Official VAIO E Series Owners Thread

I can confirm that it is possible to enable it in the bios.

Free blu-ray writer is an awesome deal, although sony seem to always be offering one of their upgraded components for free (when I bought mine it was 6gb RAM they were offering for free).

 

Yes, you can enable it

 

Indeed, when I bought mine it was just the screen... damn. If I had waited one more week I could have gotten the same configuration £140 cheaper.

 

Hey! You use VPCEA36FG
I need your advice..How is the lappy in terms of battery backup + heat issues.
I've checked out the lappy and i really like it. Just concerned about the above 2 aspects. Are u facing any probs with this model?!

Pls reply soon!

 

You could just open any program/browser whatever and stare at a colorful picture and do the procedure I wrote. The blue gradient display in CCC was a common example.

And I have uninstalled, used driver sweeper (in terms of performance I've never had an issue skipping this step), even lately I Reinstalled windows entirely, but the issue with the the occasional 16 bit color depth in 10.10 remains.

I know I'm not crazy. All of you guys are for not noticing it!

 

Hey guys,
I replaced the wireless card in my EB series laptop (Atheros 9285) with an Intel 6200 card. The installation was fine afaik, and Windows told me "driver installation successful" when I installed the driver (13.0.0.107) for the Intel card (I uninstalled the driver for the other card before I removed it), but for some reason, neither the Network and Sharing Centre or Intel's own MyWifi utility can detect the card. The card is visible in device manager.
Any ideas as to what I could try to fix this? Has anyone here successfully replaced the wireless card in one of these laptops?

 

Try reinstalling all of the drivers under "newtork adapters" except for the bluetooth ones.

 

Hi, I`m considering buying the vaio EB series (custom). I`m sure some of these questions have been asked before but my skim of the thread didn`t answer all of them.


1. Speaker quality - I`ve read mixed things about this. I use my laptop speakers fairly often for watching movies and sometimes for music when I`m too lazy to plug in external speakers. Is the quality of the sound bad or is it just not as good as some of the higher end laptop speakers out there? I can deal with so-so speaker quality but not terrible quality.

2. Extended battery - from what I have read it is worth getting as the standard battery is fairly weak. My question is, does it change the external appearance/shape of the computer or is it the same size as the standard battery? Also, how much heavier is it? Is the extended battery that comes with a custom built computer the same one as you can buy as an add-on?

3. SSD drive - how straightforward is it to replace the hard drive with an SSD drive after purchase? This might be a stupid question but I`m not used to tinkering with computers so I just wanted to make sure.


Thanks in advance!

 

1. I've never had a problem with speakers. If you really want high quality speakers buy some external ones and plug them in when you need them to be loud. I personally watch all of my videos on VLC Media Player, which allows you to boost the volume up to 400% (After 200% it starts to degrade)

2. My battery life is fine. I can easily stream 2-2.5 hours of video. I know I've watch an episode of the office, 30 rock, and Community on Hulu full screen max brightness (powersave setting) and I still had enough. I also stop my charging at 80% to preserve the battery... so I definitely could have continued.

3. From what I understand it's quite easy. You open the laptop up and you plug it in basically. There are also hybrid drives that you may want to look into . They're high capacity and give you near-SSD speeds.

 

Hi All,

I have been using EB26 without any problems from quite sometime now.
Few days back I heard some noise coming from my hard disk and the laptop just restarted.
It crashes every time I try to start it (get the same noise every time) .
I think its hard disk fan issue. It causes hard disk to heat up and system shuts down on its own.

any pointers on how to troubleshoot this problem?

 

The hard disk doesn't have a fan, so if the noise is from the HDD it's something internal. What kind of noise is it? How far does startup get before it crashes?

 

Hi everyone!
I have a problem with my vaio VPC-eb1z1e.With ATI 5650.
When I connect my vaio to an external monitor through VGA the text is blurry not very clean.If I connect it through HDMI everything is ok.
Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance!

 

Can be many things. For one, have you made sure you set your screen resolution to the same value as it was when it looked good on HDMI?

Also, since VGA is analogue, your screen should have an auto-adjust button for making sure the whole picture is scanned by the monitor.

 

Hi, my first post here, just a quick query, I currently bought a cto eb series and i chose the i7 options and after reading this thread, it seemed that everyone else has the i5.

Did i pick the wrong choice, i mean there was 170 pounds difference which was quite alot, any opinions?

also, would i be able to change my order, it is 'currently in production', if i change my mind?
I'm a uni student and wanted to get a 'crazy good' laptop to last me hopefully a couple of years hence why i got the i7 so it would decrease the need of upgrading to a new laptop too often. I didnt get the F series as i decided it was too big for me since i want to carry it to uni with me also.

thanks

 

I'm not sure if you can change your order.

