Sony SE Owners' Thread

Did you configure the trackpad?

 

I bought an SE in December, but am now getting no sound from external speakers when connected through the headphone jack. I know there were problems with getting sound when you disconnected speakers while in sleep mode, but I have the opposite problem. I can get sound from the internal speakers, but nothing through externals! I downloaded the latest audio driver from the sony website, but still no sound.

Any ideas???

Thanks.

 

Never had that problem

 

Do you guys think that the 1080p display is fine on the laptop, i mean is it hard to read text? I'm looking to buy this or the samsung chronos 7. I'm tempted by how light this is with the amazing display on the other hand, the samsung has more power and a better graphics card.

I use Photoshop and Vegas but i never do anything intense so i dont think the gfx power is that much of problem.

I will want to play games such as fifa12, nfs and counter strike, do you think they will play fine on this laptop?

Is there a button to switch off the fan, does it get load at times?

This is the one i want to get as soon as its back in stock.

http://www.johnlewis.com/231395864/product.aspx

 

You can increase the DPI of the text if it bothers you.

I actually shrank the icons in Windows 7 because I like the extra screen space to work with. Photoshop CS3 is kinda buggy on it but I upgraded CS5 and it's great. I work with large files and it barely breaks a sweat.

I am almost always on Stamina mode so the laptop stays fairly quiet. I imagine when playing some games it will get loud, but I saw some settings that can lower the performance to reduce the noise (Silent Mode).

Hope that helps.

 

SE is good for eyes if you talking about display, but its not good graphic screen. RED/ORANGE issue and sRGB scale...

I was scared abou FHD too, but if you working in some CAD or photo editing enviroment more workspace is priceless and you always can increse the DPI, but first check if Your software have no bugs with that.

 

Yea as far as colour accuracy goes, you will need an external monitor to check your work if you plan to use the SE.

The FHD should really help your productivity. I can't see how it could hurt you unless you're farsighted.

 

Not sure what is buggy with CS3. Mine works fine and it takes less than 2 seconds to load, SSD is Vertex 3.
What is file you have it open and how many at the same time? Maybe you need to increase the ram?

 

Thanks for the help guys, i really appreciate it.

I dont do that type of work on photoshop where it is critical that red needs to be red, I only use it for casual editing. I'll be watching movies as Ive got a few blurays. Are the viewing angles good on it?

I've got a few more qs if you guys dont mind.

How quick does it boot up and also, how good is the battery life when watching a blu ray. And whats the battery life if your just browsing and doing work on word.

And like the Samsung Chronos, are there issues with the switchable gfx?

Thanks a lot

 

Performance and speed were fine, I said "kinda" because they are really minor problems.

The one that bothered me was that the brush outline for the cursor didn't render correctly when you moved it across the screen, parts of it would vanish as you painted. This never happened with my older/crappier laptop, I think it has something to do with the video drivers or windows 64bit. This happened on files of any size.

The other was if I had Photoshop running and I was watching a video fullscreen, hitting ESC wouldn't bring me out of fullscreen.

Those problems are gone now so I'm really happy with this laptop.

Viewing angles are excellent. There is very little distortion when you tilt the screen or move off centre.

I haven't tested battery life watching a movie but when just browsing at 50% brightness, stamina mode I seem to get 3-4 hours. I usually don't browse on the computer 3-4 hours straight so this works for me.

Startup is usually 30+ seconds and I am on the slowest hard drive they offered.

I guess the only issue is that you can't always change the graphics, if you can call that an issue. If you are using certain programs it will say "Nope" and will not let you until you close it.

 

New to the forums but I just ordered my SE this weekend. I'm giving my 2 year old CW for my wife to use for school. The SE is an i7, standard HDD, 1gb 6630m and silver in color. Pretty excited for it. I think I got a decent deal, free sheet battery and using the sony student store I got another $75 off plus free shipping. Came out to $1139 + tax

Anyway, A couple question for you guys using a 2nd HDD in the newmodeus caddy. I currently have a Momentus XT hybrid drive, its the new 750gb model. I was thinking about either swapping the Momentus into the SE or buying a SSD for the primary drive and moving the stock 5400rpm to a HDD caddy.

Whats your battery life like with 2 hard drives in this laptop? And do you notice extra heat build up from having a 2nd drive in it? I'm looking at a 256 gig SSD but i'm not sure thats really enough space for me with out having a 2nd drive.

 

I have a i7,6630,128gb sdd,500GB 7200rpm in caddy,+4gb custom ram card.
I don't have the addond batterysheet. ( i was not aware of the coupon )

When playing full HD movies stored on the 500gb hdd i got 2.5-3 hours of watching time.

