Official Vaio Pro 13 Owners Lounge (SVP13 2013)

I'm looking to upgrade my old Z11 (VPCZ11Z9E/B) to a lighter version. However, I've understood that the specs between Z2 and Vaio Pro aren't that amazing. How does this stand up between Z11 (running I7)? Is it worth it?

My Z11 is no longer as blazing fast as it once was. It is a workhorse with peculiar double graphics that caused more head-aches than anything. My concern is always forgetting the VGA dongle since it is no longer part of the computer...

The Vaio Pro is intended for presentations (heavy powerpoints of 500 slides or more) with animations that unfortunately drives the fan into hypermode and every time it takes quite a few seconds to start. It might be used for 3D tools that are mediocre and manages okayish on the Z1.

I am aware of the issues with WIFI but I have the option of returning it in case it is faulty on that part.

It might be a noob question - but being a fan of Sony Z series - how will this compete?

Many thanks

 

Thank you!

1) Well, actually I was hoping the answer was no. Unfortunately I'm really at the limit with the budget, so if I can save even €40 that would be fine.
However, the real question was more like: how many here, who chose the touch version, have also chosen the display protective cover? It is really that important or can I forbear it and save money?
2) Thanks for the info...it is as I imagined. So what would you recommend me, the 128 gb or 256gb? Probably I will use the ssd only for music and images (around 20gb) while videos on the external hdd
3) mmmh no, actually I meant to completely remove the recovery partition because I really don't need it, So basically, if I don't put it back in some way, my warranty is lost?


Just another thing...would you (all) recommend me the 256gb sata or pci-e ssd? (keep in mind that I will almost certainly install Linux as the primary and only OS)

 

Same boat here - trusty old Z11 received a cracked screen recently and the Pro 13 replaced it. Same usage patterns as you - well, 50 slides vs. 500, and it does really well. I don't see any huge performance advantage, or difference for that matter - it's all about the weight and size. I pack the Pro and VGA dongle in the Z11's old case, so don't really worry about leaving it behind.

 

Thanks so much for this advice. Worked a charm on an intractable problem.

 

Seems I mis - understood your question.
Protective Cover - i meant "sleeve" for the Laptop but i think you are referring to Screen protector which just covers the Screen & protects from scratches. Dont bother with Sony Screen protectors - heavily overpriced , any tech mall should have generic screen protectors for 13.3 or 14 inch screens & cost maximum 10USD. Am sure spending another 10 USD wont kill you , since ur spending 1200 plus $s for SVP this is pocket change.
SSD size- its a lot of money to spend for 256 , so may be buy 128 only & save the money. for all videos etc you can just use a tiny 32GB USB drive & should do the trick
Partition - Yes you can remove the partition BUT ensure you make a "back up recovery" before deleting the partion (you will need min 16GB Pen drive)
Hope it helps !

 

still have issues with bluetooth after restart.. i doesn't detect the microsoft generic driver instead it uses the bluetooth H2 driver which doesn't start properly.. i stll have to uninstall and scan for hardware changes to get the microsoft driver... any ideas?

 

Sorry, my fault. I said "protective cover" but in fact i meant the screen protector (anyway I'm also planning to buy a laptop cover, as you said it's really essential)
Thanks, then probably I will go for the 128gb version...unless it returns the promo that allows you to double the size of the SSD at no additional cost (now there's the promo on the ram, but who knows)

But sorry I still don't understand the last answer...for "backup recovery" you mean that -if I need technical assistance- I must put the recovery partition back in some way, right?


Again, thank you for spending your time answering me...your helped me a lot, now it's just a matter of days before I order :thumbsup:

 

When you uninstall the driver, you have to check the box "Delete the driver software for this device ". Otherwise, on restart it will find the latest driver available on your computer to put it back.

Anyway here is the link for the new driver for 8.1:
Sony eSupport - SVP132190S - Drivers & Software

 

I tried installing the driver you linked above on my Vaio pro 13 and I kept getting the following error:

 

New driver just posted for the pointer/trackpad

What does it fix?
This update replaces the preinstalled Windows 8 driver.