Which i7 did you get?

It really depends on what you want to do. The i7 is very fast but it's really going to show off on things that can use 4 cores.

When it comes to games you may actually be better off with a 2 core BUT in the future more and more games will utilize 4 cores.

Your overall computer experience will be faster though. I think most of us just couldn't justify the payout.

 

I got the Intel® CoreTM i7-640M, 2.80GHz. I believe I read somewhere that the 640m is not quad core. I would like the option to play games but I'm not that hardcore on that..I browse the internet alot and usually have like hundreds of tabs up on my google chrome especially when I'm doing research/essay work, and have many programs up at the same time. My current laptop (HP compaq cq40) can't really handle me atm.

But yes, I was hoping that this would be an investment for the future, hence the big payout...
I also wasn't sure on what the L3 cache on the processors meant, as the i7-640m had the highest with 4mb whereas the i5 had 3, not sure how important this is
.
And I've emailed sony customer services if I would be able to change my order, so hopefully get a reply soon.

 

The i7-640M isn't a quad core, it's a dual core.

The reason most have i5s is that that i7 option was only recently added.

 

I didn't see it was the 640m.

And the i7 640m is a dual core and it's the most powerful dual core currently on the market (for laptops) so you definitely picked a good one. I would honestly love to have that one =p

 

You're right. Your i7 is a dual core and not a quad core. You got a good one. You made the right choice. Keep it.

 

Hmmm- I don't see that as an option yet in the custom config menu - the max is i5 (at least here in the states)

 

Not much unless you are running some kind of massive calculations on large sets of data. Otherwise you shouldn't see any visible difference between 3 and 4MB for general purpose tasks.

 

If you do gaming L3 cache is pretty important. Especially when it comes to emulating systems.

 

Well, friends. Apparently, this laptop ships with a defective sound driver. If you put on headphones and turn up the volume, you will often hear pops in the left ear on double clicks as you browse folders in the Windows 7 file manager. The same popping noises happen when navigating some of Control Panel windows. The file manager is just one of many places where these pops can happen. If you google for "Windows 7 popping noise" you will see a lot of hits, and a lot of them lead to discussions about the Realtek HD audio chips and their drivers. One solution that worked for many people was to downgrade the driver version to 2.22. This driver is so old that when it was released, it was Windows Vista only driver because Windows 7 was not out. And yet, it works on Windows 7. It's older than the driver provided by Sony, and also older than the driver provided by Windows 7. I stumbled upon this information on this site:

Realtek, Windows 7 64RTM Crackle/static/popping - Page 4 - Windows 7 Forums

and the link to the old working driver is here:

Download Realtek HD Audio 2.22 Vista | techPowerUp

You need to get the file Vista_R222.exe

Note that, you can also download the latest Realtek HD driver from Realtek's web site. I already tried it. It has the same problem. Finally, note that to install the driver contained in Vista_R222.exe, you need to run that installer twice, and make sure you DO NOT reboot between those runs. This is because when you run it first, the installer uninstalls the old (faulty) driver and then exits, asking you to reboot. However, once you reboot, on boot Windiws 7 will see that there is no driver installed, and will install its own, buggy driver. To avoid this, run Vista_R222.exe twice, and then reboot. Of course, it's better to get Realtek to fix the driver in the latest releases but I am too lazy to send them a bug report.

 

By the way, there exist a ton of chips called "Realtek HD", they're related since they use the same driver. And yet, they are different, and have different specs. Any ideas which Realtek chip model does VAIO EB have on its board?

 

Anyone tried the new ATI drivers from the sony support site? I'm guessing they are the latest 10.11's since they have appeared on windows updates as well as direct from ATI just curious how they are compared to 10.10

Currently blasting through NFS: Hot Pursuit, yet another new game the Ati 5650 can handle maxed out smooth as silk, this EB was definitly a good purchase.

 

No way! You didn't expect Sony to be that up-to-date, did you? 8.723 is only Catalyst 10.4, so 7 months old.

 

How do the 10.11 fair against 10.10? Any significant improvement?

 

They seem to fix the 16-bit palette color error.

 

I can see at the Sony's website, that they finally have provided us with new ATI graphics drivers dated 19/11/2010.

 

Hi guys, I have a weird problem. I have bought a Sony VAIO VPC-EB1Z1E model, but my VAIO update recognises it as a Sony VAIO VPC-EB1E0E model. I find this very weird. There is a different serial number in my VAIO software as on the bottom of the laptop as well... I want to somehow fix that. It wouldn't really bother me, but I don't get the updates that are for the VPC-EB1Z1E, I get the VPC-EB1E0E updates instead. Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

Uninstall it. Go to sony's website and reinstall it for your model.

