Official VAIO E Series Owners Thread

I don't quite understand the end bit but besides that it's tempting, really tempting
Im also tempted to go for the i5-450 at no extra cost as opposed to the 520, then again the 520 is only £30 more so meh
All these free upgrades run out on the 12th for Sony so I have to make my mind up before then!
(Currently my top 3 are 1) E-Series 2) HP Envy14 3) Dell SXPS16)

Once again thanks for all your help
You're repping it up!

 

Made a thread.

 

--1080 display is great, colors reasonably accurate.
--Plenty bright, but I'm used to a matte screen so the reflections are annoying
--Build quality is good, except for a bit of keyboard give on the numpad side. My previous notebook was an ASUS that was built like a tank --so not as solid as that, but better than most.
--Have not played a Blu-ray movie on it yet -- don't have any, and haven't gotten around to renting one.

Cakefish asked:
Is there any graphics driver (or any other way) to get the 1080p screen go to 1366x768 resolution? It's not listed as a supported mode.

I checked the Windows display options slider, and there's no 1366x768, but you can choose 1280x768, 1280x720 and a variety of others, including non-proportional ratios like 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. Hope this helps.

 

Powerplay automatically clocks the GPU down to 150/150 when it's not in use to save power. Setting your own clocks via the GPU Tool overrides this and prevents it downclocking. It's just a matter of clicking "restore default clocks" when you're done if you want Powerplay working

Also.. I wouldn't hold your breath for the Envy 14, you'll turn blue long before it arrives I'd think. Hell, we still don't even have the updated version of the Envy 15 over here in the UK

 

Wonder if this will extend to the "E" eventually?

BBC News - Sony Vaio laptop in mass 'recall'

Ian

 

Cheers for clearing that up for me
I know what you mean about the Envy though
I've heard "rumours" that it's due August time but A) Who knows how accurate that is and B) Who knows what kind of configuration options we get...if any
I have a big decision to make and soon, either the Sony E with Blu-Ray and the i5-450m (offer ends the 12th) or wait it out until August*... which seems so far away right now

*And pray!

 

Ahh! Help! Whenever I close the lid of the laptop the wireless switches itself off for some reason. I was downloading a game from steam and noticed when the lid was closed, the download speed went to zero. I checked the power management settings but can't see any options to prevent this.

 

Hi. I bought EB i5-520m with ATI HD 5470 in US Sony Syle, does anyone know how far you can overclock the ATI HD 5470 ? Thanks in advance.

 

Hi All. Can someone clarify the terms
VAIO Display, Display Plus, Display Premium.
Thx

 

I think the only way to stop it doing that would be to tell it not to go to sleep when you close the lid

 

It's not sleeping! I tell it to "do nothing" when the lid is closed. Does this happen to yours? It's annoying because if I want to leave it to download and flip the lid down the download stops!

 

Huh.. I don't know, never tried. Maybe it's just because the wifi antenna is in the lid and gets poor reception when it's closed. Does the same thing happen if you put it right next to the router?

 

I have made clean windows 7 install on my i5 15,5 fullHD vaio 5650 and have a little problem. Some of my devices in device manager are not working correctly. For example I can't use the function keys to bring down brightness or volume.

Can someone explain how to fix this? I have the old windows files located in windwos.old folder and i think i have the install portion on my HD aswell but dont know how to access it.

Which programs should I install and where could I get them? Tried the sony vaio support site and it was very little help.

Here's a pic of device manager

 

Also, wanted to know if the US EB vaio display is LED?

Thanks,

 

Did you install all the drivers after you installed Windows? It doesn't look like you did from your device manager. Have a look at some of the install guides for other VAIOs in this thread to get an idea of what you need to do. (actual drivers may be different for some models)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...ding-vpc-z1-faq-windows-7-install-guides.html

If you want to reset your computer back to its functional factory state, you can do it via the recovery partition (provided you didn't delete it when you did the clean install) by pressing F10 during system startup when the first screen - the VAIO logo - is displayed.

