Official VAIO Z Core 2 Duo Series Owners Thread

A couple of questions, 1. Can someone whom has never done a clean install really follow your directions without problems? 2. According, to what you posted above, in all sincerity, what's the purpose of doing a clean install, if one is unable to locate drivers? Wouldn't this be more problematic?

Yeahhhh!, It worked. Thanks. But you (lol) and TorontoGuy missed one step from the other posts. You needed to actually have me go to "Change Your Windows Password" after you go into "User Accounts". You guys left me stranded at "User Accounts" searching for the Turn On/Off thing. It's all cool, I'm glad it worked. Thanks again.

(lol) Yes, but after "User Accounts", I had to go to "Change Your Windows Password" to actually see it and make the necessary changes. I was looking for it in "User Accounts" and it wasn't there (it required one more step).

This is why I'm afraid to do a clean install, because there may be a step missing that might screw things up.

I think your a Unicorn with blonde-goldilocks that a carries around a magical crystal ball on your ankle.....

 

lol at GEEE. Does it really take THAT much to create a recovery disk!!!?? I thought it was a lot more simple, like a matter of putting the DVD cd in the drive, and hit record to start the backup in the backup recovery software.

 

Uh oh, someone's been fantasizing........

(P.S. Toronto Guy, beeee careful! its Geeeee) LOL

 

Creating a recover disk is very easy. A wizard takes you through the steps. It's a clean install without drivers is what I am worried about.

 

lol. What I want to do is create a recovery disk without all the bloatware they put in. So just simply Vista with all its drivers. Is that what the guide shows you in that link posted above???

 

Geee, check this thread out by Mega-Man it explains the process of clean install specific to Z very well and contains a thorough amount of links for all the Z's drivers + software

Link

 

Once you've made a clean install, you can make a recovery image with Acronis True Image. You can put the image on an external hard drive or on your second partition.

I have a fairly small C partition and can recover my system to a fresh clean install within 5 minutes.

 

Hi PhilFlow,

would "Fairly Small" be about 10Gb ?

 

Yea but if I make a clean install first, thats going to earase everything. Is it not? By the way, I don't intend keeping the OS that comes with the laptop (Vista Business in my case) I have my own copy of Vista Ultimate X64 and
X86 SP1, and that is what I am going to be putting. Just thought you all should know for my case. But I still want to create a recovery DVD cd cuz I am paying for it afterall.


(Note: I have an external 80gig HD)

 

20Gb at the moment.

You've paid for the license, it's on the bottom of the laptop. Whether you erase your disk or not.

 

Yea I know thats what I am saying. I am paying for it already, so might as well create a recovery disk for it. Im just gonna use Vista Ultimate X64 though.

So does anyone know if I can use the link posted above for creating a recovery cd where I choose to remove all of Sony's junk and just have the drrivers I need and of course Vista????

 

My guide covers all steps, and links to all drivers and utilities are given. Trust me, you could do it, if you could post and quote on a forum, you can follow my guide to the word.

 

I wish there was a guide like that for the SR

 

Thanks

+1

 

Hi, according to a french SONY reseller, the Z series will come with Blu-ray in November. I saw you returned your XPS 1330 4 times, you may know that dell will launch the Studio XPS 13....... with Blu-ray in November !!!
Coincidence ?

 

A few questions to Z users:
1. Could somebody confirm that virtualization is disabled? Will there be any possibility to turn it on somehow?
2. How is the idle noise compared to SZ2? Read somewhere SZ1&2 were particularly noisy and I happen to own one of them so that would be meaningful to me.
3. Is the power plug compatible with SZ's?
Thanks for all the answers and forgive me my English.

 

Virtualization is disabled. I can't figure out how to turn it on (there is no option in the BIOS) but I'm hoping it's possible.

 

There is a thread here on how to enable it on some Vaio models.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228&highlight=Vaio+SZ+Intel+VT

I don't know if the same process will work for the newer models but I'm sure someone will figure it out soon. Its really stupid for Sony to disable it but some other manufacturers do it as well.

 

That can't be right. The \ key should be next to the Z on UK models.

I really hope so Sony release Blueray Model in the UK\Europe. I'd place my order again, but lose out on the free extended waranty.