If it still says it thta means those two models are identical (hardware wise) so it won't matter.

 

I thought of that, didn't try it. Why? Because it says the same in my bios (wrong model) + I've got a different serial writen in VAIO update. I'll try it though. Thanks!

 

After getting my first "low memory" warning since turning off my pagefile with only 4gbs ram I started thinking about upgrading to 8gbs, on saturday while in town a local computer store had a closing down sale so nipped in for a look.

Managed to grab a 8gb ddr3 corsair memory kit (2x4gbs) for a measly £65, was extremely glad I never made the £120 order from amazon the previous week

 

Nice. I'm thinking of upgrading to 8GB since I do some VM's.

 

Hello all.

I'm interested in buying the EB customized with the following specs:

Intel® Core™ i5-580M processor (2.66GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.33GHz
500GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)
8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
15.5" Full HD VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080)
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5650 GPU (1GB VRAM)

I was wondering, if anybody has the same (or similar) configuration and can tell me how heat and noise emissions are. I read in an older review that the fan and the hard drive are somewhat loud. Is this true? Is the display good?

Thanks,
Franzoll

 

The E series is pretty quiet and cool running, I replaced my HDD with a SSD which obviously makes zero noise, but my gf bought the exact same spec and still uses the standard HDD which came with it and sitting next to me now I can't really hear a thing from her notebook.

Our idle temps are sitting around 36 - 38oC but we are both using logitech coolers, without they sit around 40-42oC our room is kept around 24oC temp wise, but until I am gaming the fan is pretty much silent to me and even once it kicks up a bit in game even then its not very loud and if you have a tv in the room you won't hear it at all.

 

Thanks for your quick reply. How is the monitor? I'm concerned that everything might look too small at 1920x1080. Also, I wasn't able to find a review for the 1920x1080 display. Does anybody know any and can provide a link?

 

I came from a 720p screen on a 14 incher and now I'm on 17.3inches with 900p. Honestly, it looks really nice... but I don't know how 1080p would look. I feel that 900p is a pretty good res for this size but you probably wouldn't have problems with 1080p.

 

Thanks for the information Hungry man !
As I intend to run 64 bits os like 2008r2 in Workstation, i'll need VT : VMware KB: Hardware and firmware requirements for 64-bit Guest Operating Systems

I'm stuck today as my vgn-ar31m has VT completely disabled

 

Thanks Peat - 6GB is nice too - I intend to have 6GB too but I'll buy a 4GB module separately

 

Dear friends! I still have my old problem with fan noise. after upgrading my BIOS, the fan speed has more than doubled and it is really noisy and always on and is really bothering me and not letting me study. I contacted SONY live chat support like 3 times, but they are not helping. ( I wonder what is their job other than giving obvious answers)
I need to either downgrade the BIOS or alter the fan speed. and I have not been able to do neither of them.

 

Yeah same here. Their support is ... it's so upsetting. I literally had to tell them "Stop giving me scripted answers, it's too late at night for this so just give me a yes or no." Still didn't give me a yes or no, more script bull. Took forever to get a legitimate answer and they were like "just restore your computer back to factory settings"... like that's a ing option...

 

Bought an EA36- finally!! I'm loving it!! The only complaints are the capacitor whine when something is connected on the usb port and the sporadically loud fan. And is it normal for the chassis to creak underneath the optical drive?

Great keyboard n touchpad, nice display, and really cool temps under gaming- all check. Many thanks to all members of this thread... Spent two months thoroughly going throught the whole thread and it really helped me to make this decision. Thanks a lot guys!!!!!!

 

Glad you're enjoying your new computer

 

Mine creaks too, as well as the battery wobbling slightly when pressed on.

 

whats everyone battery ?

 

I'm not sure i understand the question..

 

I think they want to know our battery life.

I cap my battery life at 80% to help preserve overall battery longevity so my results will be less than others.

On powersave mode I can watch at least two episodes of a TV show... so that's like an hour and a half. I've never run out of battery though, I could probably squeeze 2 hours out of it. It's got pretty good battery life.

 

Hey guys..
I got score 15137 points on 3D Mark 2005 for ATI Mobility HD 5650M
Check this out => ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650M OC'ed on The Undervolted Sony VAIO E Series (VPC-EB1LFX/BI)

How about your score ???

 

Anyone else have usb problems with there EB1E0E laptop ??

I'm having probs every day now with this one i get USB Device not recognised and a error message about windows not recongising the usb device. Anyone know how i can resolve this, I've tried unplugging the usb device but will work sometimes and other times it won't..