 

Okay still very upset about scratches on Silver Vaio Pro and also noticed the left corner of the touchpad gets stuck. How is Sony's warranty? Can they replace my unit? I've had it less than 2 months and already it has issues. MS Store refuses to refund my money.

 

they aren't going to refund/replace your laptop for scratches. that's wear and tear. they would probably just fix the touchpad and that's it. if you have ADH and you want a new one, go destroy it lol

 

ADH through Sony? What are the other alternatives? I was thinking Squaretrade.

 

"Back up Recovery" - what i meant is before you remove the recovery partition you must make a back up recovery in a USB drive. If your OS crashes or need to be re installed for whatever reason this USB will be the only way to get your OS back since you have deleted the "recovery partition" from your HDD and you do not have any DVD from Microsoft or Sony for the OS (like they used to supply along with laptop may be 5 years ago)
Hope i am clear now
Happy purchasing !

 

Honestly, I was just kidding. If it really bothers you, you should fix the touchpad under warranty, then sell it. Then go buy a new one.

BTW, if you didn't already buy ADH, I don't think you can buy it now after 2 months of ownership. Usually the deadline is 30-45 days.

 

I figured I'd chime in with my own experience on my Sony Vaio Pro 13. I recently picked this up, and immediately installed all of the known updates/drivers for the laptop right out of the box, after reading the numerous reports on this thread on the wifi issues. Well, for what it's worth, I have no weak signal issues on my laptop...I did encounter twice so far where I wake it from sleep and the network connection has to be disabled/re-enabled for it to work again, but as far as signal goes I am always full strength. I did several speed tests throughout the day at different parts of my home and they're all consistently high. I am not using any type of crazy wireless router, either. I just have an Apple Airport Express (new generation; mainly as it's quite small and doesn't take up much space).

I do, however, have some backlight bleeding on the right side, quite obvious on a black screen (I can even see it in the dark at the lowest possible screen brightness). Basically invisibly when anything is on-screen, as long as the colour isn't black.

Anyone else experience any bleed? I did see one post in this thread with some pictures on theirs which looked like mine, but I swear every IPS panel laptop I see all have this problem (I've personally seen six different laptops with IPS panels in the past two weeks, and each one had the issue to some degree). Anyone who can post a picture of theirs with a black screen/full brightness, I would appreciate it. I also have to deal with my Canadian multilingual keyboard (which is awful, as the backlighting doesn't light up the dual-purpose keys, so about 1/4 of my keyboard keys don't have any backlighting...which makes it look pretty tragic in the dark...welcome to Canada!).

A good place to test screen bleed is (and panel yellowing) is: Apple iMac (Fall 2009) Issues: How to Check Your iMac - click Test screen, check pixels, the 5th screen is black.

Thanks!

 

I have exactly the same, still not sure if I want to send it to Sony for this...as I don't have any of the other problems.

Having owned a Z11, Z21 and a Pro now the biggest difference conceptual between the Z and Pro is performance. Relative to their time, the Z was the lightest 13" on the market ánd one of the fastest laptops around, especially in the 13" class. This was due to full voltage CPU, RAID 0 SSD and GPU in a very compact package. The Pro has average specs, a CPU and SSD that compares to other competitors. Also, the screen of the Z was, back then, the best in it's class. Even though the screen of the Pro is better (IPS) the difference with competitors isn that big anymore, if any. Besides that the Z had some unique features like 3G and backlit keyboard. Most competitors have backlit keyboard also and 3G as an option is not there anymore. The PMD was a very unique solution too. So performance- and innovation-wise the Z was very ahead of it's competitors, no competitors offered something similar. The Pro excells at a few areas: weight/size and battery life and the optional sheet battery. It also has a full size HDMI port. Being a very good laptop (if you have one without quality control issues) it has nothing to do with the market that the Z was on, relative to it's time the Z would absolutely pound the the Pro into the ground. Itś very nice and I love the size and weight but compared to the competitors it has/will have (when other 13" Haswell laptops/ultrabooks are released) it's not that special anymore. The biggest advantage of it is the price, the Pro costs just 50 to 60% of the price of a Z.

