here?

 

After installing this driver, I now have two different items in the context menu on the desktop. Also, it takes a full 5 seconds to open the context menu after right-clicking on the desktop. Should I remove one of these, and if so, how?



EDIT: Solved this by going to the registry and deleting the relevant context menu entries. Now I don't have either of the two options, but I'm fine with that since I never really needed it and can access it from the start menu anyway. Not sure if this means that I have one driver installed on top of the other though.

 

Hi there chuchugaga,

Yeah, Samsung's 840 EVO 750 as mentionned seems to be the only 750GB SSD on the market. And looking around just now, demand seems low and prices, well, high. Availability is low as well (TigerDirect is out, Amazon is out, NewEgg doesn't list a price, etc...). I did see it on sale at one point last year, getting a rebate percentage equivalent to other SSDs, but I don't know if we'll see that again, or if Samsung will keep manufacturing the drive (in 750 size). I did find it at a decent price here ($389.99) :
Samsung 750GB 840 Evo-Series SATA III Internal SSD MZ-7TE750BW
... but nowhere else that I can find below $400. NCIX lists it at $439.99, etc...

I can only guess we'll be seeing 1TB drives for roughly $400 come Black Friday, but that's a few months away.

 

Thanks Mark, that's a good find. B&H is a decent store, I earmarked them to get a USB 3.0 flash drive too, which no one else was selling for the price they offered. I guess I'll keep monitoring B&H, Amazon, Newegg (and Bestbuy?) and see if November brings around any significant price drops.

 

I've read some reviews (MobileTechReview) saying the the keyboard's backlight is controlled by an ambient sensor but I don't have that option in the Vaio Control Center. I can only turn it off, on, or on when a key is pressed. Is the setting for this somewhere else then? Also, is it possible to lower the backlight level?

 

I'm on a Flip 15 which is otherwise fine, as far as I can tell.

I also have dual harddisk dock (local brand "Sharkoon", but of course made in China) which works well, though, and actually saved my butt today because of a botched Microsoft Windows update that affected my main PC...

 

There's also apparently no manual brightness control for the backlight. I personally like the brightness level but of course a control for it would be better.
Your options are exactly like mine and I haven't seen a light sensor for the keyboard backlight anywhere in the official specs or documentation.
However, if you look closely there are two round "holes" right and left from the camera above the display. The left one is of course the "camera LED" but the right one is possibly a light sensor. If that is the case it could - at least in theory - be used for more or less anything brightness related...

 

I was kinda hoping that you were on a 13A so that I can draw on the conclusion that Sony needed to make some trade off to make it thin and light.

Disappointed to hear that even the bigger and heavier 15 is affected.

Whenever I remove the dock's (Orico) USB cable, all the ports just flash disconnect and then reconnect again, this goes for all the USB ports and the HDMI port. Does that happen to you? I am thinking that it has something to do with the circuitry...

 

Nope. And the fact that the HDMI port is affected worries me.

Does that happen with other USB devices, too?

I'm not so sure that the Flip is the guilty party here...

I recently read an article about crappy USB-hubs (including USB 3.0 ones) that have cheaply designed circuits and can cause problems because of the way their external power supply is connected internally. In essence the external power is being fed into the USB ports of the host computer - which apparently isn't according to specs (I'm really no expert here, so take it with a grain of salt).

What I'm trying to say is that there seems to be a lot of crap out there.

 

I've finally purchased brand new Flip 15 and all of my concerns just vanished when I started using this pc. All seems to be just right and perfect and it's not hardware part I'm unhappy about. It turned out that the Windows 8.1 has some problems with application scaling on high resolutions (2880x1620). I use 200% system scaling and applications such as Opera and Steam are just pain in the . All images and text is pixelated, blurred etc. Do you know how It's possible to resolve that issue? Of course I wouldn't like to lower the resolution since it's all about that screen...

Thanks!

 

Congrats on the new machine!

For Opera, download Opera Next and you should be good as far as hi-dpi goes - seems to be nicely implemented supporting all levels of scaling (not sure about it's stability though as it's beta).

Steam on the other hand doesn't seem to care much about implementing hi-dpi nor basic touch support (like being able to scroll through a list without having to grab the scrollbar) - lodge your complaints with them (and expect deafening silence - or, if you're lucky, the regular excuses).

 

Thanks, it worked. Of course I am aware of Opera Next. I just didn't know the dpi is a problem of particular app.

I will try to send an email to Steam support.
Thanks again.

 

Did anyone do any more testing with under-volting? I had been running mine with a voltage offset of -50mV for the CPU and GPU for a while with no problems. After reading about SP3 users experience I decided to push it a bit further - now I'm at -80 for the CPU and -70 for the cache and GPU. Have not managed to make it crash yet (and it's possible it can be taken even further, just haven't tried yet). Ran stesstest with Intel XTU for about 2 hours with no problems, and also no problems at idle or going in and out of sleep (which I understand can be a more problematic than load). Temperatures with normal use (includes drawing in Manga Studio with water color brushes) is 41-45 degrees Celsius running in high-performance mode. Fan does not kick in at all. Running the CPU stresstest it maxes out at 57 degrees (have not tried something putting full load on CPU and GPU at the same time). I've disabled automatic updates in Windows which seemed to help a lot with the random bursts from the fan.

 

2 week old Flip 15 died unexpectedly while using it. The bottom was extremely hot. The battery cannot be removed but I used a paperclip to hit the reset button for the battery on the bottom of the unit. Still, no power, nothing. Really dead. Will take it to the Geek Squad to fix it but I am wondering how to prevent this recurring (that is, if it is repairable). Any ideas?