Not sure if that was stamina mode or not, since i have no idea wich graphics card is used.

 

One thing that happened to me when I had the VAIO CA was that the graphics card would just crash randomly while using YouTube. I'm worried that will happen if I get the SE. However, as I've returned like 20 computers, I will return it in a instant if it happens within the 30-day return period. But I'm just wondering if this is something that happens to Sony's or if I just had a lemon?

Don't have time to read all 117 pages of comments, so sorry if this has already been addressed. I know there are numerous graphics issues with almost every PC with a dedicated graphics card (and since what I do doesn't even warrant one I wish I could just get the built-in Intel graphics...oh well...)

 

Earlier Intel Integrated GPU drivers were very bad. With the new iGPUs in the sandybridge chips they're much better, but still not in the same league as either AMD or Nvidia discrete GPU drivers. So it's likely you were suffering from crappy intel video drivers before. Now the newer drivers are more likely to work well with HD accelerated video and on the SE you have a 6630 to decode video if need be.

 

Hello,
I have just acquired the Sony and I am very happy with it. But I have a problem with my stereo output.
The proper sound of the computer is good But when I hear the same sound in the headphones, I have a kind of spatial sound and saturation. It seems even a karaoke from time to time ...

I went in the settings of the realtek sound card to disable dolby suround effects, but nothing works.
On some songs I can not hear the voices, at times the bass ...

If you encountered this problem thank you for your help!

 

Sorry if this was mentioned earlier just got into this thread and not sure I have 15 hours to go through 117 pages

Does the SE actually have 2 hard drive slots? I couldn't believe that would be the case but looking at the CTO page at sony you have the option to choose 2 hard drives (though both the same)

If it does have 2 slots then I'll be getting one of these after it's refreshed in Feb.

 

Sony uses a special SSD drive to accomplish the raid in the space of a single slot. So unless you opt for sony's SSD options you really only have a single drive bay. newmodeus sells hard drive caddys that allow you to remove the CD drive and install a 2nd hard drive in place of the disc drive.



@Ichinenjuu For what it's worth I've been using a sony CW series with a dedicated nvidia chip for the last 2 years probably averaging 4 hours a day with a ton of HD and streaming video usage and It's never crashed a single time from it. As long as it stays cool and not wrapped up in blankets on the couch I never have issues with it. I'm pretty confident the SE will be the same way once mine arrives.

 

Thanks for the reply on that, sounds like plenty of battery time for me. I'm probably going to stick with my hybrid for now, I'm not sure having a full SSD is a big enough difference to be worth the price.

 

Very strange, I've been testing the Sony SE Stereo Output at a French Store, he had the same problem. On both computers at the Sony Store, the same ... While on other models of the brand, no worries ...

Thank you for your help

 

Thanks for the clarification. I guess that makes sense, at first I thought that there was an option to choose two regular hard drives which would definitely require two bays but looking at the CTO page again they only offer SSDs in this configuration.

Thanks for the tip on newmodeus, I knew you could always replace the optical drive for another drive but didn't know about them, definitely worth checking out. My problem is I would like to have an optical drive but having another drive would be nice as well.
Do you or anyone else have their SE solution? How is it?

 

I have exactly the same problem. Since I'm mainly using an USB headset I did not try to figure out what is wrong in detail.
May be just a hardware problem.

I already replaced my first SE because of an annoying high pitch fan noise, to lazy to replace again for the headphone jack...

 

What are your hard drive needs? Are you looking to have a small SSD and then a storage drive or do you just need maximum storage space?

I have a synology diskstation as a NAS server at home and it's got over 6tb of space. Probably the best investment I ever made to my home network. It eliminates having to worry about space on any device I own. That said I still like to have some head room so I opted for the hybrid hard drive on my CW which has 8 gigs of flash storage for booting and launching programs and then 750gigs of storage on a normal HDD. I'll be putting this in the SE to get the 20sec SSD like boot times. I was considering a small ssd with the stock drive in a caddy also but I'm just not sure for my usage that it'd be worth the high SSD price tag.

 

It is confirmed, that I am note alone to have this problem. Three demo computers at different stores, plus yours... hardware or a driver problem ?
I called Sony support center, they are going to see if this a known problem.

If someone who has the Sony Vaio SE can test his stereo output and tell me if the sound is good or not, will be very nice.

 

Space is not so much an issue for me, I'm really just looking to have two separate drives as I do a lot of work with Photoshop and music production and it's really beneficial for scratch disks to have separate SATA drives to remove any bottlenecks. So I would probably put in a 128 gb SSD for system and a 750 gb HDD for data. But a hybrid drive might be a compromise though it wouldn't resolve the issue with bottlenecks or would it? You have a good experience with a hybrid drives?

