Official VAIO E Series Owners Thread

The first professional EB1Z1E review has been published, and implicitly we have the first "objective" measurements for the Full HD display:

http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/laptop-review-sony-vaio-eb1z1e-nkrt-1135/4

(it's in German so you might need a translator)

aver.Luminance : 209.00 cd/m²
black.at 100 cd/m² : 0.18 cd/m²
black.at max.brightness : 0.41 cd/m²
contrast at 100 cd/m² : 555:1
contrast at max. brightn. : 510:1

The above values (which are for EB's Full HD display) are much better than i think 80% of all the 15-16" & below-1500euro range laptops tested at notebookjournal.de.

As a comparison, i attach the same display-test results for other relevant laptops (all tests done by notebookjournal.de):

Sony Vaio EB1S1E (1366 x 768 Display):
aver.Luminance : 157.00 cd/m²
black.at 100 cd/m² : 0.63 cd/m²
black.at max.brightness : 1.20 cd/m²
contrast at 100 cd/m² : 142:1
contrast at max. brightn. : 128:1

Sony Vaio VPC-F11Z1E/BI (matte EU Display, 1920 x 1080):
aver.Luminance : 238.80 cd/m²
black.at 100 cd/m² : 0.18 cd/m²
black.at max.brightness : 0.49 cd/m²
contrast at 100 cd/m² : 555:1
contrast at max. brightn. : 530:1

Dell Studio XPS 1645 (15.6", 1920 x 1080):
aver.Luminance : 230.00 cd/m²
black.at 100 cd/m² : 0.15 cd/m²
black.at max.brightness : 0.31 cd/m²
contrast at 100 cd/m² : 666:1
contrast at max. brightn. : 742:1

Apple MacBook Pro (15,4", 1440 x 900):
aver.Luminance : 254.00 cd/m²
black.at 100 cd/m² : 0.15 cd/m²
black.at max.brightness : 0.36 cd/m²
contrast at 100 cd/m² : 667:1
contrast at max. brightn. : 706:1

However, based on my subjective impressions (SonyCenter, other shops) i cannot confirm, that the MacBook Pro display is better then the EB's Full HD. So one don't have to exaggerate the importance of these measurements.

Right now I have the feeling that Vaio F11's glossy (Europe,Full HD) display is a little better then EB's Full HD glossy display (not much), and both are better than the MacBook Pro 15.4. (F11's matte display is a little better then F11's glossy). Does anybody know whether MacBook Pro can have different types of displays? That would explain why my subjective impressions contradict the above measurements. Or maybe there are other parameters - like vibrancy, which are simply not taken into account.

 

I have had one of these for about 3 weeks, unfortunately it has the same battery drainage problems that many other vaio's have....

On Hibernation over night i lost 45% battery, but on shut down I only lost 15% battery.

If anyone has had similiar problems or has a fix, please let me know.

Thanks

 

@Barner:
Wow, the test result difference between FullHD vs 1366x768 screen is quite a lot, no wonder many people complained about the E series' 1366x768 screen.

 

I rang up Sony to ask if I order the E Series 17" with 1X500gb 7200rpm hard disk is there a spare bay for a 2nd hard disk. They wouldn't tell me because Sony don't support this modification to the laptop!!

 

That's because replacing hardrives or switching the optical drive will void the warranty.
There are a number of posts though that say that if you are careful, no one will be able to tell.

 

Can someone please help.

Further to my brightness control problem earlier in this thread. Just went onto battery power again and the brightness osd worked fine using the function keys. But although the setting was going up and down the screen brightness was doing nothing. I rebooted the pc and it works fine again now.

Should I take the pc back or is it an Ati driver problem or Vaio software problem? Only seems to happen when I switch to battery power.

 

Just wanted to point out to potential E series buyers that the FullHD is simply a matter of preference. I actually purchased and returned a FullHD version because the screen was just too intense for a 15" laptop, and the resolution shrunk the text size way too much. In my opinion, it made the laptop unusable and that's probably why the FullHD isn't widely available in the US. If you're going to use the laptop to play movies you may appreciate it more, but for an everyday general use laptop I think people are giving the wrong impression by "complaining" about the 1366x768 screen. I actually prefer it.

 

The thing is that if you wanna get the best available laptop, you'll always end up disappointed. Even if you wait for 2 months for the one you think is the best, a week later they'll announce a new model that is better and has something extra for a good price. Unfortunately that's just the way it is when it comes to laptops.

Me, personally don't find FullHD nor Blu-ray appealing at all. Full HD is pretty useless on a tiny screen, unless you connect your laptop to a bigger screen or a TV, which again, becomes useless if you already own a proper blu ray disc player. To me, watching a Blu ray film on a 15,4 inch screen is like watching something as spectacular as Avatar on iPod....

