Official VAIO Z Core 2 Duo Series Owners Thread

hey can you post pictures of the problem with the scratches? And should the rest of us keep the foam piece that it came with between the screen and they keyboard when closed?

 

I am not sure if it is really easy to scratch the screen on the top half as to me it looks like you need to put a lot of pressure on the lid while screen is closed to have those scratches appearing. How do you transport your laptop? Is it in a hard case or soft case?

 

Does anyone have any pictures of the Vaio Z optical drive after it was removed from the system? Or perhaps just some information about the size and interface? I've read 9.5mm and slimline SATA but wanted to double check. I may eventually want to pull the optical drive out and replace it with a optical bay hard drive caddy. Has anyone done this in the Z?

 

Believe me, it's easy. The screen/lid is not rigid, but flexes. Onto the ridge between the wrist rest and the keyboard tray proper. It doesn't take much force at all; simply the pressure of your fingers when carrying the computer is enough.

Even with a case, you have to make sure it's a case with no flex if you want to avoid this.
Else, place something soft between the keyboard and screen when you close it. (Newer Z models apparently come with a cloth for this purpose -- my Z590 didn't.)

 

Is your Z950 made with carbon?

 

That's what I did. Of course, I trimmed that foam sheet. It works just fine and so far, after about 2 months, no scratches.

Also, because I'm super paranoid and like to baby my $2K investment, I also installed one of those keyboard covers.

 

All of them are made with carbon.

"True" carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) have graphite "cloth" inside them, and have very high tensile strength and very low weight, but low rigidity (stiffness). Chopped CFRP epoxy mixes are weaker, but are still very light compared to the strength, and looks nice. Which is why it's a popular material for laptops.

My particular model is marketed as "premium carbon fiber", but the only difference is the brushed finish on the surface of the lid -- they're all made from the same epoxy with recycled chopped up CFRP mixed in.

So yes, it bends. It just won't break all that easily.

 

The cloth that's included with all newer Z, is it included for all Z6's? Also, do you think Sony added the cloth because of the number of people lodging complaints regarding the screen scratches. It appears that this scratch is in the same general area - between the trackpad and the space key.

 

What cloth? I did not receive any cloth in my Z690 package.

 

Cloth? Can anyone confirm they got one? I got a Z690 and did not.

 

No cloth came with my z690 last week... That's why I have my custom shaggymac .

 

lol... YES!, a cloth. Go back One Page to 803 and read arth1's last quote on that page.
You guys are funny.

 

No cloth came with mine either...Z590UAB

 

Has anyone else had backlight problems with their Z? I have a VGN-Z590U with the 13.3" 1600x900 screen, which is a wonderfully bright and sharp screen, except when the backlight cuts out. It's not a screen saver thing, in a dark room you can still see your programs running in a very faint patch in the middle of the screen, classic backlight inverter lockup.... my Vaio is 3 months old.

I put in a call to Sony tech support, described the situation, and the tech treated it like a software problem - I told them (truthfully) that I hadn't installed new software in over a month, but that didn't seem to change their opinion at all - I let them remote login and snoop around, they disabled a few autostart programs like Sun-Java and Google desktop, and asked if my screen was working now? Well, of course it is, it was working when I called, it only goes black occasionally, but when it goes black it stays black until I go through a power cycle, sleep mode is enough to get it to restart, but if you don't sleep long enough, it will go black again in a few moments.

The next time it went black (after the first service call) I called again and their suggestion was to wipe my hard drive and re-install windows, which met an emphatic NO from me, which got me escalated one rung up the tech support ladder (still pretty deep in the pit, apparently), to a man who insisted that we run the built in hardware check, which checks CPU and disk function, and since that check passed, he insisted that I don't have a hardware problem....

Private repair of backlight inverters only runs about $100 - so I'm wondering if I really want to mess around with Sony warranty support if they are so obtuse on the troubleshooting end.

Anyone have experiences to share?

Thanks,

 

Some people here have reported receiving a (microfiber?) cloth with their Zs. From what I can gather, all of these were newer purchases, but they might also have been from certain areas only.
Anyone who did receive one -- where did you order from, and when?

