Official VAIO Z Core 2 Duo Series Owners Thread

Yes, the above items come as standard on the Z690 CTO. Congrats on your purchase.

 

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

 

Yes, the Intel 5100 AGN is, in fact, the wireless card used in this notebook (as is explicitly mentioned on Sonystyle.)

I'm sure others will reply to your A2DP / GeForce 9300M questions.

(ETA: yep, they sure did! Heh.)

 

My computer says that I have only 285 GB available on my HD. The size of my HD is 320 GB. What happened to the other 35 GB? That's alot of missing space IMO. I know there is a recovery partition but can it be that big? How can I check?

 

Is this size 8 option only available for Zs with 1600x900 resolution? The reason I asked is that I tried it on my 1366x768 Z but unfortunately, Segoe UI 9 is the smallest I can select...

 

That's a poor philosophy, no offense.

As someone who does not have a Z, I'd rather hear all the bad things about it before I purchase it, than realize there are problems in hindsight. Is that not what the forums are for??

After trying it out several times and comparing it multiple times, I can't say I can find anything to complain about. The instant on graphics card is spectacular actually. But I still have time to decide as I'm reading through this beast of a thread.

I think the people will ultimately decide whether or not they agree with what you like, or don't like (as is the case with all reviews), so it would be helpful to just hear input anyway! Granted you aren't stating problems that just aren't true or exaggerating problems. Of course you don't have to, but not just in your case, I should say that I welcome any feedback from anyone.

 

The 320 GB is measured in 1,000 bytes each kb. The operating system measures it as 1,024 bytes each kb. So while it is stated as 320 GB, the actual space will actually be less. It is more like -20GB, the rest is probably the operating system and software/hibernate etc.

 

OK. I managed to find out how to change the size of the font... Man, I am real stupid.

 

No worries. No offense taken. Of course I agree with you that that is a poor philosophy, that's why I've been saying that I'm just plain silly & stupid.

Good things or bad things about the Vaio Z (or any other laptop) is basically all subjective in my opinion. One reason I think that the Vaio Z is not up to my expectations may well be because I currently have 2 previous top of the line Vaio SZs, so this may not be a good & fair comparison for not totally liking the Vaio Z (lowest end pre-config) that I bought not too long ago.

I still suggest that to be totally sure that the Vaio Z (or any other laptop) is the one for you, you'll have to try it out yourself. I believe no one or nothing can tell you and/or influence your opinion about what is the perfect laptop for you.

Lastly, I have to stress that the Vaio Z is a top class laptop. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

 

It is at the BB in Gainesville, Ga.

Mine does NOT have an embedded card. I wish that it did, and it being a Verizon. However, I still have my USB card that I can still use. I had gotten it a couple of months before I got my TB.

 

What term of battery life can I expect if i'm planning to use Z for internet serfing via mobile phone (3G - HSDPA/HSUPA) on the high level of display brightness:
If I use the standart battery?
If I use the extended battery?

 

I was just talking to Sony technical support, they did not seem to know what the battery drain problem was. Either that or the guy was trying to dodge all my questions. This was supposedly level 2 technical support.

So I explained the battery drain, and how all users seem to have it. After constantly referring me to whether or not the battery was defective, even though I constantly tried to explain to him that it a) wasn't a problem unique to me b) the reason I was concerned was because the battery was working well and not defective, I eventually asked him what "feature" or technology do the Vaios have that make them unique? Why is it that only Sony Vaios drain battery life when powered off? He went on to tell me it's confidential.. yes confidential technology. He proceeded to give me hypothetical situations in which "if you came out with a new technology, you would want to keep it confidential too so no one would steal it, wouldn't you?" to which I replied that if you are selling it to consumers, the customer should know what it is. He rephrased the same question so I ultimately said "No, you patent it so they can't steal it."

After going back in circles where he continued to ask me to check BIOS for whether or not the battery was defective (even though I said for the 10th time that everyone has the problem and that it isn't specific to any one unit) he eventually told me at the end that he "didn't want to tell me what was causing it" and then proceeded to say goodbye, thanks for calling, and hung up on me.

