Official Vaio Pro 13 Owners Lounge (SVP13 2013)

Now you're totally making me blush

Here in the US I have not seen the non-touchscreen version in person. I'm sure the non-US folks will be able to chime in when they get theirs or see them in stores. Sony didn't have the slice battery available for review (I'm not sure it's shipping just yet here in the US). From their press images it looks like a full sheet, which is typical for Sony's slice batteries.

 

Also anyone who is looking to buy their Pro who hasn't yet. I ordered mine off of the student store which has a 10% discount. There was nothing there to made me prove to be a student so it seemed like a free 10% off for me.

 

Laurent, how many neighbor wireless ID you could see now?
You may have to find what channels they are using and select either 1, 6 or 11 to avoid interference.
Your wireless router may have site survey feature which allows you to see neighbor channels and MAC addresses.

 

This post is for new Sony Pro 13 owners who may find a few things frustrating. To the Sony veterans, this may be known information but it wasn't to me and perhaps it'll be of some use to other Vaio newbs:

The Fading Backlight

The first thing I noticed is that despite turning the Sony Vaio Control Center's "auto backlight" feature to "off", the screen would strangely start to fade out and then fade back in depending on how white/bright my screen was. After much digging, the solution to this issue is the Intel HD Display software, go to the Intel Display tray icon and launch the app. Then go to Power > On Battery > and turn Display Saving Technology to "off".

The Dropping Bluetooth Mouse

Like many, I want a Bluetooth mouse so as to save a USB port from having a dongle in it, just want to use the built-in BT transmitter. When using the popular Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse 5000 you'll find that it'll mysteriously drop its connection for no reason. The solution to this is to go to Device Manager > Bluetooth > Intel Wireless 4.0 Adapter > Properties > Power Management and uncheck the box that says "allow this computer to turn off this device to save power".

The Tiny Firefox

The resolution on the Pro 13 makes the screen look killer, but Firefox doesn't like it and makes it practically unusable. There is a two-step process to solve this. First, go to Search > Settings > "Larger Fonts" and under 'Make text and other items larger and smaller" change the default to 150%. That'll help. Next, go to the Firefox add-on store and download the add-on called Default Full Zoom Level. In the add-on's settings, make sure the default is set to 133%. Then only check the following boxes: Auto Fit to Window Width, Force Fit to Window Width, and Reserve Sidebar Width. That will once again make Firefox look normal.

BJ

 

Life-saving tip. :thumbsup:

 

I just wanted to add this to the thread seeing as I haven't seen many good pictures of the sheet battery


It seems it follows the design of the Duo 11 sheet battery instead of something like the Vaio S or Z. I think I would prefer the latter design, but we will have to see how it performs in terms of ergonomics.

 

I have placed an order on non touch screen, i will post some photos, but it is expected to arrive on 3 july

 

I'm thinking of getting one of these. However, I've heard some conflicting reports on build quality. Some reviews claim it is flimsy while others say it is supposed to flex? Can someone give more insight into its durability?

 

Depends on whether you belive what Sony says. They say it's meant to bend without breaking. But only time will tell if what they claim is true.

 

Flexibility is a key principle in engineering all sorts of things - the bend-but-not-break principle is sound. However, being designed to flex under normal use is one thing, while things like shock impact are another thing entirely. I suspect the flexibility of the Pro allows it to be so thin and light when used properly, but it's probably not a very durable laptop if it's going to be banging around in a backpack all the time.

 

The pro 11 and 13 were added to the sony canada site as ready to order models but not CTO unfortunately. 13 is in stock, but the 11 is on pre order for now. It seems there is no duo 13 just yet. Hopefully they will add a CTO option soon.

 

Thanks for the response.

I have now tried with 6 routers/APs in 2 different locations using inSSIDer and other survey tools to try different channels, 2.4 vs 5G... and it's pretty bad across the range. For some routers, it's downright unusable (like that pro D-Link I was mentioning earlier). For some, it's ok (like the Asus RT-N66U) although always worse than my Galaxy SIII (!) and much worse than my Dell Precision.

If the other Pro 13 wasn't showing the same symptoms, I would have thought it's a defective unit, but two seems less plausible, so I was wondering if anybody else had the same issues (i.e. it is pervasive for that model).

Laurent

 

Saw that. Unfortunately its the bilingual keyboard and I doubt they'll get the non touch 11.

 

anyone ordered the sheet battery for the pro 13? I'm wondering what's the weight of it.