 

Yes it still does it right next to the router - its an N router as well so there is nothing wrong with the signal. Connection immediately resumes once the lid is flipped up. I'm going to contact Sony Support to see if there is a solution...

Maybe all it needs is a BIOS or wifi card update.

EDIT: Sony couldn't help. They said it may be a hardware fault and I would have to do a complete recovery to know for sure - but I have no way to backup my data

 

The 1366 x 768 and 1920 x 1080 both use LED backlight. Both are TN panels, both are decent quality for a low-mid range notebook. I have run DVE HD Basics on both 1080 and 768 screens and both can achieve fairly accurate color and modest black level performance. I wouldn't say poor black level, but just fair. The 1080 has better gamma performance - but again, being TN panels, that is a measurement taken if you are at the correct angle. Hope that helps.

 

Thanks campb292. I cant wait for my Sony EB to arrive..

Btw, you know how far I can overclock the ATI Radeon HD 5470?

Thanks again for the reply.

Cheers

 

You can overclock it with the amd gpu tool as much as you want... just an issue of how many parts you want to melt. I have never been a fan of overclocking utility notebooks; this is not a gamer. Because of the native 1366 x 768 display, it can handle many games fairly well; you must remember that the 5470 has only 80 stream processors and 20 total ROP units so the benefits of overclock won't be that great.

The 5470 is meant to be a big leap from on-board graphics, is meant to handle light gaming at reasonable graphics settings, use very little power, and play SD and HD video well. I have seen all sorts of different speeds everyone's 5470 are running at. Mine ran at 650MHz core and 800 mem when I booted up the first time with all of the Sony crapware and their catalyst 10.1 drivers. When I reinstalled my own Windows 7 with the Catalyst 10.6 drivers, it is running at 750/900 which are the reference speeds.

 

there seems to be an error on the Sony site. Whenever I try to customize an EA it kicks me to this website https://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wc...0151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644712007 ???

 

Ok cool.. That clears everything. Your GPU is ATI Radeon HD 5470 too? What is your score in Windows Experience Index?

Cheers

 

It does that occasionally for some reason.. if you try again a couple of hours later it should be fine

 

Hi everyone!

I'm looking @ SONY VPC-EA1S1E/B to replace my HP 4515.
Now the main reason that I want to change my 4515 (well two reasons in fact) are:
1. screen size is too big for me and the EA has nice 14" screen with 1600x900 resolution
2. fan sound: now I read about system noise of Vaio is constant and quite audible. I am used to and am very annoyed by system noise with my AMD in 4515, I would like however like to hear any experience regarding this i3 VPC powered system noise - how's it in idle, HD video and gaming mode. i play various retro games BTW like AOE, MOHAA, WAR3...

I am currently overviewing two options to replace 4515s: Vaio EA and HP DM3. DM3 has inferior processor SU7300 C2D, that I'm reluctant to comit to, but if Vaio turns out to be too loud, I will compromise.

so I thank you in advance for any information you might provide.

 

Graphics 5.0
Gaming Graphics 6.2

 

Yes the present FREE Blu-Ray Writer upgrade is a pretty sweet £140 squid saving !!

But Sony seem to have new offers every couple of weeks ...... I wish they would offer a free RAM (£20), GPU (£70) and Screen (£40) upgrade instead !!

Does anybody know of any Student deals or Corporate discounts that Sony do in the UK ??

 

Excellent and informative post dude !!

Is there enough room in the E to in squeeze one of the slightly thinker 1TB HDD's ??

 

hello everybody!!!

Core i5-430M 2.26 GHz
4 GB
500 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400 rpm
BD-ROM
full hd
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
for 799€+free http://www.itbankeurope.com/LV5T+DELUXE_/ +free shipping +2 years warranty
is good deal i think to join your club
what do you think?

 

Am I right, no EB with i5-520M available in sony style UK?
GRRRR...