The model I'm using is HD ready, and for this reason I'm able to download and watch blu ray movies via HDMI-cable connected to my TV. (that is, of course if I already haven't bought the actual movie on blu ray and am not using a blu ray player to watch it) And I'm very pleased

 

You can actually make everything bigger in Windows using DPI scaling if you feel the FullHD resolution makes everything too small.
Personally it's fine for me, and I rarely watch movies on my laptop (but I do photoshop work on laptop every now and then when I'm away from my desktop). I find the FullHD resolution help as I have more real estate while doing photoshop work.
It is a matter of preference for sure, what i was saying about people complaining about the screen is from what I heard from this very thread. Me personally I haven't had the chance to compare the screen between FullHD and standard resolution screen. The store I bought it from also have the FullHD version on display, so I couldn't compare the difference.

 

Have you tried overclocking the 5650? or even updating the drivers to 10.3? i have the same model as you but 16 not 17.
I cannot for the life of me get new drivers to work or any o/c program...even though everyone else seems to be having luck getting it to 650mhz

 

Has anyone with the 1366x768 noticed the Grey colors being very difuse?
Am I the only one with this issue?
I asked sony for an upgrade to the full hd, but they said it is not possible.
B a s t a r d s! I will change it for them, just need to find a place where from I can purchase only the display. Or anyone wanna swap?

 

Yes i do want to swap.
The 1920-1080 screen is too much res for the 5650 and gaming..i play everything on low and im pissed.

If u can get to india ill swap screens!!

 

Can someone of the owners do me a favor and check in the BIOS if there is a possibility to change between IDE / AHCI for Hard Drives and make a Picture please ??

Since I would like to add a SSD to the notebook, it would be interesting to me!

I prefer european owners, since I'm from europe and dont know if all are the same!

Thanks,

NangNang

 

And additionally I would like to know if someone formatted the partition C:/ and did a clean install of Windows 7 on the E-Series. If yes how did you do that and can you give some suggestions? Thank you!

 

No I haven't, I figured I will just overclock it when I need the extra power from the card.
I haven't had the time to download the latest driver too since my internet has been problematic lately.
I will try downloading the latest driver next weekend and overclock it just to see if it works, and I will let you know how that goes.

 

Has anyone with the 1366x768 noticed the Grey colors being very difuse???
Am I the only one with this issue?

 

I installed an Intel X-25M SDD in my vaio. I downloaded the hardware drivers off the sony europe web site and installed them after a fresh install of windows 7 64 bit. Cold boot time after some tweaking is 18 seconds.

 

There is hardly any settings in my BIOS and there is not AHCI / SATA setting either. It must be enabled by default though because the windows 7 64 bit install automatically switched to the AHCI driver for my SSD when I installed it.

 

That sounds good. Are the FN-Buttons working for you? Or the WEB and Assist Button? Did you do different partitions?

Thanks for the info.

 

Can anyone please help me with my new e-series battery issue?

I need to know if the problem is the same for everyone, or I have a dodgy battery?

There seems to be a sony drainage problem with a lot of Sony Vaios and my e-series has the same.

Overnight it lost 45% on hibernate and 15% on shut down?

Do you have this issue? or know of a fix? faulty battery?

Any help is most appreciated...

 

The FN buttons work. The WEB button brings up the default browser (I did not install the special software for it - but I do not really need instant web access with 18 sec boot time) and I only have 1 partition (apart from the hidden partition that windows 7 creates by default)

 

I do not know if I have the problem, but I usually charge my battery, then take it out and only put it in when I need it. This way it is always at 100% when I put it in, otherwise the laptop is plugged in all the time so i would not notice this problem anyway.

 

Thanks for getting back to me, but it seems that a lot of users on this forum have the same problem with the CW and FW vaio's

Any chance you can charge your laptop to 100% tonight, put it on hibernate and let me know what the battery status is the next day? in 12 hours i lose about 30%?

 

Yes, I read about it too, but it has not come out in my case because of the way I use my laptop. Nevertheless, I just put in the battery and will unplug the machine tonite before going to bed (unless I forget it) and will report my findings tomorrow.

 

Thanks mate..

 

Someone ples check this thign for me, please:
Has anyone with the 1366x768 noticed the Grey colors being very difuse???
Am I the only one with this issue?
Thank you!

 

I'm with that problem to and the image in games looks like very digital with tiny squares can you notice that to? its the low quality of the display or is something that Sony can fix?
i have the sony vaio VPCEB1S1E/BJ

 

Look like is the display... i will change it first thing

 

you gona change the display? how?

 

There are only 8 bolts and two cable connections. Just need to find a matching display.