 

I really need my Z. Me and Z against the world. I mean, crap I hope my gut is right and I get a call tommorrow to pick it up. But then again, ill be at work. All I do is work man.

 

Hi this is a question for anyone who owns the Z-Series WITH Blu-Ray drive. Which Blu-Ray drive (manufacturer and model number) are Sony using in this system? This can be found out by going Device Manager then expanding the CD/DVD drives section (Right click on my computer, Select properties, Select 'Device Manager' Double click on 'CD/DVD Rom Drives')

Many thanks for your help!

 

Well, what I did with my SZ71 was to create additional partition (I always have 2 partitions), one for windows and all program/software installations and second one for my work (all files, presentations....). So I have downloaded all drivers from vaio.sony.co.uk or vaio.sony.de (they are all the same anyhow) put them on my second partition and do first partition full format and clean install. Whenever I need driver I just search them in Vaio Drivers folder on second partition. Couldn't be easier for me than this. I don't use recovery disk, while I have had FZ I have used few times Acronis True Image, but than I quit using it as my primary partition is about 20 GB. But what Phil said is also interesting (having another "backup" partition), I might try this with Z

Anyhow, with 2 partitions, you will never have problems with your drivers installation. I think it's pretty straightforward and easy to do.

BR
Miki

 

It is. I think the pic is an English/US keyboard. The UK supplied keyboards are AOK.

 

MAT****A BD-MLT UJ232AS

Edit: Haha, how idiotic of this forum to censor "offensive" words that are part of other words.

Anyway, that's M A T S H I T A

 

Thanks, that looks very promising. Hopefully we'll have a solution when more people have access to the machine.

 

Sonystyle.com (USA) messed up???

You cannot purchase Z series at the moment (Z590 CTO). At the 3rd page after customization instead of "Add to cart" you get "back order" button??? This goes if you select 2.53GHz option with Vista Business. Maybe it's temporary.

And how come you can choose 2,8 GHz with FW and SR but not with Z? Not interested in, just asking

BR
Miki

 

Quick question.

Does the Z actually have a built-in GPS like the MobileTechReview claims?

Thanks a lot!

 

I think it's a part of the Sprint WWAN card. It probably does their GPS-using-cell-towers trick, at least from what I've seen. There's an option to turn on GPS but it relies on the WWAN card being enabled. I could be wrong though.

 

lol check this video out. Its a white asian guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLzuN22Wae0

 

I did see it, Thanks, it's just that he addressed something about the process NOT including drivers.

Ok, So it includes links to drivers, but not how to install the drivers, which I'm sure is easy, right? It's just that in your link (see below), you said, "this guide not cover installing drivers and other things that you will need after Vista has been installed". This was my concern.

Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. I'm gonna try, maybe, next weekend. I hope I make it through. I didn't read through all of your directions (very long), but did you advice and show how to install it in a partition as some have suggested to do so that you don't need disks? Just curious, that's all.

 

The GPS is a part of the Sprint modem, which is fairly common on notebooks with integrated Sprint and Verizon EVDO modems.

Lisa from MobileTechReview

 

Umm installing drivers = you click link + download + run + installer installs the drivers (ala follow prompts on the screen)

I know in some instances you have to manually drag files to some directories and go to properties > update driver > locate yourself yada yada, but I am pretty sure Sony have advanced their driver installers, no?

 

I actually briefly mention partioning in my guide, but its not necessary, just follow the guide.

I'm assuming you know what device manager is, and in the guide, you just unzip all the drivers to 1 consolidated folder on the desktop, and you just point the uninstalled hardware to that folder and it will automatically install the drivers for you.

Another alternative is you can download each and every driver from the sonystyle website, since each of them is an .exe file, it'll just be like installing new programs. Its more cumbersome and time consuming, but the results will be the same. Just install the utilities in the guide in that order listed for full functionality after you're done with the drivers.

 

I'm a bit curious about this, too. There's GPS listed in the SmartWi gadget for the sidebar, but I couldn't get it to work. It's all grayed out in both the gadget and the settings, so I'm assuming it's not really there. Would have been nice if it was, would have been a nice surprise.

Lol. I used to work with several white folk who spoke fluent Japanese. The weirdest one was the coordinator, who could start translating the moment she heard the first sentence spoken. I don't know how she did that, but it was awesome.