 

I placed my Z690 CTO order at the very beginning of May and noticed the same expired date range. But everything went through as expected and my first Sony financing bill showed a payment due of zero.

 

I bought mine (Z36) in Korea, end of March this year. The cloth even has the VAIO logo on it. The leaflet also explains that you can use the cloth to protect both the screen and keyboard.

 

The TZ I owned had this cloth. Black cloth with VAIO imprinted. Looks like this.

 

It sucks. Probably we, US customers, got screwed with this cloth freebie.

 

with the 1000$ saving you guys have over the uk, i think you can spring for a cloth or two

 

I ghot my Z like 3 weeks ago. NO cloth. Not sure why Id need one nayway

 

The cloth isn't a big deal. You can get a better one anywhere and they are inexpensive. But just as a test, I placed my keyboard cover/cloth partially over the keyboard and just past the touchpad. I still got the imprint. Luckily it rubs out easily with my cloth.

 

I bought a refurb'd Z540 that had this exact same problem. Full brightness worked fine until my retinas began to sear. When I toggled the brightness down one or two notches, the entire screen would go dark. In a completely dark room I could see faint light from the bottom 'flashlighting' up in vertical lines. The MFR date was 8-2008. I returned it. When I got the RMA the customer service rep said that she had a few Zs returned because of this, fresh out of the box.

Once the screen went dark, only rebooting would fix the problem. Full brightness worked fine - but was way too bright. Any toggling down immediately resulted in the backlight going out. After reading through most of this thread, it seems to be a rare occurrence with these machines. See if your backlight goes out when you adjust the brightness, and if it does, then you have a reproducible event to discuss with the techs.

 

65% through a clean windows 7 64-bit RC install on a 30gb OCZ SS drive (newegg sale). I'm willing to sacrafice space for speed, battery live, and theoretically more rugged data storage (I've had hdd's fail on every laptop I've ever had. . .I typically have them about 2-4 years).

I used the vaio z hard drive chage guide here along with the repair manual to get my machine apart and swap the drives. I will say that it is NOT for the faint of heart and I have been working with computers since the early 90's (not much laptop disassembly but some). The inside of this beast is a marvel, though. Thanks to everyone on this forum for helping so much with posts and discussions.

 

I installed a new OCZ Apex Series 250gb SSD. And reinstalled XP pro using the, installation disks (downgrade disks), on my z690. Everything works but performance is sketchy. Moments of brilliance but definite problems.

Anyone have ideas why and/or how to fix? Driver issues maybe?

Searched for but don't have any answers and frankly just am an idiot with too much money and a screw driver. Thanks for the help. z690, XP Pro SP3, 4gb, Intel 2.66ghz

 

Definitely not for the timid. The service manual was handy for locating the tiny slider under the battery. The file of interest is z_ms1d_1_10.pdf, "MS-1-D Main Section Disassembly." I skipped page 3. The slider is shown on page 6. Opening up the keyboard wasn't too bad after that. The trickiest part was removing the aluminum brackets around the drive itself, shown on page 11. They are easily bent and you can't really pry them, as you might break the plastic case in front or some functional part inside.

For reference, the hard drive swap guide (courtesy of IsamuX) is in post 891 of page 90 of this thread. The service manual link can be found with google or earlier in this thread.

For anyone else who has put an Intel X25-M into their Z, there's a firmware update that can improve long term performance. The procedure was fairly easy. I burned the ISO onto a DVD+R and I didn't lose any data. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=17485 .

 

The Apex (and other 'cheaper' SSDs) use a JMicron controller which has problems with lot of IOs (which cause stuttering and freezing):
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=17
I recommend reading the whole article if you are interested in SSD technology.

 

Define "performance is sketchy" and "definite problems".
There are known problems with most cheapish SSDs that use JMicron controllers (and I believe the Apex is one of them), in that they "freeze up" for a short while every now and then. See this article for more details and some background.

 

Check that about 64-bit. I discovered some work apps which don't play nice. Doh. Nuked the install and did 32-bit.

I'll second the Aluminum brackets on the hard drive being delicate! The whole procedure is best done when you have at least 2 hours to spare so you can take it very, very slow with another computer w/ the manuals, pictures, and google available.

