Sony Vaio Duo 13 Owners Thread

I didn't as I don't play serious PC games but I made sure I would get 8GB RAM as I will have some statistical package to run.

 

any possible way to unlock mobile broadband modem for duo 13?
my Japanese system sim locked with AU jap provider
any help would be appreciated.

Mobile Broadband Module:
HUAWEI Mobile broadband module

if i insert my local sim, it asks for 10 digit unlock code.

 

You tried to ask Sony? Maby they tell it :s. Cant believe its only AU, Docomo and Softbank cards should work as well.

 

Can you check the device manager and see what kind of modem it is (model number)? You might look into dc-unlocker. https://www.dc-unlocker.com/

 

Sony replied as below:

' they do not tell how to unlock it '
' they do not tell even whether its lock can be unlocked or not '
' they do not unlock it even if you bring it to Sony Service Station '

 

cant seem to find the model number. it just says Huawei Mobile Broadband Module

 

I received my device yesterday, I have to say, the wifi connection on this is quite lousy... Everything else works great though.

 

Try disabling the microsoft kernel debug network adapter in device manager. I wen from 2 bars to 3 bars... It made the signal slightly better. (Still not the best) I think this is a problem with all Windows 8 devices, because if you google this, you can find a lot of people complaining about lousy signal compared to Win 7 on same machine.

 

This does seemed to help, thanks! I also noticed that keys on the keyboard aren't exactly centered in the key holes, I'm not sure if its supposed to be like that or not.. its not really a super big deal but it does look quite funny.

 

I took the plunge!!! But ship date went from 7/19 to 7/26 while I decided...please tell me it's worth this kind of money lol

 

I'm sure all of you with wifi issues have already tried updating the drivers, but I found this article about a vaio whose wifi was fixed by doing that. They said that the computer didn't show that the drivers needed an update, but they updated them anyways and it was fixed.

Here is the article. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find that line. Please let us know If this worked or not.

Windows 8 Wireless problem - Limited access

 

I received my duo 13 i7 4650u yesterday. Since I returned my 11 duo, I couldn't do a side by side test. But it feels like the pen actually tracks much faster in the 13 than the 11. Anyone else found this?

I just worked on the 13 for a whole 8 hrs today. The 2 extra inch really does help a lot. While the keyboard is better than the duo 11, its still not optimal for pro-long period of typing.

 

Was that before the battery died, or just how long you were using it? If that was before the battery died, what sort of things were you doing on it? I've read the reviews on the battery life, but depending on which country you are reading a review from or looking on the sony site for, they give different estimates of battery life, but I'd like to hear about the life from an average, non-Sony/ News affiliated person to see where it is really at.

Do you have any wifi issues?

 

I had to order the vga adapter as an option. They are cheaper on Amazon. I also ordered a gigabit usb adapter for about $20 and it works great.

 

So far I haven't had any WiFi issue.

I was on word and excel, WiFi was connected. Screen was around half. Still have plenty of juice left after eight hrs.

I think battery life is the last thing you need to worry about on the 13.

 

Not really an issue, but I've read and seen a few places saying that it is a 5 finger touch, and others saying it is 10 finger. I've even seen videos of people bringing up the specs on the computer with it saying 5 finger and others saying 10. Can anyone confirm which one it is?

Mine is being build!!! Hopefully I'll get it before I move out of the country! I can't wait!

 

Can you say more about your modem? Is it a Huawei ED162G? Maby there are some unlock tools.
You also tried to ask Huawei?

 

Warning - long post, but there is a relevant question at the end.

I've been lurking here for some time. I think the Duo13 is a great machine which is being confirmed as more people post their experiences.

I have a conjecture that Sony will release a new version of the Duo11 around Sept/Oct. This was suggested by someone else on the tabletpcreview.com pages I think some time ago, but they didn't give any reasons. Here are mine.

Once Sony assessed the feedback on the Duo11, they knew they had a good design, but one that could be improved. Given the short development window between the release of the Duo11 and Duo13, I think they decided to relax the constraints on redesign by working on a 13" model.