Advantages of the current Pro vs the old Z: sound (biggest negative for the Z, very good for it's size on the Pro) weight, battery life, IPS screen and it will be faster; the big difference in age means the ULV CPU in the Pro will still be faster than the full voltage CPU in the Z11. But the Pro i7 is only nearly as fast as my Z21 i7, let alone the i7 quad core in the last SV-Z13.

In conclusion: the Pro is a very nice laptop but not the same concept as a Z and certainly no successor.

 

Ugh, so my pointer has disappeared. F1 tells me the device is on, as does the vaio control panel. Quite sure I have the newest driver. The combo of FN+F7 does nothing. I've tried disabling and enabling. Ideas? I want my mouse back!

 

ahhh I understand now, but trust me I will never need the recovery because I'm planning to install Linux as the only OS on the laptop. Anyway, in case I decide to keep Win8 I could even download the Win8 ISO image and burning it on dvd. If the problem of removing the recovery partition consisted only in that, then definitely it's not a worry to me
Thank you!

 

Guys, are there any issues after Windows 8.1 upgrade? Just got my replacement today.

 

No issues here. I upgraded last night.

 

none of those button combinations have anything to do with the mouse. F1 is for the touchpad, F7 is to switch between the internal/external displays. just try going into the mouse settings and change the cursor to something else and changing it back.

 

I meant touchpad--pointer/not mouse. As I said I tried all those things and it was a no-go. Re-installed the original driver and that did the trick (the newer one did not).

 

yes i deleted the driver already. i've also installed that driver in the link you provided but still getting the same issues. i also have 1 unknown device that is still unknown in the device manager..

 

I just wanted to update my own earlier post, in relation to backlight bleeding. I actually went out this morning and bought a second Sony Vaio Pro 13 from another retailer to compare the screen to see if mine was just an anomaly, and that one had far worse backlight bleeding, so, I guess it's normal after all. Also, Sony's recovery software to restore the OS/partition kinda sucks. It kept asking me to plug in the recovery media (I assume I have to create a piece of recovery media from the recovery partition itself? no idea).

I've also been testing my wifi performance around the house for several days now, and I do notice in one spot I am getting far less than other parts of the house, but this was always the case with my MacBook Air and Surface as well, so, no big surprise for me. I am loving this 1080p screen over the 13" MacBook Air I was using...it completely blows it away. Also 1920x1080 is far more workable (for my type of work) than 1440x900.

Another note of my testing. When I test my network performance right beside my wireless router, I'm geting 6-8MBps...but if I move 15ft away or further, I am getting 20-25Mbps...kind of strange, no? The further I am away the better it got...very odd.

 

Curiosity, the vaio pro you mentioned affected by the problem have touch or non-touch display?

 

Both units are touch displays.

 

Sometimes your BIOS may still contain old information resulting this issue. Let's do a Power reset (this may or may not work, but no harm done). I succeeded this once when my Bluetooth driver was unloaded by Windows and I couldn't get it back. After Power Reset, the driver came back on.

First you must know where your battery reset button is:


Now follow the steps here:
1. Shutdown Laptop
2. Unplug Power cord
3. Hit battery reset button once to turn off battery(use paper clip)
4. Press and hold Power button for 30secs.
5. shutdown Laptop
6. Hit Battery Reset button to turn battery back on
7. Plug in Power cord
8. Press Power button to power on Laptop
You may find your Bluetooth driver back in Device Manager.

If you find your Bluetooth mouse tends to disconnect every now and then, go to
Device Manager> Universal Serial Bus Controller> Generic USB Hub>Properties>“Power Management” tab and uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”. See if it helps.

As for your unknown device, you can always go to it's properties; "Details" tab; select "Device Instance ID" from drop down; copy the alphanumeric string and goolge it. You may be able to identify what it is, find an appropriate driver for it.

