Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

Dunno hello, I got mine last night and I didn't notice any flimsiness, my ethernet cover is decent and there's none of that infamous battery wiggle.

Plus the difference in price for what I got would have been a grand. so nope, loving it so far

 

Same experience here.

Also, I LOVE the keyboard. It's less error-prone than the SZ's, fast to type on, and QUIET (the SZ keyboard was so loud it was almost unbearable at times - at least to the people around me).

 

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the graphics card wouldn't support it, BUT:

Would it be possible to use both the DVI and VGA ports on the docking station to run a dual-monitor configuration? Or would that be too much for the poor ATI card to handle?

 

I dunno, the SR might be flimsier than the Z, but compared to my friend's 2yr old Dell?

 

I'm pretty sure the card CAN handle dual monitor support....im not sure if the ports are set up that way. The card CAN handle HDMI, it just isnt included in our computers, the card can handle dual set-ups, etc... but the notebook isnt set up for it. See my point?

Anyways...in regards to it being flimsy...i disagree. At first, i also felt that i had to be extra careful with it, this is not so... I have handled a Z, the Z isnt any less "flimsy" feeling. These are very light laptops....hence they dont feel like rocks like an old thinkpad or a macbook...but thats cause those both weigh an extra like 2 lbs than the SR or Z(3lbs more in the Z's case).

The Z MAY be more durable in certain situations...but i assure you, it doesnt feel more durable or less flimsy than the SR...and it weighs even less, adding to this "effect".

The SR has magnesium chassis, magnesium lid and bottom, and hard drive protection built in... how much more do you need in regards to durability?

If your looking for something heavy that "feels" sturdy...i suggest not looking at any thin and light computers...except the macbook(cause it weighs like 5 lbs and is made of nalgene bottle plastic)

 

SR Pr0n!!

 

Hi everyone,

Has anyone had paint chips on their brand new SR??

I can't believe I'm seeing this. I have no idea how it happend. I came home from work, opened it up and there it was! (

I guess theres something to be said about the quality of the plastic on this new series.

 

Thanks for the pics. The SR just looks stunning. This is one reason why I regret buying the SZs.

 

You're kidding me... I go to CTO and everything is sold out/out of stock. This better be a sign an updated model is coming out or something--ha.. That sucks. I am itching to get one.

 

BaronRon- Yeah.... I have gotten a bit of the paint to scratch off of the sides part of the lid. It's not really noticeable, unless you are really looking at it. It's just the edges. I know that if it were a glossy, it would look even crappier at this point.

Also, I do have a chip in the body of the SR already. It's right near that rubber foot thing that is on the keyboard part to act as a protection of the screen and keyboard when closed. It's on the right side. It's very very tiny though. You have to be within 5" to see it. I don't really care. I know the SR could probably take much more than that. I had an HP from 2005 that had REAL dents in the screen part of the casing as well as on the sides. That thing still was doing well until the motherboard shorted out.

 

Does anyone have an estimate of start-up time for their SR? I spent an hour the other day killing services and start-up programs that were unnecessary (so now I'm at 42 processes on start-up), but boot time is still a little bit more than a minute (which seems slow to me). It's just weird because the memory card light lights up more than I remember during boot, and the "Welcome" screen sometimes doesn't even show up--the screen with the green loading bar before that takes up the saved time, though, and then some.

Anyways, anybody got any ideas? Also, as a side note, there was a service called RtkHDMIService, which is even more proof that the HDMI port was axed at the last minute, not that I care that much.

 

You may have shut something down that is slowing your start-up... i have 65ish processes at start-up and its hovering around 40 seconds as well... who knows. Honestly, windows has wierd settings that make it wait to shut down, its possibly that it does the same with start-up...

otherwise, no idea... you could try using a thumbdrive and utilizing readyboost?

 

Wow, 42 at start up? You killed much more than I did. xD

Mine, well it takes about 8 1/2-1/3 bars on the vista loading screen before it moves on to the log-in screen. Mine takes about..... a minute from turning it on to get to the desktop to actually do anything with it.

I'm used to a long start up though, as my Dell goes through a few screens and some waiting for XP to load.

The SR shuts off pretty fast though.