I already was convinced that the Duo11 would be my next machine even with the slice battery and trackpoint mouse, but I wanted to wait for Haswell to get the battery boost.

Back to Sony, it's interesting to note that when the Duo13 came out, everyone called the Duo13 a replacement or upgrade to the Duo11 EXCEPT for Sony. They kept selling the model under the Duo Ultrabook s category.

Either by their own choice or by Intel pushing them, Sony released the Duo13 with the release of Haswell to flaunt battery performance. Not only did Sony announce it in Taiwan at Computex, but Intel actually showed off the Duo13 as part of the Haswell announcement prior to Sony's announcement, making it clear that Intel viewed it as the flagship model to present Haswell's improvements.

By introducing a new Duo11 in the Fall, Sony can extend the line-up and keep it fresh. If not, then when all the other companies come out with their new lines, the Duo13 might appear a bit old already, when it really was just the first machine out of the gate with Haswell. For this reason, I also think they will bring a Red Edition to the States (if not more colors, now that they developed a high-quality paint-layering process). This will also generate more interest from holiday shoppers. I also think that when they update the Tap20 with Haswell, they'll introduce a Tap27 to compete with Lenovo's runaway hit with the Horizon. But I digress... back to the Duos.

I believe the Sony team had a lot of customer feedback to consider how to make the new Duo13 model. With the new design solution for the floating tapered chassis, narrower bezel, port relocation, improved hinge, stylus storage, and mini trackpad, Sony could now focus on what they do best - miniaturization. Shrinking the Duo13 into a new Duo11 would be simple since they only have to deal with optimizing battery performance, thickness, and weight - size would be almost predetermined by the aspect ratio of the Duo13.

There was one matter they still had to solve - where to store the stylus. Older generation tablets were so thick that a pen garage was the best choice. However, now with thinner ultrabooks, a new conflict in optimization was created. If they continued to store the pen in the chassis like the newly-announced Samsung Ativ Q or Lenovo Helix, its diameter would be ergonomically inferior for holding. Extended use with an S-Pen type of stylus leads to hand cramping and wrist fatigue when held as a pen. Try taking out the AAAA battery from the N-trig stylus and holding it as a pen to see how awkward it feels - amazing what a difference a few millimeters can make.

This is where I think the consumer data also helped Sony. I believe the majority of buyers of stylus-enabled machines primarily use them for business/productivity/note-taking use cases ("writers"), as opposed to artistic use cases ("painters"). Writers hold the stylus like a pen, painters may or may not. Even painters who sketch drawings ("sketchers") most likely hold it like a pen. So, the group of sketchers could be really included in the group of writers - further skewing the market segment toward writers.

Another indicator is that the Duo13 is a high-end machine (in quality, design, and cost). So, the target market would want a high-productivity machine. Contrast this with the Ativ Q with its Android option gimmick and super-hi-res screen begging for a use case without a large market segment (sorry painters).

While the storage solutions in the old Duo11 were workable, they certainly weren't elegant. Storing the stylus in the Sony case sleeve or in the sheet battery were okay (I don't think the lanyard solution was practical), but one still had to mentally track an accessory - e.g., did I last place the stylus in the case or in the sheet?

What Sony was able to do was break the logic that the pen has to go in the chassis. Once they did this, the question was where to put it. While the new side-clip holder is not Apple-esque brilliant, it certainly becomes the best tradeoff for writers. I wonder if people will report that the pen can get easily pulled out of its holder. Personally, I will use the Duo for pen-based productivity (I'm a patent attorney) while it's on my desk, so the swing-out inkwell feature is really useful. I would probably worry more about losing the Ativ Q's pen more once I got tired of plugging it in its chassis garage every couple minutes. The wakeup feature of the Sony inkwell just clinches the deal even more by providing both form and function.