 

I ordered the sheet battery last week, but I don't think they have shipped it yet.
The website shows "Estimated ship date: 06/21/2013". I'll be happy to report when I get mine.

Laurent

 

Hi

I'm from Singapore. As we will only get the Pro 13 on end June 2013 and the Pro 11 on Mid July 2013.

I'm lost to get the 13 or 11. But i like to confirm. the SSD on the 11 and 13 are they the same? 13 is using the PCIe connector so its faster? Or both are on PCie?

Can someone confirm?

Thank you.

 

When I was using my Vaio SZ (clearly a few years old), it had a carbon fibre lid. I was using it on a plane. The guy in front of me reclined his seat quickly. The lid bent and the screen inside broke, but it went right back to shape. I had ADH on my warranty, so Sony replaced the cracked screen. So I can tell you that having a flexible lid is a good thing.

 

The Pro13 does flex. It's not too bad. It's so light that even carrying it by a corner, it feels fairly solid. The only obvious flex in normal use is that the middle part of the keyboard sinks a bit when typing. Not a big deal IMHO.

Laurent

 

I think I read that the Pro 11 doesn't use the PCie interface and hence has slower SSD speeds. Can't remember where exactly I read that and hence can't fully confirm it, though. Irrespective of that, the Pro 11 does seems to come with a few downsides:

Sony Vaio Pro 13 vs Sony Vaio Pro 11 comparison - YouTube

Pro 11 tops out at less RAM (4GB), runs shorter (smaller battery), hotter and louder (smaller heat sink), and has a less comfortable keyboard size. I guess the message is: If don't necessarily need the smallest and lightest device to carry around with you, rather go for the Pro 13.

 

As the Vaio Pro 13 does not have a user replaceable battery, does Sony provide such a service for when the battery inevitably dies or loses charge? I've googled and gone on their support site but can't find anything..

edit: I am aware of the sheet battery which I take acts independently from the internal battery?

 

Laurent,

I saw your posts for a while and generally had nothing to say since I didn't have any problems connecting to my g network at home. However recently the internet has bee literally on off for me.
At first I thought it was a problem with their network but I remembered seeing your post about the problem. Did you ever end up finding a solution? You said upgrading the drivers helped?

 

I am not sure I am happy, but I did three things that made things better:
* I updated the wifi drivers to the recently released Intel drivers. According to inSSIDer, this made the connections much more reliable. I'd recommend doing it and I haven't seen a downside. For reference, Intel has a small driver that's wifi only. The big driver also updates the couple of useless tools, bluetooth and Wi-Di but doesn't add any crud, so I'd recommend going for that one.
* I finally managed to convince my sysadmin to allow me to update the firmware of the biggest offender wifi AP (the pro PoE D-Link I mentioned) and that made things definitely better.
* On my corporate network, which is WPA2/Enterprise with a Radius server, I also noticed that the w8 wifi would disconnect me and ask me for my credentials often. Even after the AP firmware update, this happened. I found that disabling the "Enable Fast Reconnect" option in the Wifi Status / Wireless Properties / Security / Settings did the trick. Now, even when it disconnects briefly, it manages to reconnect reliably. I am not sure if that's related to any other issue. I only have one corporate network to play with so it's hard to compare and root cause.

Now, I am in a position where the data rates and connection quality are not great (still worse than my cell phone across APs), but it is livable and connections don't just drop forever.

I hope this helps.

Laurent

 

While I am at it and chasing issues with the new toy, I have 2 other things to report:

* I have seen issues with video decode on some home-made videos that play well on other platforms. The video starts stuttering at about 1 frame per second. Before I did a full reinstall trying to chase the wifi issues, I updated the graphics driver to Intel's newest ones and it seemed to have made a difference. Not entirely unexpected for such a new platform.

* My fan kicks in way too early and turns out to be quite noisy. After a bit of debugging, I found out that the fan kicks in loudly when the CPU temp reaches 50C, and at near-idle, this is where the temperature hovers. However, I seem to have a potentially hardware issue on the CPU as the core 0 temp is always 5-7C higher than core 1 temp, even at full idle, so that it never really goes below 50C under normal use and the fan keeps spinning. I checked on the other Pro 13 we have and it's not the case - the temps are uniformly lower (as low as CPU core 1 on my machine). Looks like a potential CPU temp sensor calibration issue. I'll keep looking at it but may end up calling support on that as I am not sure any sw can work around this. I used RealTemp 3.70 to do the temp monitoring.

