Sony SE Owners' Thread

Hi all,

Looking to buy the VPCSE190S. Can anyone tell me what kind of battery life should I be expecting? Or should I post somewhere else?

Thanks

 

I'm sorry, I do not quite get your first question. Maybe if you posted in French (and I try to translate, haha.). But I'll guess you say that if the processor has an impact on performance. On day to day tasks (web browsing, word processing), you cannot really tell the difference. But on Photoshop, AutoCAD, video games, maybe. There's really not much of a difference, the i7 and i5 are both dual core with 4 threads, only the i7 has higher stock frequency.

The choice of hard disk does not impact the fan speed. In fact, the hard drive is separate from the heatsink.

You should get about 4-5 hours of battery life when on Stamina mode.

 

No show stoppers, but some annoyances. The biggest issue is of course the graphics. There currently is no support for muxless graphics switching in linux. You'll only get support for the Intel graphics for now.

Under 3.1 I had some issues with iwlagn (Intel wifi driver). I'd periodically have to reload it after wireless would stop working. The problem didn't exist under 3.0. I'm currently testing out 3.2-rc2, so we'll see how that goes.

The unigine heaven benchmark causes the graphics to die under 3.1, again, I'll test with 3.2-rc2.

 

Thank you for your answers... I'll take a 7200 HD...

In French :
Est-ce que le choix du processeur a un impact sur l'autonomie du portable ? Sachant qu'ils ont le même TDP, je suppose que non, mais sait-on jamais...

In bad English :
My first question was about the impact of the processor on the battery life (even if they have the same TDP...).

 

About the graphics, I don't mind. I will only use the Intel card.
The AMD card is totally deactivated in Stamina mode ?

About Wifi, I hope it will be fixed.

Thank you very much for your answers ! I will be able to install Debian on this notebook

 

Maybe this is just me but is the space-bar supposed to be backlit? I took the key off and there is no light emanating. Did break my space bar already? lol

 

I don't think so... mine's not lit. It makes sense because:

1. It's the biggest key.
2. There are no letter/symbols/numbers on it for the light to shine through.
3. Cost savings not having to put another LED for it (seems like all the keys are separately lit).

 

The switch has no effect on the graphics cards. You have to use vgaswitcheroo to power off the AMD card.

 

That had crossed my mind as well, but I got concerned when I took the key off and there is one LED lit under it but it's under the right plastic anchor, kinda odd

 

I doubt there is an LED under every key. The usually have a small number of LEDs, and then a layer of diffusion plastic between reflective layers. The top reflective layer then has a number of holes that let light through.

MBP Keyboard Assembly: Backlight illumination with FTIR Apple Johannes Luderschmidt's Blog

^ Cool project. Although a cooler project would be to replace the white LEDs with controllable tri-color LEDs.

 

Anyone know easiest way to stop mouse studder when running tasking programs? My first issue, day 2. I was thinking more RAM? Have 4GB right now.

 

The battery life will be somewhat impacted, because the i7s are usually have higher frequency. Je peux comprendre votre français, depuis que j'ai appris à l'école au Canada.

Also, if you go with a 7200rpm HD, you will lose a little bit of battery life (around 15-30 minutes) compared to 5400rpm HD. I am doing fine with 5400rpm HD, but it's your choice.

I also noticed about the lack of backlighting on the space key. Thought it was abnormal, but... okay. It's not necessary anyway.

EDIT: @byers85 Are you using the touchpad or an external mouse? Did you reinstall the mouse drivers (and Synaptics touchpad)? Maybe that's why it was open box.
4GB is enough for me for now, but if you want go ahead and add up to 4GB, DDR3 RAM is cheap these days.

 

If you're running full throttle on something like rendering images on a highly threaded app like Photoshop there will be a bit more power consumption since the i7 runs has higher base and turbo frequencies. However for normal operation with nominal workloads the turbo functionality manages the cores dynamically to maximize performance and power efficiency. Also, the i7 will get tasks done sooner so I think in most scenarios the power consumption is not much different between the i5 & i7.

A 4GB stick of RAM is like $20, so why not upgrade. If you're a regular multitasker and have several browser windows and a few office apps, etc, it's very easy to eat up 4GB and then the system will bog down once it starts swapping data on the HD.

 

I'm a new owner of Sony Vaio SE i7, 6630M! I put a Crucial M4 128GB on it, original HDD to a caddy, fresh install Win7 and everything is perfect! I'm very very happy with it!

Anyone already removed the stickers of it? Any kind of special care with this operation? I don't want to screw up the palm rest...

 

No issues removing them by hand.

 

bump bump ...