Another point about optimizing the stylus was why doesn't Sony switch to Wacom technology. Given what I wrote above, the enhanced pressure sensitivity would mainly benefit only the painters - thus, diminishing returns for Sony. Furthermore, some have said the N-trig pen is limited by the battery, but N-trig has battery-less solutions. If Sony were to use their supercapacitor model, they would risk the pen losing its natural feel for writers. Not only due to a super-thin pen causing hand strain, but Sony would have to add weight to the barrel so that the pen didn't feel too flimsy without a battery - again, no upside for Sony.

Okay I've rambled a lot about the virtues of the Duo13, but my main conjecture is that Sony will introduce a new Duo11 in the Fall. The smaller and lighter model might really get larger adoption in the marketplace for AIO mobile solutions.

There is one component that I didn't mention yet - the keyboard. Physical limitations seriously constrain a novel option to deal with the smaller form factor of a new Duo11, meaning a more-cramped keyboard on a new Duo11 than the Duo13. Since the footprint in the Duo13 is mainly longer (not wider) than the Duo11. The keyboard of a new Duo11 would probably be the same as the old (current) Duo11. For the same reason, a new Duo11 would probably be able to have the same trackpad as the Duo13.

So, here's my question to owners/users of the old Duo11, and more importantly to those owners/users who have upgraded to the Duo13, if a new Duo11 were introduced with an identical configuration to the Duo13, except that it had the keyboard of the old Duo11, for let's say about $200 less than the Duo13, which one would you choose and why?

Personally, I'm still not sure which size/weight is better, 11 or 13, for mobile use cases. Comments?

 

Has anyone done a fresh install? I've seen a few tutorials around for the Duo 11, but I'm having MAJOR issues doing a fresh install on my new Duo 13. I'm about to punch Sony in the face. It won't boot from ANY usb flash device. I don't have a USB cd-rom to test on. Here's what I've tried.

1. Created USB Win 8 installer on 4 different USB devices using MS USB Installer tool -> won't boot from device
2. Created Linux bootable USB device -> won't boot
3. I already went into BIOS and enabled booting from external device and made it the priority over internal hdd
4. Booted into Vaio Assist and told it to boot from USB device -> it tells me my Vaio failed to boot from USB device

At this point I have a completely unusable Duo 13. I want to completely wipe the Sony bs and have a fresh install. This is irritating beyond anything I've ever experience with any laptop. Any ideas or experience with this?

 

I am still waiting for mine to be shipped out but this is definitely first thing I would try to do, a clean install of OS. It's disappointing to say the least that SONY has made it such a pain in the neck! On the other hand, it seems illogical to have the option of booting from external USB device in BIOS while fail to do so in actuality....

By the way, is it Win 8 CoreSingleLanguage that is being pre-installed?

 

I decided to make a poll for the question at the end of my long post. Sorry, I can't. I thought I could from within the same thread.

 

Following my previous question, you might want to try a bootable usb device created by WIN8 coresinglelanguage if that's what was pre-installed. It maybe that bootloader of another OS is not supported.......

 

I have been using the Duo13 with a preinstalled OS without problems. Battery life is consistently about 7-8hours (music streaming, news, mail, chrome, ms office, youtube). 100% battery life after overnight sleep (all metro apps were closed), which suggests no problems with connected standby? No issues with wifi connections as well.

 

Are there any security options in BIOS you nee dto turn off? I had to do that in my Asus computer. Like you, the first thing I do when I get a laptop is wipe away all the crap-ware BS and install a fresh copy pf Windows. I then install the drivers from the Web site along with the applications I want. Everyone should do this if you can to avoid dealing with all the BS crap-ware.

Have you called Sony support any chance?

 

i had no battery loss for 6 hours sleep mode, yesterday. but today, it went down from 82% to 72% for 10hours.

 

Since this was such a huge cluster to install, I figured I'd post what I did to perform a clean install of Windows 8.

FIRST, I copied the folder c:\windows\drivers to a different computer. That folder seemed to have all the setup files for driver installation. Although there are other utilities to backup drivers that I'm guessing work equally as well.

1. Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS.
2. Download gparted live ISO
3. Use unetbootin to create bootable USB using downloaded gparted live ISO
4. The GUI wouldn't work for me so I had to use the command line version of 'parted' to remove all partitions
5. I also wrote a new msdos partition table using 'fdisk' although I'm not use if this is necessary...I wanted to be sure to completely remove all traces of previous setup.
6. I could never get the Windows 7 USB/DVD boot tool to work. I used Rufus with the following settings.
GPT Partition Scheme for UEFI computer
FAT32
7. I used a Windows 8 Pro ISO.
8. I enabled secure boot in the BIOS. I also enabled Intel Virtualization and set it to boot from External Device and moved it above internal HDD boot.
9. After Rufus finished, I plugged it into the Duo 13 and it booted and started Windows setup fine.
10. There is no mouse or touchscreen throughout install so you'll have to be good at using the tab key.

I'll keep you posted on any updates...

 

I personally think that Anand is a bit off with their testing...for one, they used different manufacturers devices, and two, don't even state the exact configurations for the cpu/ram on any of them (unless I missed this somewhere).

Its probably the MBA with the i5 and 4GB ram, I'd bet the Duo 13 with i7-4650u and 8GB would do much better than it.

 

Duo 13 has 5 touch points.

 

I haven't actually had instances where I couldn't connect - just the signal seems half ~ 2/3 of what it used to be...

 

So I ordered Duo 13 with a screen protector, and it shipped with the screen protector pre-installed. Are you guys going to use one? The screen protector is fine, and actually reduces glare. But it gives me this weird texture on white color. I'd like to try it without a protector on, but even though I know it's scratch resistant it just makes me really nervous to use without it, especially when i'm constantly using the stylus. Are you guys planning to use the Duo with a protector?

 

Is there any threads with accessories and stuff?

 

I didn't order one as I generally don't like screen protectors. Hope someone who have had both experiences could say more.

 

Hi, You know I want to know the same thing about Duo13 and cannot find a genuine answer anywhere I even called to Sony but they are unable to answer even to the question whether all versions of this model have a sim card slot )) So, if You find the answer please cd You share with me ([email protected]) Thanx ))

 

I've also tried with Both Sony and AT&T, They don't know. Anyway, I'll keep looking and update you if I got any positive reply

 

Alright, regarding WiFi performance: I got this laptop since a few days and it has TERRIBLE wifi performance.

Disabled Microsoft kernel debugger - did nothing.
I tried playing around with different settings within the driver - did nothing.
I tried checking the powerconfig (notice how sony stripped out several power options?) via the commandlinetool (in detail: powercfg /setdcvalueindex 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0). This command *should* change the power for the WiFicard to maximum since I suspect this is the problem for the poor performance but it actually does not work since Sony must have deleted the option to even access this via powercfg - so this didn't work either.

I was giving up but ended up googling for 3rd party manufacturer drivers that might use the same wifi card and found a Sony driver for the brazil version of the Vaio Duo Notebook. I installed it anyway and it would install. The changelog doesn't mention any significant changes BUT right after rebooting I noticed that I had 5 bars to my Wifi signal for the first time ever with this notebook.
I'm currently checking and testing and it seems that the issue is FIXED.
I don't have any issues with a bad signal or slow speeds which I had since the beginning.

Please check out, download, install (you DON'T need to delete the previous driver version before installing, just install it), test and report back if it works:
Sony eSupport - SVD13217CBW - Drivers & Software

It seems there are actually more updates which aren't avaible anywhere except for the brazil site (FastAccess bugfixes which I encountered seem to be fixed) so you might check this out aswell.