Laurent

 

FIRST LOOK: VAIO Pro | Carbon Fibre - YouTube

Doesn't look too hard to get the bottom off? Screws beneath the rubber feet near the hinge - can anyone see RAM sticks/SSD access in that video if just the bottom casing were removed?

 

Laurent and other new owners. On my machine Vaio Update doesn't find any updates (in fact it fails to connect to Sony's server and then throws up a web page with a 403 forbidden error). But there are a boatload of driver updates on Sony''s website, including Intel HD graphics that fixes the display brightness bouncing back and forth seemingly randomly when Intel graphics power savings is turned on (which is is by default). There are a variety of Intel platform updates, though none for WiFi as of yet.

 

Lisa, the Sony web site has a bunch of downloads at the link below - for my model at least. However, if you click on "Show me updates only", you'll find there is just one new download (VAIO Care troubleshooter). The rest is supposedly just the same as what we have pre-installed. I don't see the GPU driver you mention (although I know the annoying brightness bouncing issue...).

Sony eSupport - SVP13215PXB - Support

The VAIO update program does throw an error, but if you reclick on the two categories (Check for Update / Important Info), it does reload and finds nothing

Other than that, there are newer versions of the Wifi/Widi/Bluetooth and GPU drivers from Intel. The Intel driver updater doesn't find the wifi driver (probably too new to be in the database) and complains that the installed GPU driver is a customized version and doesn't want to install the new one. My experience is that the wifi driver works fine and is a great update and that the GPU driver seems to work (not a lot of testing there).
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3716&DwnldID=22874
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=22842

Laurent

 

My model is SVP13213CXB, and there are 8 or 10 updated drivers. As you mentioned, they're more easily waded through using Sony's "show me only updated" feature.

 

Lucky you! I am not sure why those are not available for my SKU As the only difference seems to be CPU and SSD size. The HD Graphics drivers have the same version number as the drivers on Intel's website (link in my previous post). Not sure why the wireless drivers are not available.

Sony eSupport - SVP13213CXB - Support

Laurent

 

not comfortable with 4G ram, currently using 6G ram old Z, do not like downgrade.

Any guys are running photo shop 6, lightroom 4 and perfect photo suite 7 on the 4G machine? how is it?
Is Intel HD4400 GPU using shared memory or dedicate memory? how many M?

 

Who expects to do serious photo editing on a 13" screen anyway?

 

Hey Guys,

Wow! Haven't been in the Sony forum for a while. So Sony did eventually came out with a Z replacement - somewhat of a replacement I guess.

I'm not too familiar with Ultrabooks, but can someone tell me what the performance would be like with the Pro 13 Series with Haswell i7 4500u compared to the former SVZ with i7? Would it be comparable or better? Thanks.

 

Thanks to everyone who contributed information to this thread, it's answered a lot of questions I had.

I am wondering if anyone has any experience running Linux on this laptop, and what the current state of the drivers are? I'm mostly worried about trackpad issues - does anyone know the exact model used?

Someone asked a few pages back if the storage is soft-raid - I would also like to know about this if someone has the info.

Perhaps someone has tested a live image of ubuntu/mint etc - how is the experience out of the box?

Many thanks in advance.

 

video comparison (by lisa from Mobiletechreview) of Sony Vaio pro 13 vs mac book air 2013 haswell

Mid-2013 Apple MacBook Air 13" vs. Sony VAIO Pro 13 Haswell Ultrabook Comparison Smackdown - YouTube

 

Hey guys,

Looks like Conics.net now has the Pro 11 and 13 up for order. They have the non-touch version available!

Has anyone ever ordered from them before?

 

Has anyone gotten the NFC to work?

I'm trying to connect with my Samsung Galaxy S4 to transfer a photo. With S Beam turned on on the phone I do get the option to transfer the file but a message pops up saying that the receiver doesn't support transfer of large files. The same happens on my Galaxy Nexus.

Is this NFC feature only supposed to work for connecting headsets etc.?

 

I've ordered 3 or 4 computers from COnics. They're great.

 

edit: the conics info has been posted above already

 

Sony has three updates relating to NFC on their site. It might help.

 

Is it possible to watch Netflix Super HD (browser and W8 app) with PRO 13 core-i5? My current Samsung (i5-3317U&HD4000) doesn't play Super HD properly and it can't be watched.

 

What is your Internet speed?