Haha yeah, sorry about that. The confusion probably came in that User Accounts (and other Control Panel) items change their methods of doing things depending on whether you're in "Control Panel Home" (default) or "Classic View" mode. I had to go back and check, then I posted. Glad you got it working!

Edit:
Does anyone else's Z make a clicking sound when you press up against the area where the battery light is? That's currently the only problem I have as far as build quality goes. I don't press that area much, but it annoys the crap out of me when I'm searching for my SD card slot.

 

Hey guys, this might be a pretty helpful video for SSD vs HDD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjCmLJtITK4


Watch the whole thing.

 

Wow very nice video..

the only thing I am concerned about (And hope some experts can chime in is that some review sites are saying SSDs will go "bad" cause Vista isnt optimized for it - that Vista is too write-friendly = bad for SSDs life?

If I am shelling out 3k for the Z with SSD, I better expect it to last for atleast 4+ years lol (wishful thinking!!!!!!!)

 

I read somewhere that Microsoft understands that this is a problem and that a future update will have optimizations for SSDs. I'm not sure if Vista's SSD-unfriendly write habits are necessarily "bad" for them, I haven't heard anything about that, just that it won't be as fast as it could be.

SanDisk was apparently (one of the) first to bring this to light, as they'd mentioned their SSD drives were delayed because of Vista problems. More recently, early last month there was news that Samsung was working with Microsoft to improve SSD speeds in Windows OS.

 

Thats great news, thanks Tj! I hope the new Samsung ones in the Z maybe optimized a bit?

 

I wouldn't be too excited yet, the news that Samsung was working with MS on the subject was only recently announced (about a month ago), and it sounded more like the problem was on Microsoft's end of the spectrum. ie. Microsoft has to optimize Vista for SSD.

On the plus side, you can look forward to Vista running more smoothly once MS is able to put that together. I'm guessing here, but Vista on SSD will probably run much better than on HDD once that happens.

Here's one article about it:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscent...osoft_in_talks_to_speed_up_ssds_on_vista.html

 

I never got why there's always M A T S H I T A instead M A T S U S H I T A...anyway it means it's Panasonic as usual...I always found it interesting that Sony is using Panasonic drives...I was expecting that at least in case of Blu-Ray they'll develop their own drive...

btw...as it was asked already many times before...did you try to play some BR video already with that...how's the quality? And what about burning DVDs, what speed it can achieve? And is it capable to burn DL DVDs? Please write your experiences with the Blu-Ray drive in Z....

 

If you must know then the reason for this question is that using DDR2 over GDDR3 in video memory makes a difference on the bandwidth speed. On a 8400M GS with 64MB GDDR3 this equals according to GPU-z results 9.6GB/s of bandwidth while a 8400M GS with 128MB DDR2 has a theoretical bandwidth of 6.4GB/s. This might seems like just tech data but on GPU on a 64-bit bus this would cripple it even further. I tested both versions and found the GDDR3 version was faster (400mhz Memoy Clock versus 600Mhz).

This can make a light difference in not only games but 3D intensive programs like 3D Studio Max and Maya which I use for modeling, now every bit helps. I do low-ploy modeling and texturing as well which means i need to test in the real world game environment as well.

Now having something the size of Z to do portable 3D modeling is something quite remarkable. 3D modeling can quite stressful on the GPU as it needs to be rendered real-time to do the editing however I suspect the 9300M GS will handle this well as the 8400M GS was quite adequate.

I am actually a little insulted with the demeanor of your reply and i felt that you were implying that the Sony Z series should only be purchased by a select group of people, this is not so.

 

BR quality is smooth and excellent, but the included software (WinDVD BD for Vaio) sucks, and there is the "diagonal line interference" issue with the LCD I mentioned before. Read my previous post for more info on the BD experience.

Tomorrow, I'll try to play a BR disc in 1080p on my TV and report the results.

Yes, it does support DL writing, both BD and DVD. Here are the full specs on what it can read/write:

BD-R DL Read : 2x max
BD-R DL Write : 1x max
BD-R Read : 2x max
BD-R Write : 2x max
BD-RE DL Read : 2x max
BD-RE DL Write : 1x max
BD-RE Read : 2x max
BD-RE Write : 2x max
BD-ROM Read : 2x max
CD Read : 24x max
CD-R Write : 16x max
CD-RW Write : 10x max
DVD Read : 8x max
DVD+R DL Write : 4x max
DVD+R Write : 8x max
DVD+RW Write : 4x max
DVD-R DL Write : 4x max
DVD-R Write : 8x max
DVD-RAM Read : 5x max
DVD-RAM Write : 5x max
DVD-RW Write : 4x max

So far, I have only used the burner to make the recovery discs (2 DVD+R).