 

So, the holders of i5-4200U how they judge the autonomy with wi-fi on in normal use (web surfing, music, applications)? The effective battery life reaches or exceeds the one stated by sony (around 7-8)?

 

With batterycare at 80% I get around 5-6 hours with light usage. So I can imagine you will easily get till 7 hours with light load if the battery is 100%.

 

I can't download this update. It keeps failing.

 

I get around 8 -9 hours daily after a full charge to 80% (Vaio care) . mostly using office applications like Outlook, MS office (excel mostly around 5-6 files open ), + chrome open & always on WIFI. however hardly any videos or music being played . I think battery life extended a bit after 8.1 update .

 

I think I finally choose the config:

- Touchscreen display
- Intel Core i5-4200U
- 8gb ram
- SSD (sata) 128gb
- NO dongle, screen protective and so on

Total: ~ €1040 with coupon code included (7% off). What do you think?
As I said before, it's only a matter of days now.

Damn...that's a thing I forgot to ask. I don't think I will use Vaio Care also because if do install Linux as the only OS I could not use it.

In this case, how is it the battery life in terms of degradation? Would you think I'll risk something with or without Vaio Care in short times?

 

with the sheet battery or without ???

 

You can restrict the charging with Linux as well.
eg. echo 80 > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/ will restrict it to 80% charge

I've tried it and it works for me fine and remembers over a restart as well.

 

After reading about the successful 7260-AC upgrade, I went ahead and did my own as well.

The first thing I noticed is that one of the antenna connectors (which may be conductive at the ends) can easily come in contact with the screw holding down the wireless card - this could be the cause of some of the poor reception that people are getting. After upgrading the card I place a small piece of paper between the antenna wire and the screw so that there would not be accidental direct contact.

Also as a heads up, since I did not see this mentioned on the typical disassembly guide:
-The rubber pads are attached using double sided tape. You want to be careful so that this tape stays on the rubber pad(s) and not the case else it will block the screws.
-Be extra gentle when popping open the cover edges. I'm especially bad at this and at the end I found a very small piece of plastic that popped off one of the clips.

I also don't see any noticeable increase in signal strength or link speed. But I didn't have disconnect issues so this doesn't matter to me.

 

Hello all,

Has anybody else had issues installing the Intel Dual Band Wireless Update (version 15.5.1.6) through Vaio Update? I'm running Windows 8.1 x64 Pro and it keeps failing with the only error message being "software failed to install".

I'm running the latest BIOS as far as I know.

Thanks in advance!

 

I did have this problem since the Windows 8.1 release. I managed to download and install this driver manually. Installation was completed but under Device Manager, it still showed the older version of 16.1.5.2 while Vaio Update kept prompting me newer version of 16.5.1.6 was still available for update but update through Vaio update failed repeatly.. It was not until Windows Update showed up this driver last week as an optional update that I installed it successfully. Now Vaio Update no longer showing this driver update anymore.

 

I think you're being a bit too optimistic. Considering Battery Care 80% and a minimum of 5% battery left before the laptop shuts down this equates to 0,75 * 37,5 = 28,125wh to use.
In case of 8hrs: 28,125 / 8 = 3,5w power consumption
In case of 9hrs: 28,125 / 9 = 3,125w power consumption

I think we can both agree that the Pro is very energy efficient but that it does use more than that when doing anything with it, especially with wifi on.

 

mmmh...why is it so recommended to use vaio care? Actually I was thinking of removing all Sony software/bloatware and then use all 100% (or at least 90%) of the battery without wasting 20% which I find quite ridiculous unless it's proved to be really useful in terms of degradation of itself

Another thing. When (sooner or later) the battery will degrade losing power is there a way to replace it (maybe paying for it)? I can simply go to an authorized service center, or is there another way?


Thanks

 

All that vaio care does in this case is to set the max charging limit to either 80% or 50%. w/o vaio care i think battery will charge upto 100%. I haven't installed Linux or any other O/S so have no clue about it .
Note: Your config is pretty nice & 8GB RAM option is a wise selection. for SSD PCIE option (if available) is better ?