 

This is Vista for u!!! Theres no solution to this. At most, u can reduce it by 5-10 seconds, but expecting a bootup in 30 secs on Vista is over-ambitious. I read somebody in this forum boasting a 9sec bootup.. I suspect he might have been smokin some weird stuff lately...

 

Does anyone know why my fingerprint reader is not powered on from sleep, and if i can fix this? Thanks

 

that was I! And I mean in 9 seconds the loading screen went to login screen. and after all my programs installed it takes 15. total to desktop 40-50 seconds.

 

just go to sony site and download the software for fingerprint again !!

 

i think its something about vista, my SR takes forever to shut down, must longer than my SZ does on XP

 

It works fine for the most part. It's just that it doesn't work when I turn it on from Sleep. I'll give it a shot though.

 

loving the battery life. with brightness at 75% and WiFi off, I only killed 30% of the battery through a 2hour lecture today

and as for sleep mode killing up to 10% of battery life instantly (as ive read in this thread), I put it to sleep before i left my house and when i woke it from sleep mode in class it was still at 100%

 

my battery only drains when i put my laptop to hibernation on battery and when the battery is not fully charged

if you put your laptop to sleep when the battery was fully charged, it's normal that you didnt see any drainage..

try putting your laptop to sleep/or hibernate when the battery is not fully charged and see what happens.

 

the software for the fingerprint reader is not on sony's web site. only the driver is on there.

 

Edit: I've managed to do a clean install of Vista and have all the drivers installed but there seems to be only one problem. The Fn keys to adjust the brightness do not seem to work. The other function keys work perfectly, and I can adjust the brightness using the VAIO Powertool but not using the function keys.

Would I need to reinstall my drivers in a specific order or is there another program besides VAIO Event Control that I should install? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As well as the function key issue I've noticed that on the factory install of Vista when I used the function keys there was a visual display of what was happening, i.e. you could see the volume bar and brightness bars change when you adjusted them but after performing a clean install they have disappeared. Is there any way to bring back this feature?

Thanks in advance.

 

I just ordered a pre-config'd SR2 today with a P8400 processor, 320GB HD (5400 RPM), the ATI card and Vista 64 (no more 32-bit Vista allowed on the SRs apparently). Still can't quite believe I've signed that much money away.. though the frugal part of my mind seems to be quieter than the part that really wants one of these. So here's hoping it's a really nice machine!

 

so no more vista premiums 32 bit?

can i install ultimate 64 bit on my SR190 properly and working?? I have a 64 Bit Version Ultimate

 

no, sony is still putting 32bit vista in the sr190 series.. only the sr290 series are using the 64bit vista

sony still hasnt put up 64bit drivers for the sr190 yet...

 

yay I finally bought the sr19vn today =D Also bought the zeroshock 3 for it!

 

I get ~2hrs. with 75% brightness and with WiFi on. I can barely make it through my programming lecture/lab... should have got the integrated GPU - I don't even game at all! (but I do use CS3 extensively... maybe it was still a better idea to get the ATi after all?)

 

There are "tricks" to getting 3 hours+ battery life. Make sure to set your power settings to maximum battery or vaio optimized when using battery mode. Also, make sure to turn of the dvd-rom, etc. These things will all provide significantly longer battery life.

 

Sony and their trickery, the SR2 is such a scam, they gave it some POS starting CPU. All they are doing is rearranging the configurations so it looks like its cheaper....

The only benefit of the SR2 is the hdmi and vista 64 bit...so really as soon as they put 64 bit drivers online the only benefit of the SR290 is hdmi... so all of us early adaptors are still in the "up to date" crowd

 

I'm having a problem and wondering if it's an SR problem or something else:

Every 15 minutes or so, the internet stops working. I am still connected to my wireless network, and it still indicates that I have an internet connection, but it doesn't work. If I disconnect from the wireless network and re-connect, everything works fine (until it happens again). This is not happening to anyone else on the network.

Any ideas?

 

Distance, try being closer to the router. Also, make sure that SmartWi and Windows networking arent both the current wifi usage programs. They may be conflicting or something. Just disable smartwi, it sucks.

