Official VAIO Z Core 2 Duo Series Owners Thread

Has someone experienced freeze when shut down or sleep?
My z seems to have some issues with nvidia driver, on batterie the brightness go full and vista notice a that an nvidia driver stopped and had to stop him to prevent stabiliy issue.

But yesterday again i closed the lid, laptop went to sleep mode then after few minutes woke up (change to the green light). thought that i could put it to sleep again but the computer froze and have to do hardreset...
1 or 2 hardreset per week...too often i think

 

can any one explain this in laymans language that i can understand with pics, what will enabling this do to cpu performance??

 

It is all in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345282

 

Just wondering if anyone can tell me how is the quality of watching a Blu-Ray movie on the Sony Z? And how long is the battery life while watching a movie?

Thanks!!!

 

Phenomenal. It looks absolutely brilliant. I saw it on display at a sony store a few weeks ago. I wish I'd spent the extra dough and got a blu ray player (i watch movies on my Z fairly often).

 

Thanks Lt.Glare!

Any issues with watching your dvd on the Z? Read here some owners reduced the resolution to get a smooth viewing.

 

definitely not, this computer isn't the greatest gaming machine, but the nvidia GPU does do offloading from the processor. in other words, its smooth if you have it on speed mode for high def content. At least, that was the setting it was on on the demo I saw. Whether the intel GPU can pull off high def without choking is a different story.

Since it is offloading to the GPU, running a CD, and using a fair amount of processing power I would say the battery life DEFINTELY suffers. But again, I only saw a demo.

oh and running 720p youtube vids run great on the intel

 

I guess this isn't covered under warranty:
My sony z broke after a few months after use. It fell on the power button and the power button got jammed inside the shiny circular surface. I pulled it out and it damaged a button below.. ;-(

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16154&N=4294966502 Towards the middle.. The light is Green and is currently on... Does anyone know the part number for that and the part underneath the power button?

 

It's better than DVD, but not full 1080p quality -- the screen is only 900 pixels tall, and the image has to be scaled to fit, which introduces a certain amount of blurriness.
This can most easily be seen in menus and extra features (small text can be hard to read), while it's very hard to spot while actually watching a movie. Most Blu-Ray movies aren't in anywhere near high quality anyhow, so it isn't a great concern right now.
The colour saturation is exaggerated, which most people find a good thing. Unless you watch nature movies with the purpose of identifying birds by their plumage, I don't think it matters much either.
Sound -- use headphones, and you'll get excellent sound. The HD audio is far better than what you'll find in most notebooks, and even many DVD players.
The built-in speakers though... don't bother. The average mobile phone has better speakers.

 

Sorry but I must suggest this again -- get AnyDVD HD and a cheap desktop BD drive, and copy your BD movies onto your HDD. You'll save batt life plus a large bundle of $$ compared to Sony's massively overpriced BD drive.

 

I totally agree. Even slim external BDs powered by usb is very inexpensive these days. Im going with ssd than the BD when I get mine

 

I am getting a Z590 with a 128GB SSD. What size hard drive does the Z use? 1.8inch or 2.5inch? How easy it is to replace the hard drive (I am thinking about upgrading to a higher capacity drive when prices come down).

And what is the max RAM the Z590 supports? The spec says max is 4GB. I would like to upgrade to 8GB later on when the prices come down.

 

the Z use 2,5" HD. As for the RAM, at least 6GB is supported. 8GB is possible, but ...

 

All the talk of BD drives. you know that the one in the Z's are burners too. Then again i personally don't like burning/entrusting a solitary disk with 25-50gb of backup information (although it might be more reliable than a HDD) oh well.

 

I have thought long and hard about the BD on the Z. Yes it is a burner and I would love to have the BD and SSD combo but the cost just isn't justified.

The thing is, having a BD that can burn is great but who else would be able to read your burnt blu-ray discs? Not many, as most still have your standard DVD drives.

 

I totally agree with you, BD burning is pretty much only useful if your backing up huge amounts of data (and if u want ssd's you're probably getting the 256gb configuration so thats 1/5th of your drive space being backed up on a DL BD) To be completely honest, if it were me, i'd go for the 7200rpm 320gb standard drive, and simply upgrade to ssd's urself in the near future. Their prices are only dropping and speeds are getting faster, and lasting longer (more read writes).
And also just get the external bd drive if u really need one.

 

The primary problem with BD as a backup medium is the slowness. You can back up to a NAS in a fraction of the time.
Another problem is the fault rate. If 1 out of 10 BD disks are faulty, that's a lot -- when combined with the slowness, it may mean that after a backup has run for an hour, you get an error message about faulty media. Which quickly weans you off using BD for backup.

BD is good for many things, but backup isn't one of them.

 

Is it easy for an everyday person to replace HDs with SSDs in the future? Would you need to re-wire anything?

 

So how easy it is to replace the HD in the Z? And what about replacing the RAM?

Are there any online instructions?

I was browsing through the Sony webpage, it says the most recent Z's support a max of 8GB of RAM. So the older Z590 only supports a max of 6GB of RAM? What happens when you try to put in 8GB of RAM?

 

It's easy to some people, not for others. You need to disassembly the laptop in order to replace the HD. For the RAM, it's much easier, it's below the laptop.
Yes, there is a service manual, you just need to find it (somewhere in this forum).
There is no different between the Z5xx and the newer Z6xx and Z7xx. The question is not if the Z support it, but which RAM you have to put in. Try to search the forum, there is a topic about it.