 

Memory should be put in, in matching pairs, right? Or is that a myth? Putting another 4GB stick in a different brand wont be a bad thing?

 

To Windom: please look carefully, I had replied to you already.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...se-owners-thread-post8099344.html#post8099344


@byers85:
Well, since this notebook has 4GB of onboard memory, it's very hard to find the exact stick that matches with the one that is soldered in. So you really have no choice for brand. But spec-wise, it should be exact. DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24 in this case.

How's the mouse stuttering problem going? Did you fix it?

 

Whoops, sorry, missed that page. Is the Stamina mode the energy saving mode? What if I just use the default mode for school work and other internet browsing activities, how long can I expect it to last? Canadian webpage doesn't give me anything specific but the US website page give me 6 hrs of usage on default but of course it'll always be less. Thanks

 

Yes, the Stamina mode is the energy-saving mode. The Speed mode is best reserved for video gaming, AutoCAD, Photoshop when plugged in without the battery.

I have not tried Speed mode on battery, but it could be 2-3 hours maximum.

My computer is a Canadian CTO model but came with US keyboard (no bilingual goodness).

 

More RAM with only help you if you're filling it up

Peeled with a finger nail then rubbed with an alcohol wipe to get residue off

 

I was doing a transfer of large amounts of data through a crossover network connectiin from my old laptop, after that complete it still stuttered so i restarted the machine but leftfor dinner so im not sure yet how its doing. I will have to look for some memory, not expensive like you said, so why not? Thanks for the advice, I failed tl realize it was soldered in.

 

So I returned from dinner to a freshly restarted machine. I went to move the mouse and stutter occured. I then left the computer and came back after a few moments, stutter. I am beginning to think this is the reason it was an OPEN BOX ITEM and returned to the store... even has I type this, just browsing the web, I have the issue.

 

I'm pretty sure the mouse stuttering is due to some of the pre-installed bloatware. I used to have it on occasion, but after removing or disabling most of the bloatware on day 2, I haven't had any problems.

 

MORALAR: Thanks for the feedback. I re-installed the driver for the touchpad and it has only had the issue once, while updating the graphics driver and streaming a movie file to my Xbox and typing this post.

Can you confirm... did you use the Vaio Application Manager to uninstall the VAIO software, if so, what programs did you leave?

 

Hi everyone I am now completely sold on this laptop. Was previously looking at the acer timelinex 5830tg but the throttling problems were too much for me. All I need to do now is find the cheapest place to buy it.
I'm looking for the i5 2430 model, radeon 6630, basic ram, basic everything else. Oh and I'm also located in the US of A. Any help/links will be greatly appreciated

 

I use the 3.1.2 vanilla Linux kernel and the ondemand CPU governor as default. In stamina mode the CPUs are limited to 1.6 GHz. In speed mode they are not. I realized it while I was building the kernel (make -j5) - it took very long in stamina mode.
Did anyone else experience it?

 

Finally, I have another question

I hesitate on which graphics card to choose.
I only use Linux (Debian) but, why not a game under Windows occasionally ?
Under Linux, will I see differences with the Intel HD 3000 with 512 Mo or 1 Go ?
If I'm not wrong, with the 6470M, the HD 3000 has only 512 Mo and, with the 6630M, the HD 3000 has 1 Go ?
And is there an impact on the battery life ?

Thank you.

[@absolutehellos : ton Français est meilleur que mon Anglais ]

 

The HD3000 has 0 MB of memory of its own, the 6470M has 512MB and the 6640M has 1GB. HD3000 shares with internal memory, from 64 up to 256 or 384 MB I think, just takes what it needs. For gaming you are much better of with the 6630M as it is twice as fast compared to the 6470M (is only 20/30% faster then HD3000 but does has it's own memory leaving more left for the OS and progams).

 

OK, I was wrong on the HD3000 .
So, if I use only (except in very rare cases) the HD3000, there's no difference to choose 6470M or 6630M ?

And I suppose, if the AMD card is powered off (is it possible in the BIOS), there is no impact on the battery life ?

Thank you and sorry for these newbies questions .

 

Correct, if you switch to the stamina mode it will behave the same no matter what dedicated graphics you have. You can't disable it in the BIOS but switching to stamina does the same, when you need the power you can always switch it to speed

 

Amazon has discounted models and depending on where you live... no sales tax (saves about $100).

The Microsoft Store (if you have on in your area) was selling $1299 model (w battery slice) for $1149 and then had 25% off anything over $1000. Not sure if that sale is still valid.. but since it's Black Friday... they might have something going on.

 

Yup, that drove me completely nuts until I figured it out. The worst part is that limiting the CPU can actually result in more power consumption for a given work load then less, especially compiling something.