 

I'm less than 30 feet from the router, and smartwi was disabled the second i got the machine

 

I have the integrated video card and my battery life only says like 3 hours at the start, but it drains pretty fast. I put it on 3/8 brightness, power saver mode, but it never goes over 3 hours. I should be getting 5+ with the integrated vid card shouldn't i?

 

I had the same issue. Here's what I did...

Right click my computer-> properties->device manager->network adapter-> right click on the wireless card-> click properties->click advanced tab->wireless mode-> set it to option "802.11b/g" and apply/ok.

It seemed that the "a" mode that was on by default was ****ing up the connection. If that doesn't work I have one more thing I did that may help, but i'm sure that that was the true solution.

Anyway, if that fails to do the trick try changing the frequency channel to like 11 or something in the wireless router's configuration. However, I'm sure it's the "a" mode that was causing the issue.

Please update the situation!

 

Put it on MAX Battery and just turn the brightness up. You won't get 5 hours if your surfing the net, watching streaming video or downloading things.

I get like 5-6 hours doing those things on my extended battery with brightness all the way up but on MAX Battery. So don't expect 5+ hours on standard.

If you're word processing and doing light browsing (email or something non graphic intensive like movies, video, ect..) then you will get 5 hours or so on max battery with brightness to 1 or 2.

 

I'll try that as soon as I get home, thanks for the tip! I'll let you know what happens.

 

There is a difference in how long your battery actually lasts and what windows says. This is a known vista issue, its simply an incorrect read time. If you look on the sony thread, this is a known issue. It was actually a problem in XP on laptops until 2006 when an update fixed it. So i recommend timing how long your battery lasts and not relying on the vista battery meter.

 

Duke, this worked like a charm. Thank you thank you thank you thank you!

 

I'm having problems with sleep and hibernate on my SR190C. Sometimes, it'll work fine, other times, the laptop won't sleep or hibernate properly. The screen is lit black, and the power button stays green. Pressing keys doesn't do anything, and the only way to get out of that state is to turn the laptop off via the power button. Any ideas?

 

I have that issue.

When you start up again, does it give you a popup on your desktop saying windows had an error?

P.S. What anti virus do you use?

 

Yeah, it says theres been a serious error and windows had to restart or something. Also gives me the screen whether I want to run in safe mode before vista boots up.

I use Avira AntiVir (free version).

 

LMAO. I think it's Avira!

Check out my post earlier on the same exact issue:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=304463

I didn't try uninstalling it yet... could you try it and let me know if it works? I will try it this weekend, but school i starting up tomorrow so I'll be busy till friday let us know! if it is avira for sure, then we can just let avira know or perhaps just use another free anti virus!

 

Cool! You're welcome Yea.. "a" mode is hardly used anyway now days... every wifi hotspot i've been to uses g and *sometimes* b and now some have n support.

Can I ask what router you were using? I am using a lynksys wireless G router wrt54g2

 

I just got off the phone with Sony ordering my new SR, but interestingly she said the SR190 I ordered actually comes with an HDMI output. She said at one point they did not, but the CTOs they are shipping now, despite what the website says, actually have the HDMI output. Furthermore, she said the new SR290 is for the most part the same computer as the old SR190 with a few minor exceptions and a few new options available. I hope this helps others make a decision on which computer to buy.

 

I have Avira on mine as well, and haven't had that happen. Done both sleep and hibernate mode. Maybe Avira is conflicting with something else you have going?

 

Uh oh, it's happening again.

I think I've figured out something - it only seems to happen when attached to the docking port. Any ideas?

 

i dont use a docking port.

From that thread i posted, someone said in a private message that there were TWO conflicting things going on... I'm assuming Avira is one and it's conflicting with something else..

What else do you have running?

I the following running:

SpyBot SD-Resident

Synaptics Touch pad

Comodo Firewall

 

Hi guys, my Sony SR comes with an Atheros AR928x wireless adapter and the range sucks. Would I be able to easily replace this with the Intel 5100 or 5300?

 

I have Comodo and the touchpad driver running as well. No spybot. Maybe try disabling that and seeing if it happens? Also, I'm not clear..does it happen every time or just some of the time?