Sent from my LT30at using Tapatalk 2

 

I got to see the Pro 13 at Sonystyle. Wow! Amazing! The design is svelte. I like the Silver over the Black. I took a few photos. I noticed they did away with the memory stick slot. I'm still curious how Haswell i7 4500u compares to Sandy Bridge i7 on the SVZ. Anyone know?

It seems the Duo 13 is the Z replacement and is not considered an ultra book.

 

Just took the first business trip with the Pro 13, a few things of note:

1. The thing is really light. So light that when I picked up my backpack to head off to meetings I thought there was no way the Vaio was in there because the backpack was so underweight. It's weight its unquestionably its best feature.

2. The battery life is off the charts. Started my day at 10AM with 100% battery. Had the Pro up and running until 5PM with the backlight on the whole time, Word and wi-fi on the whole time, mouse running on Bluetooth the whole time. By 5PM I still had 4 hours and 39 minutes remaining. Completely shocking how this battery can last a full workday and then some.

3. The lack of an Ethernet port is a downer, but I just bought a USB-to-Ethernet adapter from Monoprice that will solve that issue.

Next up, the big trip to Asia which commences on Sunday.

BJ

 

Hey BJ, thanks for quick "review" so far! What do you think of the keyboard and the touchpad?

And also, FenderP, thanks for the recommendation for Conics. Pretty sure I'll be ordering the Pro 11 non-touch from them shortly.

 

The first two are what would ultimately make me consider the 13 on some level since I do a lot of travel and I need lightweight and good battery life. As you say, the ethernet thing is solvable. So is VGA. But it does suck to have to carry extra stuff. I've got a Lenovo X230 on the way. Not sure it'll make the cut, but it's got everything on paper ...

Since I do fly to places like Asia and Australia, your findings will be most interesting

 

The keyboard is great, truly is. It's not hard and not soft. Literally, just right. And it's full-sized too, it was not compromised to hit a weight or size limit.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10311&cs_id=1031102&p_id=9468&seq=1&format=2

Just connected this $13 Monoprice USB to Ethernet Adapter, didn't even need drivers installed, works right out of the box. I called Sony about the wireless ethernet dongle, its not out in the US yet, it is overseas, looks to be $100 which is crazy, so this Monoprice puppy will do me just fine.

The battery life is sick. It would have lasted me around 15 consecutive hours with the screen fully-lit and the mouse on Bluetooth and connected to wi-fi and Word and Outlook running the whole time had I worked that long.

BJ

 

There are other USB to ethernet adapters. The whole WiFi to Ethernet thing on the AC adapter is gimmicky anyway. I'd rather have full ethernet bandwidth anyway.

So you got that battery life without altering screen brightness, etc.?

 

The battery life was achieved using the "Balanced" power plan with tweaks (backlight never dims, PC never sleeps), the brightness was set to 50%, and the Vaio Control Center's light sensor setting to "automatic". Wi-fi on, Bluetooth on. Touchpad on (though I don't use it) and Touch Screen on (though I don't use it).

I was at a meeting taking notes in Word every, say, 10 minutes. Just a quick bullet point. The rest of the time the Vaio was sitting idle, connected to wi-fi and Bluetooth, the screen never dimming, the PC never sleeping, no screen saver, Outlook checking for mail on whatever the default time lapse is. So the fan never spun up, the computer was under no strain, just a few typed words or a hit to a website or a send/receive to an email here and there for 7 hours and then I had another 5-ish still on the meter.

What's happening now is a very strange sensation. Where I always had to fear running out of battery halfway through a business day, always had to have the power supply and/or connect it to power always just to be safe, now I treat my notebook like an iPad. Charge it up overnight, leave the power cord home, and still make it to bed with a few percentages on the meter left. It's really an amazing paradigm change to how one interacts with a notebook.

BJ

 

Awesome awesome!

Has anyone re-installed this beauty with Windows 7? That'll likely be the first thing I do with it.

Just ordered from Conics, btw. 11 Pro, non-touch, with sheet battery. Should be here within a couple of weeks. Will post some photos when I get mine!

Excited!! No more 5+ lb, 1.5" thick, 6-year-old laptop to lug around with me.

 

I am also considering downgrading to Windows 7. But, wouldn't the touchscreen be wasted?

 

What I've learned is that Windows 8 is Windows 7 with the exception of having to hit the Windows key instead of the Start button.

It's very easy to run Windows 8 and feel like you're running Windows 7. And there are a few cool things about Windows 8 that make it easier to get to settings and functions too. Give it a week, you'll be comfortable with Windows 8.

BJ