 

HI guys!

i'm currently looking @ SONY VPC-EA1S1E/B with i3 and 5145.
now main issue why I didn0t buy this tomally yet is the fact that people report constant fan noise from this build.
I currently have HP 4515s and the fan noise is too much to handle. I play HD movies on it sometimes and it's just too loud that's why i'm changing it.

does anyone have any exoerience with this model and can you tell me how is the fan noise with idle and under load.

thanks for the info.

 

Don't know -- I was busy picking the brain of the other Backstage Tech at the store while the drives were being swapped. I bet you could find out if you called a Sony Store and asked for a backstage tech.

However, personally, I wouldn't do it, because the newest designs of hard drives (like anything else) tend to be less reliable than the tried & true. I tend to err on the side of caution. Remember that for storage, you can put a 2.5" drive in a E-Sata housing, and it will be just as fast as an internal drive and quite compact. You don't really need a 1 TB "C" drive. Or do you?

 

Thats right, AMD GPU Clock Tool can run at startup.
To do this..
1. create a new .CMD file (ex: DefClock.cmd)
2. write down like this :

Code:

@echo off
TITLE Patching.. Please wait..
"C:\Program Files\AMD GPU Clock Tool\AMDGPUClockTool.exe" CLOCK -eng=550 -mem=800

3. then place it on your 'startup' folder.

Good Luck !

 

Thanks, but running it at startup isn't something I'd want to do since it disables Powerplay

 

I've overclocked mine to 675/950 and it's been stable in the benchmarks. Crysis kept on crashing though so I use 650/950 for that game. I haven't tried other games at 675/950 yet. How far has other people managed to overclock the 5650 in Sony Vaio's?

 

You got lucky and got a pretty good quality chip in yours, mine isn't stable above 630 core

 

cakefish, I have exactly the same problem, as soon I close the lid the wireless connection stops. I think it's an issue on all e-series laptops. Pretty ridiculous!

 

Mine does not. Seems like a pretty big flaw. Would send it back if I were you.

 

How did you guys get a HD5650 and full HD screen on your Vaio E series?
I've looked on the US site for the 14 and 15 inch vaio E but the max configuration I got was a HD5470 for both 14 and 15 inch and I couldn't find anything about the screen.
I've also looked on the dutch sonystyle website, there you can get a HD5650 for the 15inch version of the Vaio E but not for the 14inch version.

 

if you ask me i got it from here (special offer) but as you say with 15" version

 

Last I checked, at least for the 15", you couldn't get an "E" with a full HD screen on the US site. It's been that way for months. It is available as CTO on Sony's sites in some other countries. No one at Sony I talked to (either at the S-store or online), had any idea whether it might be available in the future. I got mine from J&R Electronics in NYC, but it only comes with the i3 CPU and 5470 graphics. It runs very cool and is virtually silent, BTW.

 

This guy on youtube got a HD5650 on a 14inch
YouTube - Unboxing Sony Vaio E Series 2010 VPCEA16FA Part1.mpg
Just stop around 2:26

 

Anyone? Anything?

 

I can't tell you about the 14" E-Series, and there aren't many people who post here that have it.

But as far as the 15" goes, the fan is always on but at "idle" it's barely audible, certainly not distracting (to me). It ramps up when you start putting it under load but even then it's not all that loud - the Blu-Ray drive is louder than the fan noise.

 

Where can I find the drivers for my E-series notebook? The e support site lists nothing for my model. I need the x64 drivers.

 

Hey guys!
Where can i find a bigger battery for my E? Is there another model i can use an extended battery from? Thank you!

 

Hi guys
few days ago I bought VPCEA12 EG.........1)Where can I find 32-bit Drivers?

I installed a clean windows 7 ultimate 32-bit ....But when push WEB button ,it mentioned that there is no driver for that?Where can i find its driver?

Also I can not use brightness button on the keyboard + Fn....what is its driver?
Thx

 

Hi,

I have just read this and wanted to ask a question in reference to it which I am hoping someone can help me with.