I'm wondering if I'm the only one that has ever called in and asked what is causing the power drain. Or if Sony is just not aware of this problem? I mean what more can I say? What am I trying to get out of him if he flat out tells me he doesn't want to tell me what the problem or "feature" is?

 

I wouldn't think so?
With 1366x768, you should have 120 dpi and not 140 dpi as on the 1600x900 display, so Segoe 9 is probably smaller (in pixels) anyhow. But you can always choose other fonts, including Trebuchet MS and Tahoma (which are the defaults in XP).

 

How did you get there? Arth said to hit F1 at the desktop but that didn't work for me.

 

I sold my SZ750 for the Z550 in Aug. 08. Right before Circuit City announced they were going into liquidation, I saw the SZ750 sell for $999.98 CC online. Every week I'd check to see if it was still there. I went into CC in-store and was told there were 14 left nationwide. By the 3rd week when I decided to go for it, it was all sold out. What I'm saying is, There is something about the SZ that has something over the Z. For me, I think it might be the comfort of the 13.3 screen. It also felt sturdier because it was slightly heavier than the Z. After owning a Z for 6 mos. Like you, I now realize I could've been content had I kept my SZ for another year or two. But don't get me wrong, I'm getting a lot of good use of the Z's HDMI and it's lite weight among other things. The Z, to me looks "quality", but just does not feel "quality".

I like the SZ's sleek exterior, but with the Z's interior design. By the way, this is no description of the SR, which looks chunkier than the SZ (lol). IMO.

 

Yes it does

Europe's latest Vaio Z Configurable, The sony Vaio VGN-Z35X.

It's Made in Japan with a 2-3 week build time. I love the T9800 2.93GHz option, just like sonystyle Japan. Be nice if they offered the different lids too, although premium Carbon would still be my first choice. The usual european prices though, shall I buy a Vaio or Rolex

www.sonystyle.co.uk

256 GB SATA SSD, doesn't state wether RAID or not?

 

o.k. I figured out where to change font sizes and such. Now I need to know if there is a way to fix web pages so that the words aren't overlapping eachother and such. What do you say arth? I know you know.

 

In case anyone didn't catch the ad, SonyStyle has added the bundle savings again (2 accessories + warranty, $300 off).

 

Cool..Im going to order also! I think I go for the P9600..but I hope the SSD is RAID 0..

 

Some news for you wwan guys. Looks like z is getting it embedded through
verizon

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/16/sony-bringing-gobi-wwan-module-to-vaio-z-tt-and-p/

 

Yeah, I posted that a while back. Verizon it its.

 

The one in Japan are 2x128 in RAID 0...so I would expect the same with these (?)....but if I'm not wrong, they're ATA interface, it means that would make the conceivable upgrade in the future much more complicated. I would probably choose HDD with SATA interface and upgraded for the SSD by myself...

 

First of all, I'll admit that I'm hopelessly lazy & stupid. Hope I don't offend anyone with my following comments. If I do, I sincerely apologize.

I cannot stop thinking that computers are supposed to make life a lot easier for everyone & now we all have to resort to wasting our time just trying to fix the fonts, resolution, etc. so that we are able to get a simple thing fixed, which is to make fonts & images consistent & nice across all applications.....

 

That's the thing I do not understand..about the Ultra ATA; SSDVAio had a Samsung MMCQE28GFMUP-MVA 128GB in his 25X, which is actually a slim microSATA SSD.
These can be found on ebay for USD$ 200-300!
This would make the SSD raid upgrade also interesting, if only we could find the raid cable ...

 

One quick question for all. I hope that this is the right place to ask, if not the moderators can delete this post.

If any of you guys have the Vaio Z610, would you sell it for $1,400 (price includes shipping)?

 

How old is it?

 

Very old! Just kidding. Mine since Feb. 4.

 

Here's a stupid question, but do all Z series VAIOs come with LED-backlit screens standard?

I ask b/c yesterday I ordered a Z540 online (not from the sonystyle store though) and after re-reading the site's spec sheet today, I just noticed that it doesn't even mention the LED part; just something about "Active Matrix TFT Color LCD" in the display screen type description. Should I be worried, or am I just being paranoid/ignorant?

 

Yes, all Vaio Zs come with LED-backlit screens as standard.