OMG this SSD is fast (and yes I know it's not the fastest option out there ). I'm going to pick up a 16 or 32 GB SDHC for storing my music and other random "stuff" and just leave it in the slot.

 

hi,

One of the "detents" in my left mouse button broke a couple of days ago. For 90% of the time I use my bluetooth mouse, so it broke after around 20h of normal use. The button is loose but still respond when pressed.

But as I had a couple of months left on the warranty I called vaio-link for a pick up. I was sure this was a warranty type of failure...but I was wrong.

I got an email from the service center and they want to change the Button(TP)(If I checked the leaked service manual correct this is the part with the buttons and the touchpad), aswell as the whole "palmrest" and "Complete Powerboard"(?) for a cost of over €300 incl transport fees, all this for a broken detent...?

anyone familiar with argueing about the repair cost?, I feel that this service cost is crazy and I want it repaired within the warranty. My vaio z is full of problems; a broken pixel, the typical screen scratches from the spacebar and now this... great for a €2000 laptop

 

Did you align the partition(s)?

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48309

 

jammz, I second the partition alignment as the likely source of your problems.

 

Thanks, and yeah full bright is pretty bright, especially in a dim room, I'll often run at one step down from full, which might be the key to making it happen. It's been pretty rare for me, just a few times in the last 2 weeks and nothing before that, but my experience with these things is that they don't tend to get better with time...

I'd hope this problem would be rare among new notebooks - I won mine in an Intel contest and they bought it from a Circuit City in Colorado, the box looked new and sealed - no sign it is a refurb... but I guess it will be soon.

 

In regards to the Z series notebook -would requesting the "FRESH START" option cause me to lose anything relevant? I have my own Office 2007 and from what I can see, I don't use any of the other programs. But what would you say is the biggest downside of requesting fresh start on a custom configured Z ?

Thanks.

 

Biggest downside would be you have to pay $50 extra for the 32-bit Vista Business. I think way back when someone complained that the Fresh Start is still not as clean as a clean-install by yourself, but overall I don't think any body misses stuff like Sonic Stage.

 

Fresh Start was $0 when I bought mine.

It's still not entirely clean -- in addition to Sony's rather useless demos and utilities, it comes with stuff like Microsoft Works (my favourite oxymoron), an horribly out of date and insecure version of Adobe Reader, and crippled versions of Roxio Media Creator and Intervideo WinDVD.
I really wish they had dropped the crippleware, and instead packed ads in the box.

 

Hi guys!
Did anyone installed Hackintosh on our VAIOs? I've got z11XRN.
If anyone suceedeed, coud you gimme the link on related topics/forums?

 

Continuing with the intermittent backlight problems on my VGN-Z590U. The tip that partial brightness causes more frequent problems seems to be true, I'm only getting black screen once every couple of days, but partial brightness seems to make it come faster.

Third call to Sony Tech support was the charm - informing them that an external monitor still functioned seemed to be the key (I tried telling them that a faint image in the middle was still visible and I could see the applications changing the screen during the first two calls, but those tech support trolls seemed to be working for a bonus for not authorizing repairs...) Other keys included: no new software installed, problem comes when active or idle, no liquid or physical damage... I let them remote login and snoop the settings, as well as running the BIOS hardware check for them, would have been nice to avoid that wasted hour.

Onsite repair is included in my standard 12 month warranty, we'll see how that goes...

 

Hi there. A new owner of Z690 CTO here. Not new to laptops - it's my 8th at least (maybe 10th, I don't count anymore). And not my first Sony laptop either: I used to own a very old version with Neomagic graphics (if anyone remember those), I also owned some PCG series model with Jog-wheel (was it the only model with it?). I already downgraded to Windows XP (after running Vista for 3 days) although I use Vista x64 on my other laptop (15" ASUS). Replaced 160GB HD with 500GB HD from WD.
Love the screen, and for my use (Web graphics, programming, some 3D) 1440x900 is minimum resolution I would accept. So 1600x900 works wonderfully. Not worried about turned of virtualization - VitrualBox in Windows XP runs Ubuntu x86 server just fine without it.
I'll write a bit more about my experience with Z later.