 

A machine *can* become defective for various reasons (for example a manufacturing error like soldering problems or sloppy thermal paste distribution) and the Flips aren't excepted from this like any other mass produced gadget.
An internal connection could be flaky or have broken off because of movement while in production or on transport to where you bought it from.
Not even speaking about stuff happening at the buyer...

You probably have already tested hooking it up to the power supply to see if the battery is simply dead.
If the reset button doesn't work and the assist key won't bring you into the assist menu/BIOS and you still have warranty I recommend you bring it to Geek Squad.
Getting into the BIOS is the basic test for pretty much any PC to see if it works at all. If it has no regular boot process there may be indeed something terribly wrong with it as it will even tolerate bad memory, for example.

If you don't have warranty anymore you could indeed open the machine (remove the back cover) and disconnect the batteries (the small 3V for the settings and the main lithium battery, which can indeed be removed) and see if this helps. If the machine is really defective it probably won't.

 

Did you use any tools to stop the flip from throtteling and did it die during idle-use or heavy gaming?

 

Same happened to me earlier this year after a couple months of usage. My flip 15 died suddenly during some gaming. It turned out that the motherboard was fried, so it got replaced and all has worked well since. The only (slight) issue is that it came back from the service center with a really weird BIOS version, so I can't install any of Sonys BIOS updates.

 

Are there any significant boosts to battery life with this setup? If so, I may consider testing this on my own as well.

 

I think it depends on your hardware-configuration and usage-scenario. If your overall powerconsuption is already very low, you probably get more extra-minutes. The most important part probably are the lower temperatures which can increase the lifetime of your notebook-components. (MB,...) Just give it a try and post your results.

My old Pentium M ran at ~1000mV which is around 300mV lower than usual. (stable of course ) The boost to batterylife was impressive and the temperatures went down 5-10°C.

 

Anybody know where I can found a Sony vaio multi FLIP service manual? I need to know a part number of my SVF13N13CXB LCD MONITOR+touchscreen.
Also I would like to know if they are sold separetely or toghether.
Any help is apreciate.
Thanks

 

I'll run some tests. Do you know of any battery tests that are better than Battery Eater? The Classic benchmark is a bit too heavy, while the reader test is too light.

 

I think I'm going to have to re-test tomorrow to verify if this was correct - the difference was pretty extreme. I ran the Battery Eater Classic test from 50% charge down to it shut itself off (5%). Running on integrated graphics, screen brightness at the lowest and WIFI off it managed 50 minutes with standard settings. Undervolted it managed 81 minutes. The difference in noise level was also massive.

 

Which software you use for under-volting?

 

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility.

 

You can try to reload a webpage (which doesn't change too often or has got massive moving adds) every 20-30 Seconds, disable automatic hibernation/standby and log the batterylife. For example notebookcheck.com has a custom script which is loading different websites. (WLAN, fixed brightness,...)

Do you recommend the intel tool over throttlestop?

 

BatteryEater does seem to be the standard that I've seen used most often, so I'm not sure about an alternative, but of course it would be more useful to have a noticeable difference in real-world usage.
Your results are quite impressive relatively speaking, since you seem to be getting half an hour more with undervolting. However, just as a reference point, my Vaio 14A with integrated graphics lasted about 2 hours 15 minutes on the Classic test from 100% to 2% with Wifi on and screen brightness at 50%. So if we assume that your Flip would last double the time given that you started with 100% instead of 50% battery, you're getting 2 hours 45 minutes with undervolting, Wifi off, and lowest brightness. That's quite a gap..

 

I have been searching for a good deal on a Flip 15A and finally got it today when Best Buy agreed to my $700 offer on an opened box unit. What a great deal for an incredibly versatile machine. I plan to use it as my every day driver tablet, as well as plug it in and edit high def video with it. I don't think there's another machine that can do this as well.

With my savings I also purchased 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD to help bring out the full potential of the computer.

Thanks to the excellent tips here, I plan to swap the drives as soon as possible. So today I created a restore on a new 32Gig Toshiba USB thumb drive using the Sony Vaio Care Wizard. It said to confirm that it successfully created the restore by hitting F11 when the Vaio logo appears on start up, if the Vaio Care Restore Tool Opens then it worked.. The problem is - it didn't. And I've read that our machines aren't able to boot from USBs that appear as a drive on the machine like mine does.

Is this true? Will I not be able to have a factory restore on the new SSD because the machine wont boot from my thumb drive?? I don't want to clone the drive, or mess with discs and buy a disc player.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

Currently ThrottleStop only allows you to underclock the CPU voltage, while Intel XTU also gives you access to the cache and integrated GPU - so for now at least XTU seems preferable.

Did a new test, from 100% down to 3% (was mistaken last time - that was also down to 3%), WIFI on, screen at 50%. Lasts 3 hours 16 minutes with the undervolt. All else is the same as the previous tests. This is running in balanced mode. The screen is the 2880 variant, storage has been swapped out with a Samsung 1TB EVO, and the WIFI card with an Intel 7260 AC. The second last HID USB device has the power management turned off (so I won't randomly loose touch screen response).

I'll try repeating a few times at 50% later today (100% just takes too much time) just to verify that my numbers are consistent between each test. Unclewebb over in the ThrottleStop thread did put in some convincing arguments of why it won't have that much of an impact on the battery with light/normal use, as most of the cores will be in a parked state most of the time anyhow.

As long as you have the original hard drive in it's original state you shouldn't be running any risks. If the restore procedure doesn't work on the SSD, pop in the original drive and you'll be back to square one (a bit time consuming admittedly). It's been a while since I did it, but I seem to recall the verification worked out. Hopefully somebody else has this more freshly in their memory than me.

 

7 times out of 10 when I resume the flip from sleep mode, the wifi plays. In each of those occasions, I had to 'troubleshoot problems' to resolve it. All it does is reset the wifi adaptor everytime. Any idea on how to fix this permanently? Thanks.