Best regards,
cornz

 

I was really excited to try this, but seems to have made little to no difference... I only get 2 bars in my living room with Duo 13 (which is pretty bad) normally. After restart, the signal strength seemed to have gotten better for a while, to 4 bars, but now it's back to normal. Wifi performance is pretty much the same. (Occasionally I have to refresh webpages, probably because of dropped signal)

 

Hello!
I'm very curious - how did you manage to get such a high PC Mark result?
PCMark 7 Score:
Sony vaio svz z vs duo 13 pcmark 7 benchmark - YouTube
SVZ i7-3612QM: 5397
DUO 13 i7-4650U : 5082

I have a bit lower model - VPCZ2390X, with i7 2640, 2.8ghz, 8gb ram, PMD ATI 6650, 256gb ssd... But I only have 4166 on pcmark 7...
Why such a big difference? Ok, SVZ has a bit faster processor and faster RAM, but more then 1000 marks difference - that is crazy...
Please advise.
Thank you

 

Has anyone else found a solution to the WiFi issue other than the Brazilian driver? I should be getting my computer this week and I'm trying to stock up on solutions in case the WiFi doesn't work because I have a very short amount of time before I leave the country. I want to make sure it works before I go.

 

For this cost wifi should be outstanding...what has Sony said if anything?

 

I should add that the wifi still has terrible performance (I get 20mbit max out of my 100mbit, with my macbook air and samsung series9 i get around 70mbit) but there is no delay or wait in page load times anymore. However this should not be the case in a 1.5k ultrabook.

 

Have you tried any wifi fixes?

 

I wrote the post about the wifi fixes. I'm speaking about the time AFTER applying them. Before the fixes the Wifi is _COMPLETE_ trash and I would've returned the machine asap.

 

I own a Duo 11 so I can't speak for the Duo 13. I've found the wifi performance of the Duo 11 very poor. Three key problems (possbly related): (1) inability to pick up weaker signals; (2) random drop-outs (even when the signal is strong); (3) slow connection speeds (again, when the signal is strong). Close to the router, my Vaio Z will show connection speed at 150Mbs while the Duo next to it will show a speed barely above 60. Further away from the router, the Z shows a signal strength of 5 bars when the Duo only shows 2-3. Removal of the debug network card has definitely helped. There have been lots of complaints about the Intel Win8 driver, so hopefully a new release will help matters, but I wonder whether the Duo (11 & 13) just does't have a decent aerial.

Someone raised the question about the screen protector. It does add slight patterning to white, but no more than what you'd expect with a matte screen. For me, the benefit of much reduced reflections outweights the slight patterning.

 

I have my Duo since yesterday...

Very nice device but I have to admit that there are some "issues" with it.
The most annoying are bad wifi performance and not able to change the angle of the screen ( was known before I ordered).

I also find it difficult to lower the screen to get back to tablet mode and the screen brightness should have been a little bit higher for outdoor usage.

There are also a lot of possitive findings... battery performance is great, performance overall is great, screen colors are great, keyboard is very good imo, sd-card and usb3 performance very good... and the quality is really top according to my previous expierences...

...still learning... does anyone knows what the 2 buttons on the stylus are for? (the small is right press?)

 

Did you previously have a Duo 11? If so, how much better is the bigger screen with the Triluminous display? Is print still really clear like on the Duo 11 even though the 1900 x 1080 resolution is spread over a larger area? (I have the Duo 11- which I think is a fantastic machine - but I am interested in the bigger screen of the Duo 13 because I often work wth two pages side by side)

 

How much better would you rate the Duo 13 screen?

 

I take it from what you have said that the screen is even better than the Duo 11 screen? Is text just as sharp as on the Duo 11? (I have the Duo 11 but would like the bigger screen if text is just as clear or better - to work on documents side by side)

 

Have you found the Duo 13 to be much better? If so, in what ways? Curious as I have a Duo 11.

 

Can you post some SD Benchmarks? There are SD cards with a reading and writing speed of ~100mb/s and I want to know if the card reader supports it. Would be a waste if I buy a expensive card and I cant use it with full speed


About the WIFI. It's not that you are (for example) really close to the router and if you walk about 2meters away the signal drops? Cause that was with my LenovoThinkPad Tab2 the case. Reason for this was a bad installed/connected hardware antenna. Hope thats not the case with the DUO 13.

 

anyone know if the n-trig stylus still makes a clicking noise....this was one of the reasons i sold my duo 11 and bought a wacom enabled fugi t902 ....the noise was far to load and really got on my nerves when drawing for long periods of time ...does anyone know if this is still noisy .....if so i may wait for the samsung ativ q