 

Hi all,
long time reader, first time poster so be gentle with me

Some possible answers for various questions that have been raised in this wonderful forum -

1) Overclocking the Ati 5650 appears to be very simple with the previously suggested tool but the VERSION of AMD GPU Clock Tool is essential. I had no success even getting any version of gpu clock tool to recognise my card until I tried

AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870

Note: I have not had the free time to properly clock/stability test/temperature check/benchmark so while I have had the tool setting "engine clock" to ~650 I have reverted back to factory (~450) until I have the time to do it properly. It is also possible that as I haven't benchmarked yet the overclock tool may not be doing anything

2) I have replaced the original 320Gb HDD with a 160Gb Intel Gen 2 SSD. A lovely yet expensive change. I then got slightly carried away and replaced the optical drive with a 2nd HDD drive caddy which currently contains the original 320Gb HDD. Crystal Disk Mark is suggesting everything is working great. The optical drive to HDD replacement was easy although I ended up ordering the drive caddy from USA (newmodeus.com as I couldnt find a UK supplier although 6days from online ordering to delivery was awesome!). Only problem with this mod so far is that the curved bezel that flush fits the optical drive doesn't fit so until I have time to sort this out ,I have a fairly obvious break in the lovely contours of the laptop. This could end up being a case of simply super-glueing the curved bezel onto the HDD caddy but this seems a bit low-tech

3) Linux install - specifically Ubuntu. Sorry to say I struggled to get 9.0x to work fully and after spending far too much time trying to sort out numerous issues, I gave up. The next Long Term Support version of Ubuntu ( Lucid Lynx 10.04 ) due at end of April is meant to be a much better out of the box install experience so I'll try again then.

4) So far I love this laptop (15incher, i5-520, FullHD screen) but I am a bit dissapointed with the in-built speaker which is to my ears appalling. I wasn't expecting miracles with any laptop speaker but I did expect a Sony to be better. This is a small annoyance for me as I travel with work a lot and had hoped to be able to use the laptop as a multimedia platform when Im overnighting in some strange hotel without having to resort to constantly plugging in earphones. I may look to get a pair of micro 2.0 speakers if they are small to carry in laptop case - Any recommendations welcome

 

Anybody got any idea how to stop the fan? It's working all the time, and so far nothing helped me with stopping it.

 

Thanks for the info, Much appreciated!

Was it hard to replace the hard-drive? I.e. do you have to open the entire case or is there separate panel on the bottom?

And do you know if changing the hard-drive voids the warranty?

If you get a chance, it would be awesome if you could run some crystal mark hard-drive tests.

 

OK I am thinking of ordering.

One question. Is the F series better than the E series? Both are virtually the same price per spec but the E series comes in a bigger size (17 inch) and is available in white/silver. However the trackpad on the E series feel horrible with its rough surface.

I'm not sure which I prefer in terms of looks but the F series is growing on me. Pity it isnt available is apple glossy white or other colours.

Did people here specifically choose the E series over the F series and if so why?

 

I actually bought an F series machine F11M1E1 I think was the model model number. It is the lower-priced Euro version without the premium display. The quality of the screen was so bad that I sold it and bought the HD version of the E series instead. I am much happier with the quality now.

 

There is a HDD-sized compartment on the bottom of the unit. You only need to unscrew 4 screws to change the hdd.

 

It was incredibly easy to replace the HDD, there is a seperate panel cover on the bottom. Remove two screws securing the cover panel then remove the 2 screws holding the HDD caddy assembly, slid HDD to one side, lift out, replace hdd with ssd and re-screw everything back down. The one small puzzle here is the BIOS doesnt have any ACHI option but as far as I can tell Win7/Intel Rapid Storage driver etc take care of it. Crystal benchmarks seem comparable to others Ive seen on the web for the Intel Gen2 and I've still to tweak Win7 ( superfetch/prefetch caching etc can all be tweaked).

My understanding is that replacing the HDD with a SSD doesn't void the warranty, I also don't believe replacing the optical with a 2nd HDD does either as both upgrades are non-destructive and worst case can both be easily reverted.

Personally I did a clean install of Win7 to remove all non-essential apps. As previously pointed out in this forum, I went from ~72 processes constantly running to just 49.

First pic is factory installed 300Gb HDD, second is 160Gb Intel Gen2 X25-M.

 

Are you talking about how high resolution games tend to have ugly pixelated edges on all in game models and such while on a lower resolution?

This is easily noticeable on low rez displays (on a 1366x768 display with no doubt) and can be "fixed" by enabling antialiasing (sometimes refered to as multisampling, a form of antialiasing), either in the game itself or in catalyst control center. Looks OK with 2x AA on my Vaio in most cases and the HD5650 can handle that amount of AA just fine. Probably 4x or more if you want.