 

Thanks again SPEED! I almost did a spit-take when I saw that the site description didn't mention a LED-backlight. That puts me at ease. Now it's back to the waiting game until my Z arrives.

 

No problems. Yeah, I kinda hate the waiting game because it will just drive you nuts waiting for it to arrive! Congrats on your purchase. You'll love your new Vaio Z!

 

That's it? Heck I'd pay 1400$ for that.. that's a steal. The only thing separating your 610 and a 2100$ 690 is resolution.

 

Seriously though, if I do not sell it at around that price, I doubt anyone will want to buy it because I bet they rather go to BB to buy the Z610 than buy it from me.

However, now I'm beginning to have second thoughts yet again. This time, it is because selling it for $1,400 (including shipping) means that I'm gonna lose a few hundred dollars. Is this a sensible or stupid thing to do?

 

Oh, I couldn't agree more! The OS should, of course, query the monitor, and set the DPI to whatever the monitor has, and auto-adjust all the fonts accordingly so they don't change the size. Plug in a new monitor, and voilà, everything will look exactly the same size on the new monitor (just crispier with a better monitor).

Someone with old and bad eyes (we all have those in our family, right?) that need their fonts 1 cm tall would still get 1 cm tall fonts even if they changed to a super-hires monitor. That's the way it should be, I think.

Alas, we're not there yet. Gnome under Linux is probably the best so far -- change the DPI setting, and it will change scale much every font on the system accordingly. But it still can't do it without manual intervention, and it doesn't work well for bitmap fonts.

Mac also has a pretty good DPI setting, but there, the OS vendor control what hardware you can use, so it's a bit easier. But most of all MacOS is better, because of QuarkXPress and Adobe tools which always have behaved well with respect to WYSIWYG.

Windows is still a bit of a kludge. You have to first set the DPI, and then go through umpteen pulldown menus and change the fonts to what you like, and then change the fonts in some other apps (like Office). Tedious. And made worse by the unreasonable request that you reboot after changing things!
Hopefully, Microsoft will work on this. There are people with huge big 1024x768 monitors, and people with tiny 1600x900 monitors. Both of these users should have readable fonts, and be able to change them at will.

For web pages, the main problem seems to be that web designers think that everybody use the same font size as themselves, and use fixed width tables, with the width specified in pixels. That is a no-no, of course, and will only ensure that your pages will look horrible five years down the road when users have 256 dpi displays and fonts are much bigger in pixels to compensate.
Firefox is much better than IE at circumventing this problem -- you can set both a default and a minimum font size, and also scale with CTRL + and CTRL -
For Internet Explorer, you can choose "smaller" and "smallest" font size for the web pages that are a problem, but not set the font size -- only the font. "Smaller" works with at least 95% of the pages out there, and "smallest" takes care of most of the rest -- it's just a nuisance to read something that small...

Luckily, web pages that don't work well with different font/dpi settings are becoming more and more rare. On the machine I'm on right now, I have 125% (120 dpi) AND "large fonts", and I think it's several weeks since the last time I had to use the zoom.

It's more of a problem when people embed fonts in images. On a 1600x900 13.3" display like the Vaio Z, that often becomes unreadable flyspeck, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it, cause images are independent of the DPI setting. With Firefox, you can zoom in on the image, and get a horribly blurry (but larger) image. However, if you have to use IE for a page, you'll end up with your eyeball two millimeters from the monitor, trying to read the text.

Hey, I WANT my fonts to be about 2.5 mm tall. That's comfortable for me. Others have different requirements. Can't we all get along and let people use the fonts that work best for them, and not shoehorn everybody into using a fixed number of "pixels", just because someone's old DOS computer used 9 pixels tall fonts?
It's 2009 now -- freedom from the tyranny of pixels!

Sorry for this being such a long post!

 

arth1, what you said its true & I agree with you.

It is kinda sad that we've to go through all this trouble. It kinda makes me wonder what Microsoft has been doing all these years....

 

This dpi discussion is great, though! I certainly wasn't aware of how to go about correcting the dpi and these adjustments that have been pointed out. I would love if the info. could be collected into a little how-to maybe? I am really going to want to try this when I get my Z, and maybe with my new 24" widescreen monitor as well ... but I think this kind of info could be useful to more than just Z owners.