 

w/o sheet battery ! The current sheet battery design is a bit too ugly unlike the Vaio Z (Bulky , is not flat etc) & hence decided not to buy it

 

To be very candid, I wasn't very thorough or accurate in measuring the hours . it was just a casual calculation. It does run me from around 10.30 am to 8 pm or so on a single charge (of course including some nicotine breaks plus lunch break of 45 minutes etc) . My chrome however has "The Great Suspender" extension ON. so may be you can discount my numbers a bit if at all the measurement has to be scientific !!

 

Hi all ,
I just notice that my charger make buzzing noise while charging the battery and the computer is ON , (when plugged in and not charging there is no sound(when battery fully charger) . and no sound either when charging while the computer in sleep/shut down mode .)

Is there is anything that i should worry about ? is this normal ??
anyone with this problem?

 

Maybe bad caps.

I currently have both and would prefer the Pro sheet. Yes, battery design is far from optimal (to be exact, mounting has been designed by a monkey I think) BUT despite that it still won't be much thicker on it's thickest point than Z sheet and mostly be thinner. Also much lighter.

It is supposedly better for the battery not to charge it fully. Extends battery life. And I assume it is somehow replaceable, would be weird if the laptop must be disposed off when the battery is dead.

 

For those VAIO Pro 13 owners still experiencing the non-working display brilliance issue after resuming from sleep mode, as well as the display not turning back on after going into "display off" mode, I believe that Sony has finally provided the proper fix, especially for those of us operating in Windows 8.1. Today, I noticed a patch on the eSupport site under VAIO Care. When I saw the description I smiled (skeptically) and immediately downloaded the tiny (550K) patch. After applying the patch and restarting the PC, I am EXTREMELY HAPPY to report that my Pro 13 brilliance issues (all of them from what I can tell) are GONE! My PC (purchased in late September) never worked properly in any of these modes from the day I got it and nothing changed after upgrading to Win 8.1. This is the first time that I can say my new Pro 13 is working as I expect it to. I believe this has even fixed the issue of applying the "Open Lid" option found in the VAIO Control Center. Here is the text for the patch on the eSupport site. I won't provide a link, because I think it is specific to my model. However, head on over there, grab that patch and (hopefully) your problems will be solved!

UPDATE - VAIO Care Performance Patch
Release Date 11/05/2013 - Version 1.0.0.10300 File Size 553.08 KB
This utility installs the VAIO Care™ Performance Patch software to resolve an issue where the brightness cannot be adjusted after the computer resumes from sleep mode.

NOTE: I was also having Touchpad issues, where after a period of usage my cursor would want to always jump back to the upper right hand corner of the display, and I had to reboot to resolve. Sony's latest Touchpad Update (10/28 I believe) appears to have resolved that issue for me as well. If you haven't updated yet, I suggest you do so.

 

I updated my Vaio to Windows 8.1. In that process I had a few issues but was able to resolve most of them. The one issue I do have that I can't seem to resolve is that my HDMI output no longer has sound capabilities. Whenever I plug it in the only sound I get is coming directly from my Vaio and not from my TV/external output. I called Sony and they weren't much help. Does anyone else have this problem and/or does anyone have a fix for this?

 

I do have the same issue , some one suggested some solution few pages ago , i did apply that patch but havent had chance to connect to TV once again

 

I currently have both and would prefer the Pro sheet. Yes, battery design is far from optimal (to be exact, mounting has been designed by a monkey I think) BUT despite that it still won't be much thicker on it's thickest point than Z sheet and mostly be thinner. Also much lighter.

I some how cant digest the new sheet from an aesthetic point of view, its neither flush nor covers the whole base/bottom portion. If it was adding same thickness everywhere & covering the base completely might have bought it then. with current battery life i think is not exactly a necessity !!

 

It should have been flush, true. Completely covering the bottom is not possible with this weight; that would make the battery thinner than it can be produced currently.