 

Under linux, disabling the AMD GPU is done via the vgaswitcheroo interface

echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

 

Has anyone done key-remapping for this laptop? Not sure which one to try
I wanna turn the Assist/Web/Vaio buttons into media buttons and the menu button (between alt and crtl on the right) into another Windows button

 

So, if I understand, the switch works only on Windows ?
On Linux, it is a "manual" switch

Thank you for your answers : I'll stay on the 6470M !

Now, I just have to place order

 

FYI, Sony is offering a free Core i7 upgrade on the SE & SA CTO models through Nov 28 ($250 value). http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...0151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644836500

Oh, and they also tack on a free sheet battery at checkout, so save another $150 there...

 

Happy Thanksgiving SE Owners!

Wanted to take a poll of all SE owners with i5, 6630m, 5400 RPM, 4 GB set ups... has anyone else experienced severe mouse lag/stutter? I bought the open box and cant decide if I should return all together or exchange and pay 100 extra... for a "new new" one?

If no one else has this stutter issue, Ill exchange... if its a known issue (cant find any in this forum on it) ill return all together!

Enjoy the Turkey!
- Byers

 

For a week since I got the notebook in the mail, I have experienced no mouse stutter with your exact setup.

No need for turkey today for Canadians, we already had it during October. But happy Thanksgiving to the Americans.

Is the exchange model still a Sony SE?

 

Yes, Still SE model only it will be seales in a brand new box rather than like what I bought that was returned by someone before me within the first 7 days they had it. Im now thinking it was due to the mouse lag. Ill give a new a try, i can always return again within 7 days if I have the same issue. *fingers crossed*

 

lliston: Did you add 8GB of new memory or just add another 4gb Stick to the existing/oem memory?

Thanks,
- Byers

 

Here's an answer from a related Sony SE thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/624398-se-max-ram-sdd.html#post8069172

 

Thanks gor the link, definitely helos clear up the max memory issue! Now i just need to confirm whether or not the OEM memory is removavle or not.

 

Greetings to all,

As an owner of a rapidly dying VGN-SZ780, I am interesting in purchasing a new notebook. I use my computer primarily for post production of images in Lightroom, and the usual array of word processing, and other functions.

I looked at Dell's XPS 15, but the graphics chip is suspect. My other option is to purchase a Power Mac, but I would rather not go through a learning curve. I am strongly considering the purchase of a Sony SE with a 15.5 screen, 6630m graphics chip, i7 2.8 cpu, 8 gigs of RAM, a 512 solid state drive, and a blu ray player. My concern, however, is that the product is still plagued with fan and heating up issues. Can anyone tell me if the aforementioned problems have been resolved?

I want to make a decision in the next day or so, thus would greatly like to hear from a member or two of this great forum.

Thank you for your consideration.

Enjoy the evening.

 

I'm sorry about that. I should have written "Macbook Pro." Again, however, I would much rather purchase a Windows system.

 

Apparently Sony just released a new BIOS update for this laptop that should fix the issue. I'll test it out and see.

 

So I was finally able to get my fan running and it is noticeable.

How? Angry Birds. Heh.

I just downloaded the Chrome app and as soon as I started playing it... the temp got up to 60+ and the fan started up. Once I stopped playing, the temp cooled down and the fan slowed down and then stopped.

I'll wait to see what others say about the new BIOS and see if that helps. It really doesn't bother me that much as again, I don't seem to be using this computer in a manner that taxes is... but considering that it starts up just by playing Angry Birds, it's a problem for probably 95% of the users out there.

 

BigNerd, I certainly don't want to encounter the same problem, especially since I do a fair amount of graphics work on my system. Does your machine have the 6630m chip? If I purchase the Sony, I would order 8 gigs of RAM, but I doubt this would solve the fan issue.

 

I have the 6470M 1gb video.

Unless they are giving you a deal, it would be cheaper to put 4gb yourself. Mine came with 6gb but if it was cheaper to get 4gb, I would have and just upgraded on my own.

 

Actually, if all you're doing is Lightroom, Word, & mainstream kind of uses, the Intel integrated graphics will suit you just fine. The ATI GFX won't help all that much in that situation. I'm currently using a previous generation Core i7 laptop w/ only iGFX and it works fine with Lightroom and raw images. The bump from i5 to i7 is more of a benefit in this case.

Btw, I took advantage of the Core i7 & sheet battery promos on the Sony website and bought myself an SE yesterday. Already ordered the extra RAM and will replace the HD with a 600GB Intel SSD that I already own. Will eventually yank the optical drive and replace with another SSD as well...