Another option would be to just go for the caddy solution and buy an external optical drive since I don't use it that often but still need it once in a while.

 

I've had pretty good luck with my hybrid so far. It's a nice compromise vs having 2 drives. It's especially good if you use the same programs over and over because they'll stay in the flash memory.

I know what you mean though sometimes it's nicer to have the extra drive only concerned with your project instead of whatever else the OS has going on. I always set up my desktops with that in mind before I switched to only having laptops. In my head it makes sense but in real world usage I'm not sure if you really notice it or not, I've never really done a comparison. I don't think I do anything other then loading games that would benefit from separate drives.

For straight storage, backup or video play back having a NAS is awesome but for your needs you'd probably be happiest having the caddy in place of the optical drive. You'll probably get way more usage out of the HDD then you would a CD drive. There's also a thread in the sony section about running scripts to shut the 2nd hard drive off to save battery life if that would ever be a concern.

 

Yeah I looked up a bit more info on the 2nd gen Seagate XT and while it looks like a good drive it wouldn't really help me all that much. In an ideal world I would have 2 SSDs one for system and one for scratch disks but that wouldn't really be practical. If I decide to get the refreshed SE that is supposed to be released in Feb (actually I'll probably hold off til it gets refreshed with Ivy Bridge) I'll definitely have a look into the caddy. Thanks for the link for the script will look into that also, but I usually don't use my laptop on a battery so it's not a massive issue for me. What effect does the second drive have on the battery?

 

Well ! I have got the good idea to test with another headphones, and it works ! In fact the firste headphones is made for an iphone, and I think that the input has not the same format.

 

what have you heard in terms of a refresh in feb and when are we likely to see ivy bridge for the se ??

 

ivy bridge is not going to be released for a few months. And who knows how long sony is gonna take to put it in. always waiting for "better" and "newer" lol.

 

I just researched that refresh. Sucks to hear about it 4 days after I ordered one lol. Looks like it's just a CPU change. Just a .1 ghz difference so not the end of the world.


Sony refreshes VAIO lineup, VAIO Z ultraportable gets Verizon LTE and white color options | The Verge

 

Mm not exactly. For the 15" they will be updating the screen to IPS which is exactly what I'm after. Even though the current screen is great it's still a TFT so you're not getting the same viewing angles and color reproduction. Considering I'm a designer that's definitely something I'm looking for.

And yeah it's kinda like that, always waiting for the better, but to be honest Intel releases new processors once every year / year and a half so I think it only makes sense to not buy a new laptop couple of months before they release new line of CPUs so you get the most value out of the purchase. If it was 8 months away I wouldn't bother but I don't like to buy something knowing that there will be refreshed version in couple of months. Anyways Ivy Bridge is scheduled for April and it might take Sony another few months to do a refresh, so it's still a bit away, but I'm not in a hurry, there might even be better options out there in a few months time when I'm ready to buy something.

 

Isn't the current SE using IPS panel? I thought Sony did confirm this already.

 

No unfortunately. This is from the Australian official sony specs page

Display
Type 15.5 inch wide (Full HD: 1920x1080) TFT colour display (VAIO Display Plus, LED backlight)

Unless they use different specs in different countries which I doubt considering in the new announcement yesterday they said "The 15” will come standard with a 15.5” Full HD display (1920 x 1080) with IPS technology for improved image quality and viewing angles."

Link here SONY Announces Spring Refresh for VAIO® Line SONY make.believe

 

Really? IPS? That's so cool...glad I have to wait for the refund from Alienware

Maybe this will solve the "Orangegate" problem?

 

AnandTech - Sony VAIO: Z with Dock, SE with IPS, and an Ultrabook Concept
Well it says the same thing on Sony Canada website, but they don't mention the panel type on the US website.

 

Interesting. I have an SA and use both 4 connector iphone ear bud heaphones and a pair of Sennheiser HD280 regular headphones and they both work perfectly. Interestingly, the jack on the SA (and I assume SE since they're essentially the same in this regard) supports both fine, and the microphone on the iphone type ear buds works perfectly for things like skype.

I hope they use a really good one. Just because it's IPS doesn't mean it'll have good color reproduction, there are plenty of mediocre IPS panels out there as well, and judging by the choices Sony has made so far for the S line, I'm not assuming they'll make the right one this time either. sigh. Fingers crossed. If it is a much better panel and hopefully matte, I may sell my SA to go to an SE in a few months.