 

I personally damn want a new geforce g 110m for the next z690 cto in the summer and a less ridiculous cpu price. It's a pity that a near perfect lappy like the Z have to stick with a 9300mgs while the Air even has a 9400

 

The backlight on my SZ270 was set to dim after a period of inactivity, but then it would stay at that level until a reboot no matter what I tried. It turned out to be an nVidia driver issue. The official Sony driver update that fixed this, however, seemed to be crippled (for whatever other reason) so I didn't bother with it. Instead, I turned off the automatic dim function and everything was fine (except that there's no longer any automatic dimming). Anyway, you might want to play with this.

Yes, that would be nice. Better yet, Sony, give us a new model with a 9400M and the same screen in an even sleeker body.

 

Hi everybody. Hopefully I will soon be a VAIO Z owner. I have a couple questions regarding the Z690 before I buy...

1) Does it have GPS? I've seen blurbs that it does, but there is nothing on the website about it.

2) What RAID modes does it support? I am interested in the 256GB SSD option.

3) Does the mobo only support 4GB of RAM? I may be interested in more later...

4) Would the weight still stay near 3.4lb if I buy CTO?

I'm leaning towards the premium carbon fiber, no blueray, 1600x900 option.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

OK I think I can answer a few of these myself. I read the user's manual for the Z690...

1) Yes, it is included w/ the Verizon WWAN card. Apparently the GPS module can be activated without activating WWAN.

2) Looks like it is set up for RAID 0 (striping). Nothing to indicate that another mode can be used. Still looking for confirmation on this...

3) Appears that 4GB is the max. Still looking for confirmation...

4) Apparently 3.4lb is the final answer, if using a standard battery.

 

i believe gps is determined by model and region.

isn't the 4gb cap another 'feature' of the crippled bios? sony please let arth1 write the next z bios!

 

Will update momentarily

 

People have gotten 6GB working, just not 8GB.

It was in another thread. Something to so with limitation in the voltage, it can deal with a 4gb stick + 2gb but not 4 + 4.

 

Every Z owner please see this thread I started regarding the "endless reboot problem" after first powering on the new system, windows updates, vaio update, who knows .... but .... ugh ....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4880643#post4880643

Any comments are welcome.

 

Ignoring the fact that 4gb is not the cap for a sec, you act as if all Sony limitations are due to incompetence and not deliberate strategies. You're wrong.

Any discussions of installing OS X on Windows platform computers are prohibited on these forums as far as I know, since it is deemed illegal.

 

I just finally made my decision and ordered the Z690 on Thursday. I've been researching and thinking for months looking through this forum. Here are the configurations:

VGNZ690-CTO

* Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz)
* 250GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
* LCD 13.1" (XBRITE-DuraView™)
* Premium Carbon Fiber
* Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
* 2GB DDR3-SDRAM (DDR3-1066, 2GBx1)

I am going to buy Crucial 2GB RAM. I thought it would be a smart decision to pay only $30 at crucial instead of $95 at Sony Style. I can't wait. It says estimated shipping date 6/29.

Doesn't Sony ship from San Diego? If so, the shipping wont take long since I live in the Bay.

Damn I love new electronics

 

Ive had the 590 since August or whever they started to take preorders. I have the same specs you have pretty much -- It still impresses. I cant beleive it sometimes

I just swapped out my 320gb drive for a 128gb SSD and this thing screams. I put Win7 RC on it and its a killer combo.

I can't believe this doesnt get more press than its getting. When the media talks about ultra portables they always talk about the Lenovo x400 and the macbook air. Those are garbage.

The Z is lighter, faster, has longer battery life and just looks dam good. The best thing is the screen, but also it doesnt have a wimpy ultra-low-voltage CPU like all other ultrportables.

No comparison

Why doesnt media give it more love? Its hard to even find a review. Is it Sony? They seem arrogant enough that they wouldnt even try to woo the media. Perhaps they dont care to send review samples? This was also the case when I had the SZ also... barely any reviews from anyone respectable. I just dont get it