 

Mhm, yep.

Incidentally, the above-quoted simplicity post is precisely why I'm probably returning my z690 for something with a smaller resolution. I am not averse to learning new stuff, adapting to equipment, and all of that, but I'm not about to feel like I have to force myself to enjoy a $2,000+ piece of hardware. No thanks. I just want it to work with minimal intervention.

For my masochism beyond there, I'll just play with my dual-booting Fedora Core machine, thanks.

 

BestBuy charges tax, so the product is going to be over 2000$, which is a good price now that I realize it, since I can't find anything with the same specs at a cheaper price. I guess it really depends on what condition the laptop is in.

 

But couldn't you just use 120 DPI and be done with it instead of getting a smaller resolution?

 

Vista doesnt have good DPI handle.. it may distort images/productivity in 3D apps, etc..

Windows 7 is touted as an overall modernizer upgrade for DPI, SSDs, battery control.. everything

 

I´ve the problem, that my z21wn doesn´t go to sleep or hibernate with power profiles. Choosing the mode through the windows menu worked without any problem, but not in the power schemes. What can i do?

 

Hi Guys,

Well I've ordered a 'Z' series and it should arrive tomorrow.

One of the things I'm thinking of doing is upgrading the hard disk. I've seen some posts on here about how to do that but it does look a bit scary from the pictures...

Anyone had problems with taking the machine apart to upgrade the disk ? Any tips ?

Thanks,

Mark

 

How do I choose a font size for a specific web page? Sorry if I'm asking questions that are obvious to everyone else. Thanks for your help.

edit: Nevermind, I figured it out.

 

Very true. arth1 is the expert on this subject & deserve a lot of credit for the useful information on the subject that he provides. It would definitely help a lot of people. For people like me, I've to admit that it is an eye opener! Maybe when one of the moderators have some serious free time available, he/she can pick out the info arth1 had recently put into this thread & make a totally new sticky thread for many people to benefit from it.

 

I understand what you're feeling about this DPI, font changing thingy... Even though it doesn't affect my lower resolution Z, I myself tried to learn a bit more from arth1's useful information & play around with it a bit. I know that this kinda thing is "simple" once you get the hang of it, but for people like me, all these manual changing of fonts here & there (of course it doesn't help that I'm lazy to have to mess with it ) just drives me nuts! This really makes one wonder why in this world & age in terms of technology, Microsoft & the rest of the software vendors can't make such a "simple" thing easier for everyone?!?!

 

It is still in the same condition as the one in the photos I posted a few pages back.

 

Its not as easy as people might think, the two Japanese sites that I seen both caused slight damage. One to the lid(scratch) and the other bent the metal above the optical drive.

If your Vaio Z went in for repair and they saw that kind of damage, it would be voided

You would have to follow good pictured instructions and be extremely careful if you were to do it. I took my SZ apart once, it never felt the same again...violated somehow especially if your Laptop is pretty new.

some Japanese pages with excellent pictures:

http://kunkoku.livedoor.biz/archives/51543336.html
http://kunkoku.livedoor.biz/archives/51485813.html

 

oh my.. only on NBR will you get to EVER read such personofication for a laptop!! I almost had images in my head.. ALMOST you sick geeks!

 

hey guys, i'm contemplating buying either a vaio z(21) or a dell m1330. i would go for the obviously superior dell, but there are nifty details about the z that i could very much be persuaded to go for.

my greatest concern is whether unreal tournament 3 and games using the ut3 engine will run on the z (9300m gs, 256mb). i need around 30-60 fps on medium settings (ac plugged in). is it possible, or will i have to go with the dell? or should i wait a couple of months before a newer version is out (if there is one coming)?

thanks!

EDIT:
also, if someone could tell me the difference in battery life between the two at normal capacity (i.e., web browser, text processing) that would be swell.

and would it be possible to remove and replace the graphic card with a new one at a later point (such as a 9500m gs)?

 

And I think your the one who thought I might be serious when I was talking about taking my laptop to bed w/ me and rubbing up against it! LOL! I think you're the one who is sick!!