Keep in mind tho, that the first releases of anything, CPU, GPU etc often have plenty of teething problems as well. If you're looking for something solid and reliable, you buy something a year old that has good reviews of stable drivers and stuff like that. If you want the last little but of performance you can get, you buy new. It's not just one or the other, there are compelling reasons to buy both the latest and tried and true tech.

 

Well considering the awful 1366x768 panels with horrid viewing angles that most manufacturers use, I'm sure ANY! IPS will be an improvement. Plus the TFT Sony's using atm is already pretty good for a laptop, so I would assume they would want to improve upon it. I'm not expecting NEC or EIZO IPS quality but compared to what else is available you have to appreciate the effort.

And regarding new tech, it's not always true. Last laptop I bought was when the first gen mobile i7s came out and I literally bought it second week they were available. Never had a single issue. Now of course I was pretty lucky, if I did the same thing when they released Sandy Bridge I would have to return as they recalled all laptops the first week, but just because it's new doesn't always mean there will be bugs. The likelihood is much higher though.

 

True. But I always wait at least a month after release before buying anything. Plus I run linux a lot, so new hardware can be even more of a minefield there.

 

It's clever to stay away from launches indeed. The second month of production is usually way better.

 

whats people views is it worth wating for the ips display ? any ideas when it will be available in the uk ?

 

Apple-type headsets works perfectly well for playback however their microphone doesn't work. The integrated microphone in the Sx series is so sensitive that it works pretty well even when covering the microphone slot (under the hdd LED). To test it start the sound recorder (start menu under accessories) tap the headset microphone with your fingertip and then tap the integrated microphone.

 

Greeting,

Apologies if this is a repost, I'm just wondering, following the recent Sony announcement how do I know im getting the IPS display if I were to purchase this device directly from Sony's UK website? I see the reference to the 1080p resolution, is this all I need to look out for?

Could it be the IPS display has not yet hit the Website, therefore it's better I wait till it arrives before the purchase? Thanks

 

How can you be so sure, that they update to an IPS-Panel?

1. Although until now there is no official statemant, that the current version has an IPS, there also isn't any official source saying the opposite.
And when you e.g. read this thread, most people belief that it is an IPS.


2. On the sony blog they say: "The S Series includes Hybrid Graphics with either an AMD Radeon™ HD 6470M (512MB VRAM) or AMD Radeon HD 6630M (1GB VRAM). The 15” will come standard with a 15.5” Full HD display (1920 x 1080) with IPS technology for improved image quality and viewing angles."
So far for me this seems to be only a general description of the features and doesn't indicate that these features are new.
(also remember that the "old" one came with HD 6470M / HD 6630M and Full HD too! So there is the second indicator that they just repeat the old sepecifications)

 

Don't hold your breath. The IPS screen on the new Envy 15 is having an Orangegate of its own. Big time. Check the Envy subforum in the HP forum.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing. Most of the blogs posting the info were re hashing the same current specs over and over with the exception being the new CPU numbers. It sounded more like intel updating its line up then anything else. It's hard to think they would make a screen change now instead of waiting till the new CPU's later in the year. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens over the next few weeks.

 

as the i7 processor has already got the .1GHz bump ( Intel® CoreTM i7-2640M, 2.8GHz ) it seems whatever was added in the refresh is already reflected on the official Sony site (for UK at least)...

 

Nope, the refresh isn't already reflected.
The i7-2640M with 2.8GHz was already available in the first release.

 

I did post a bit on the Anandtech blurb that covered the refresh, and they said Sony swore it was an IPS panel (dunno the time frame...)

However, Anandtech did note a less-than-full-gamut backlight could cause the... orange/red issues. Makes sense, especially if the backlight is nothing more than cool WLED (which are technically blue LED with yellow phosphate(dunno exact chemical form myself, to be honest ) coating).

Even a semi-decent TN panel like the m17xR2 managed to have wide color coverage, because it used an RGB-LED array backlight.

 

I'm only sure because of what I said in one of my earlier posts, that the current specs clearly list a TFT panel and with the refresh announcement they are saying it willcome with an IPS.

Current official specs

Display
Type 15.5 inch wide (Full HD: 1920x1080) TFT colour display (VAIO Display Plus, LED backlight)

Announcement from two days ago
"The 15” will come standard with a 15.5” Full HD display (1920 x 1080) with IPS technology for improved image quality and viewing angles."

 

Funny how The Verge will post something about the OrangeGate problem with the HP Envy... while us Sony SE users get no love:

Some HP Envy 15 screens display orange where red should be | The Verge