By the way, the drive is comparatively quiet to most DVD laptop drives I've used.

 

Phil, you are obviously very concious about HDD performance, which is why I'm surprised you have these partitions. Vista has a number of highly effective [1] speed-up features including SuperFetch: one of the things it does is to analyse the programs you use and your use habits over time. Eventually it moves data that you access most often onto the fastest part of the platter (the outer rim has the highest linear velocity and hence bits per sec) [2].

The point is, if you have your OS on a partition at one part of the platter and software or files on another, then there is no way that SuperFetch can properly optmise you HDD access times given the physical restriction. Chances are your (say) awesome 7k200 Hitachi drive will then be somewhat gimped.

Note that SuperFetch also preloads programs into RAM before you lauch them. So, say you open Firefox every day at 6pm to read NBR, Vista will have it in the RAM already at 5:59pm and it will lauch significantly faster.

Ref:
[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed,1532-6.html
[2] http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2110604,00.asp

Edit: I am, of course, assuming you are or will be using Vista.

 

Thank you a lot! I read your previous post but there weren't answers for what I needed...for instance you wrote that you had to change to the lower resolution to play DVDs properly in stamina mode...did you solve that problem....and in Speed mode is it OK?

And thank you one more time for writing down the specs of the drive...I would be just curious what's the technical reason that even burning of the DVD-R is so slow...probably because the drive is so slim? As for my work I need to burn quite a lot of DVDs, so that's why it concerns me...

 

Hey everybody (^:

I have a question. The Z series can be equipped with up to 4GB of RAM, does it come with a 32 bit or 64 bit OS?

 

I apologize if you took my post the wrong way, I can completely understand your reason for considering a Z for the kind of stuff you do because that's what I'm using it for. I certainly did not mean it's for a select group of people; if you meant it was for the "rich"... I had to use a loan to purchase mine.

I haven't had a chance to test anything DX10-related on it yet, but eventually I want to use it to display realtime DX10 models with full-resolution maps applied to them for full quality for demo purposes. I really hope it runs well...

I said what I said is because after having used it for a few days, I can already see this probably isn't the best machine for 3D work. While it can handle a lot of polygon crunching (I managed around 200 million polygons in XSI (wireframe) before I tried to go to 270 million and it crashed), it's a relatively expensive machine and there are cheaper computers out there that can do better, though they're larger. I suppose you could say it is for a select group of people: those who are looking for an extremely mobile machine with an amazing amount of power for its size.

Because you were asking whether it had DDR2 or DDR3 I figured you might be a gamer who's looking for as much speed out of a machine as possible, and hence the reason for my asking if you were looking for a gaming machine.

Anyway, I did some research regarding DDR2 and DDR3 in terms of maybe trying to decipher what kind of RAM this thing is using, but I couldn't find anything worthy of noting. The strange thing is, none of the other utilities I tried that were supposed to list video memory type could find what it was, but at least GPU-Z could see that the Intel chip had 64MB of DDR2 memory. Perhaps the way the Z is built current utilities are not capable of seeing the memory the NVIDIA chip is using, but is capable of seeing what the Intel chip has.

 

I'm assuming that the Blu-Ray Drive is a 9mm drive height and not the 12.7mm? Can someone confirm this? Many thanks!

 

Tj did you run GPU-Z in Speed mode?

(probably, but just checking!)

 

Sure did! Actually, I tried it both ways, and in Stamina mode the 9300 doesn't even show up. It almost seems like the 9300 gets switched on in Speed mode, and the video output from it is just fed through the Intel chip before it's displayed. I really don't know how the tech works, but it sure feels like that's what it's doing.

Random tip from a friend who just found it:
In Vista, you can change the size of icons on the desktop, and change the view mode in folder views by holding Ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel up or down. Awesome fun!

 

=Tj-

Control/Shift and either (+) or (-) will also move the screen size up or down.