 

its not the edges, the image its not blend all the images in motion wen you look closer make a tiny squares like a digital noise i have other laptops with this rez and don't do this,I'm very sad because i bought a Sony laptop because of the quality and have the worst screen i have seen, i hope Sony do something about this... ps:sorry for my english

 

Ahhh.got it working at last. you have to use the amd gpu clock version 0.9.26.0.

my 3d mark 06 score has shot up from 5900 > 7456 !!and the website sees my card as a 5750 with the core set at 650mhz and memory set at 950mhz.

not bad..thanks for the help.

 

Did you really overclock your memory to 950 mhz?
CaN YOU PLEASE check with GPU-Z and then run a 3d game that is hard on both CPU and GPU (like Crysis) for 1 hour so we can see if the system is really stable with both GPU set to 650 Mhz and mem set 950 Mhz.
I myself was afraid to go over 800 MHz for Mem.
Thx in advance!

 

I did the test as promised and it seems that my notebook is suffering from the same problem. I shut down at 100% battery and 12 hours later it was down to 82%.

 

Yeah i ran gpuz while playing dragon age for 2 hours and not a hiccup. max temp 67.

 

Many Thanks Sedo.

I have exactly the same drainage on shutdown in 12 hours...

I can't beleive Sony don't see this as a problem and have no fix...

 

Although I have not tested this... but is it not possible that this 'phantom drain' is only a issue of windows incorrectly reporting the remaining charge? This is not a huge issue for me, because my notebook is plugged in 99% of the time with the battery taken out, but I can see how it can be an irritating if you use your notebook differently... I also noticed that microsoft is aware of a notebook battery drainage issue in windows and is working on a fix for it, although I am not sure if this is exactly the same problem...

 

Following the announcement of the Macbook Pros and their prices I have today ordered:

17.3 Inch E series
i3 processor
320GB HD
4GB RAM
1GB Graphics Card
1920x1080 full HD screen
Bluray Writer

for £759.

Will be putting the £1150 saving compared to a 17inch Macbook pro into a new imac 27 inch desktop.

What I want to know is what is the Sony bloatware people are talking about? Does this significantly slow down the laptop. Why is it installed in the first place. And lastly should I remove it and if so how do I remove it.

Thanks

 

For those of you that have tried MSI afterburner in order to overclock the 5650 and failed beacuse the damn application can't seem to save your presets, do this:

1. Install the application. Then quit it.
2. Lookup the profiles folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\Profiles), 3. Open the .cfg file named after your device adress. Mine is named VEN_1002&DEV_68C1&SUBSYS_9071104D&REV_00&BUS_1&DEV_0&FN_0.

4. Write your profiles manually! I'll post my profile here (the parts in bold text should not be in your cfg):
[Startup]
CoreClk=0
MemClk=0
FanSpeed=0
[Profile1] ( This is the default clocks and I recommend saving these into it's own preset because when this profile is used, your gpu will be able to automatically downclock itself when it isn't being used heavily)
CoreClk=450000
MemClk=790000
FanSpeed=1
[Profile2] ( My custom clocks. When profile 2 is active, the GPU is constantly clocked at 580Mhz)
CoreClk=580000
MemClk=800000
FanSpeed=1


After that just assign a hotkey for each profile. The application can show you your current clock in the taskbar so you can keep track of it with the afterburner application icon hidden. After that just set the app to autostart with windows, and to start minimized preferably .

 

Good choice, I suspect we'll find a lot of people thinking the same as you.

The Sony bloatware is a collection of programs that comes pre-installed. The companies pay sony a fee to install them on their new systems, quite a lot of them being trialware. Besides those, there's also a lot of Sony's own software that's unnecessary and considered bloat to many.

But it's down to choice, really - it's up to you to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I'd suggest the best way to do it is to have a poke around your new system for a week or so when it arrives. Try everything out, see what it does, what you want to keep.

Then you can follow the instructions in THIS thread to make a brand spanking squeaky new install, and use Sony's recovery software to install only what you need. No risk - you can just use the recovery partition to fully restore the computer to factory state if you want to.

The bloat will slow your machine down to some degree, but not a huge amount. See my example from that thread of before and after bloat removal:

That looks pretty drastic but it's a powerful enough machine that the bloat won't hold it back much.

 

How would I go about listing a battery for this computer on Ebay. I recently purchased the extended life battery from Sony but I returned the computer to BB. Now I have no use and cannot return it to Sony. Do you list it by the computer model number or the battery number??

 

Just to add to the mix,I don't have any battery drain problems on a recently purchased E Series ( UK ).

Exactly the same battery charge this morning as yesterday when I switched off.

Ian