 

Thanks. I am okay with minor disassembly work. But anything major would be beyond me. Let me search for that service manual.

2.5inch HD's are easier to find and cheaper than 1.8inch HD's.

 

How many HD's can you fit inside a Z590?

I read on the Sony website, it says that 2 SSD's can fit inside the Z. Is this true for the older Z590 as well? I have a hard time believing you can shove 2 2.5inch SSD's inside that chassis.

 

With this option no CD drive though

 

Mystery solved!

Is it possible to remove the DVD drive yourself to add a second HD?

 

Thanks arth1!

Does bring up a question. I was looking through Asus' website and they lists some laptops...15-16"...with blu-ray drives. The screen resolution is only 1366x??? (sorry, I don't remember the correct dimensions). But they say its capable of playing at 1080p. Is this only for the HDMI output?

Also, someone mentioned that its the software that would help enhance the blu-ray experience on a laptop. Is the one included with the Z sufficient, or is there a better player available?

 

Ya on the SR owners thread we just addressed this since both the Z and SR have stickers that say full 1080p on them. It's referring to the HDMI output.

1366x768 is 720p for televisions.

 

Hang on a sec. I clearly remember that sticker being there ONLY on the SR and NOT the Z. Wierd isnt it?

 

No, not having the sticker doesn't mean it can't do it.

 

In store i've seen random Z's with the sticker, and stony style representatives couldnt give me a straight answer why. Lol to unqualified workers.

 

Is upgrading to the Intel X-25M worth it?

 

All Z500 series all come with that "HDMI" sticker attached.
From the Z600 series onwards, they don't come with that sticker anymore.

 

Worth in terms of money? Not really.

Worth in terms of user-experience? For sure! It's going to make everything that much faster for you.

If money isn't a problem, I would say go for it!

 

Cost-cutting to the max! Hehe.

 

Hum... My Z690 didn't come with that sticker.

 

Of course, your Z690 didn't come with that sticker. Mine neither. They are part of the Z600 series.

 

Oh wow... I'm such a retard.... Sry for that dumb post. Just had a long day.

 

Nah, you're not a retard. We're all busy with our lives so sometimes all of us tend to misread stuff when we're in a hurry.

I've had my fair share of misreading stuff. My last misread here at NBR was a major embarrassment. I misread the Dell XPS M1530 as an Apple MBP & gave the wrong advise in its price check thread. I didn't even realize that & tried to correct others when in fact I'm the one who was wrong. It was a couple of days before I even realized my mistake. Luckily, I didn't cause any damage to the OP. That was embarrassing!

 

Does IRSP (International Repair Service Program) apply to the Z series?

Chatted with a chap (Arthur) from Sony support. He doesn't even know what IRSP is.

 

Sure you're Z will feel way faster than with a 7200 or 5400rpm hard drive.

Get Intel X-25M gen 2.

 

Hi all. I have some problems with my z790 and hope some people can help me out here.

My vaio crashed after I used it for only about a week unfortunately before I could create a recovery disc and Sony canada apparently can't even provide the recovery disc for me. So, I have to get everything for myself (since I'm outside of Canada right now and can't send it to the service center) and I can't seem to get the drivers to work properly.

My model name is VGN-Z790C with
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P9700 (2.80GHz)
500GB Hard Disk Drive
DVD +/- R DL / DVD +/- RW / DVD-RAM Drive
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
4GB DDR3-SDRAM (DDR3-1066, 2GBx2)

Would anyone tell me which drivers I should download? Because for some reason, for my Z790C, they only have drivers which are intended for Vista Buisness 64-bit.

Any help would be very appreciated. Please help..

 

Do you hav a faulty HDD or is it just your OS which crashed? If your HDD is ok then you just can recover Vista from the hidden recovery partition. Just press F10 during the Bios Screen and then you should see the recovery menu.

 

It was the recovery sector (or some sort) that was faulty, so I couldn't perform any recovery..

 

Hm - thats not good. If you had RTFM then you had burned these DVDs. Its the first step you have should performed after turing on the Laptop.

But it seems that your device is new so just return it to sony (or where you got it from) and claim that there something is wrong and hope they will recover everything.

 

I bought it from sony store online so I couldn't just return it (AND i engraved it.. ).. moreover I'm outside of Canada and don't really want to send it over yet. I'm telling myself that it cannot be some hardware problem so I'm trying to fix it myself and Sony support cannot be any useless.

 

Then just get a Vista DVD according to your Key at the bottom of your Z and install it. The drivers (at least for Vista) are all available from Sony Vaio Pages

 

Try the Sony USA site maybe?
I wish the best of luck to you.

Could you be more specific with your problems? We may be more helpful if you can provide us with more information.

 

I've got a VGN-Z555DN and I did the clean install, everything's fine but I can't seem to get the stamina/speed toggle to work, any tips? (I've used all the drivers posted on Sony's support site)

 

PORTABLEONE charging $822.90 to upgrade Z7xx = 8G RAM

http://portableone.com/config.asp?config_id=VGNZ790DAB

 

Thank you all for your kind replies. I actually managed to at least start using my laptop. But.. still, if I install few drivers like the intel chipset or the HDD drivers, my vista constantly freeze. Other than that, some very annoying thing is that I cannot get the Sony Utilities manager to work. When I try to install it, it says the version's not compatible with my vaio (I tried all the versions I could find). Any suggestions on how I can solve this would be very nice.
Thanks

 

Hello

Guys is it possible to upgrade my VGN-Z555DN to an 8GB of RAM?