I'm not too great with understanding the ins and outs of screen resolutions and how they effect fps, so I am hoping to get a bit of advice.

I am looking at buying the Sony Vaio 15" e series laptop, it will mainly be for uni and playing world of warcraft. I have the money to buy the "VAIO Display Plus HD1080 (1920 x 1080 pixels) (16:9)" however after reading the above statement saying that higher res means lower fps I would not buy the better res as I want a good gaming experience with the ATI 5650 I plan to get.

Could someone possibly explain a bit more about what screen I should get with the Vaio to suit my needs best?

Also will the 5650 underclocked graphics card be enough to play warcraft well at high fps? As I have no idea how to overclock the card and would not want to destroy my laptop - if someone could let me know their opinion that would be much appreciated

Thanks in advance!

 

WoW runs fine underclocked on 1366x768, and continued to run fine after I manually overclocked it (It's really easy to overclock it w/o changing voltage etc, don't be a sissy ). All settings at max except for shadows that tends to mess with most ATi cards (any setting below the max on that slider goes fine however)

My guess is that, for WoW, the higher res screen should still do fine considering that the graphics card isn't really strained to begin with. WoW is more of a strain on the CPU than the GPU. Any Core iX (even i3) is however capable to handle 25 man raids at the moment, and resolution shouldn't matter much for the CPU.

Biggest bottleneck seem to be the slow harddrive that loads textures and models awkwardly slow in places like dalaran. I changed to SSD recently and the problem went away. But yes it's not such a big issue to begin with. Not when the solution costs €200.

Also, should you buy an E-series Vaio, and find stutty FPS performance (stuck at exactly 16, 32 or 64 fps) in WoW, type /console timingmethod 2 in-game and restart the client. I had to do this in order to play with ati catalyst package installed.

 

Can anyone tell me why it seems like people who by these Sony E-series laptops in the UK are offered upgraded parts for what seems to be the same if not lower prices than the US??? Like 90% of people posting have the 5650 vid. card. Even though I'm very happy with my system, I wish it came with the ATI Radeon mobility 5650 1gig dedicated card since it still is a 15" laptop... plus like other people have said they have higher resolution screens, I got the 1366x768 which is fine but damn ! Still paid over a $1,000 (including 2 years accidental) and why are people calling this a lower mid range notebook?? I guess that's just based on the graphics card but I consider anything close to 1,000 bucks or higher atleast mid-mid ranged (I'd actually call mine a lower-high range laptop)... according to that "notebook enthusiast" he's saying what then the avg. 6 to 7 hundred dollar notebooks are considered lower-low range notebooks? .. HOW DARE YOU CALL MY NEW SONY A LOW MID RANGE LAPTOP!!!

But other than that... I'd still like to overclock my 5470 but don't wanna risk melting my video card slowly until finally broken a year later... I've heard people say Don't be a sissy... "there will be no damage because my card is already undervolted to begin with" and one guy said the opposite... Also how do you toggle your trackpad on/off?? Didn't see the key for this on the keyboard... Any help would be great!! Diggin this laptop fosho!

 

Oh hey again, for those of you looking for that Mac like object dock that usually comes with a new vaio, it's called Vaio Gate, mines didn't come with it pre-installed so i just googled and dl'ed it and now it's a convenient way to unclucker my desktop and organize all my games into a hidden little icon dock thingy maijig... Audios com podres! See pic



Oh and if you can't find it, I'll give you the link

 

Thank you for your response, it's helped a lot
Just wondering in your opinion would it be worthwhile spending the money on the faster 7200 rpm hard drive rather than the HD higher res screen?

Are you happy with the lower res screen while playing? I'm not too fussed about high def as Wow isn't really a high definition game.

Also I'll have to look into overclocking the card just in case - do you know of anywhere which gives some easy to follow instructions for girls who know nothing about the mechanics of computers haha? It would be much appreciated

Thanks for your help!!