Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Read and digest ZoinksS2k article on SSD and Trim and then you'll understand why Defragmentation is disabled by default (and on purpose) on SSD drives: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...g-term-ssd-performance-post-your-results.html

You can get even more details from the SSD Anthology article from anandtech: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

Did these work straight away in Windows 7 for you..? They don't work on my Z, but they do work on my mum's cheap crappy Vista machine...

Any ideas how I can get them to work in Windows 7, I can't seem to find a specific driver..?!

ponx

 

(Too be clear) So even though I defragmented the SSD many times, every week, the SSD won't become slow, right?

I need to turn off disk defragmenter fast!

 

It seems that because of RAID, Windows does not appear to recognize that the Z has an SSD, and so if you leave the default defrag setting, it will run every week. As has been discussed at length, this likely hurts more than it helps.

So therefore that is one of the first things we all turn off.

As far as the statement "There is nothing you HAVE to do", it doesn't really make sense to try and phrase it in terms of things you HAVE to or DON'T HAVE to do. Those are all just recommendations that allow the unit to work a lttle better for most users. It's one of the main benefits of a forum like this that this sort of information can be shared: Enabling the writeback cache furnishes a nice performance boost. Removing bloatware is something most people like to do (and is not at all quirky). Turning on virtualization (for those that use that feature) is a nice reminder because you can do that with VT on or with VT off (but its MUCH better with VT on)

 

No, it won't become slow.

The main concern is that SSD's have a fixed number of writes. They should be good for many, many years to come. But it is a fixed number nonetheless. So therefore the argument is: Why use up writes for something of limited value.

Doing occasional defrags, like you are describing, doesn't hurt anything. But defragging once a week for 3-4 years? A couple hundred defrags later, maybe the life of the drive is cut down quite a bit? With no tangible benefit. That is more the issue.

 

Mostly correct, but not quite.
When a file is overly fragmented, the file system needs extra blocks to maintain the lists of all the blocks a file uses. Let's say you want to read the last line in a huge file. With a file in one piece, the file system driver reads a block which tells it immediately which block to look at, for two reads total. Then consider a very fragmented file. The file system drivers reads the first block, doesn't find it there, but the block tells you the next block to read to find more blocks, and so on, until you finally get the block. At a minimum, that's three reads instead of two.

In normal use, though, the effect is minimal. Sequential access for large files is affected so little that it's immeasurable, and for small files, it's never a problem (cause you can't have enough fragments). It's really only random access of large files that takes a penalty.

But that's also not the entire story. Defragmenters also consolidate free space, and for SSDs, this is definitely beneficial. The more full sectors you have freed up, the better garbage collection and wear levelling works.

My advice:
For SSDs, run a consolidation-only run monthly (more often if you do a lot of deletes), and a full defrag yearly (more often if you use the volume primarily for append operations like logging).
But IMO it's better to not run at all than too often.

 

Just to play devil's advocate.

Arith (or anyone else who may wish to chime in ), I was wondering, if perhaps the defrag may serve a useful benefit, in the case of the Z, for this reason: I have often wondered what sort of garbage collection is going on, given that TRIM does not penetrate the invincible RAID barrier

The thing that comes to mind is the idea that, whenever a partial ssd block is going to be written to, since it has to "rotate" out the underlying physical block anyway, it directly chooses a new, hopefully blank, block to do its write of the new block contents (current bytes along with the new bytes).
But as a consequence of that, the current physical block (which no longer represents that particular logical block) is now known to the controller to be available and so is marked for clearing (very much like trim in that regard).

Could defragging, or consolidating, result in helping this a little bit, by virtue of allowing all those re-written blocks to be freed up in one fell swoop?

EDIT: I guess I was composing this one at the same time as your related response above.

 

Hehe. That happens. In short, yes, consolidation (but consolidation only) can help garbage collection, at the price of disk wear. File defragmentation ("normal" defragmentation) won't help much with that, unless it frees up a considerable amount of space. So I don't recommend it, except very sparingly, or for very specific scenarios with very large files getting a very high amount of fragmentation (databases, huge log files). But for that, you can defragment the single files, and not the entire file system, by using a tool like Sysinternal's "contig" or similar.

 

What tools are you aware of, in Windows, that can do the consolidation?

 

Hey

I read that some of you have been receiving discounts on the Z119. Who'd you guys call or talk to?

 

I have been waiting for the z12 in hopes that a few of the issues with the z11 such as the video problem and the buzzing sound would be gone. From what people who received the z12 have said it seems as though everything is almost exactly the same as the z11. Do you think any of these problems will disappear in the U.S. model of the z12 and if not do you think Sony may address the video problem in some kind of driver update?

 

Well if you're in the US, Sony offered(I'm not sure if they still do) 15% off if you called in to order a cto and added a warranty + 2 acccessories. I ordered mine this way on April 20th, and I got a pair of ear buds(for my sister, the vaio comes with a pair too), a kensington combo lock and I cancelled the warranty within 30 days. Just ask about it. It's not really a hidden offer, the first sales rep i called actually pulled up a list of discounts she could offer me so it seems to be standard although the second sales rep(the one I ordered from) actually had to ask like headquarters or something. But in any case, good luck.

 

Hello to everyone from sunny Greece.
I have recently purchased probably the last VAIO Z11Z9E/B of the market as it was very difficult to find. I am really happy with it but a few hardware problems are putting me into thoughts of sending it in for service.
1. I can confirm the horizontal lines while watching video. (I strongly believe that they appear when the picture is moving vertically...) The resolution of my native display is 1920x1080
2. The lid is a kind of curved! If you take a close look from above you can see that the right edge is not in absolute straight line with the left edge. You can even feel it when you close the lid gently, the right edge is touching the chassis before the left one does. and finally,
3. the esc button is a bit displaced. Again the left edge of it is a bit (~1mm) lifted up than the right one.
Overall I have to say NO functional problems but its a bit more like aesthetics issues for a 2500 euro machine.
Has anyone else noticed these details or am I the only freak around

 

Which store?

 

Adelaide City Cross.

 

What does this mean and how do I do it please? I would also like a performance boost.

Also how do I do this and what does it mean/what does it do?

Thanks!

 

I just got an email from Sony.

It seems Japan has moved onwards to Z12 as well.

Theres a new processor in the CTO Core i5-450M (2.40 GHz)

Core i7 620M are back in stock too.

http://www1.jp.sonystyle.com/Product/Computer/Vaio/Z/VPCZ12AHJ_VPCZ12AGJ_VPCZ12AFJ/

 

can confirm,
pre-orders for the Z12 in Europe as well. The only difference from Z11Z is the extra 2GB of RAM, otherwise is pretty the same...

 

For Windows, I use Raxco Perfectdisk.

 

You are right, there are things that you *can* do - but there is nothing that you actually *have to* do. People who have bought this notebook dig through this forum and start thinking 'oh my gosh, there is so much to do to get this notebook working as intended, and i do not even know where to start, it's all greek to me'. But no, there is nothing you have to do to get this notebook working as intended - Sony did a good job on this. You have never heard of writeback cache? leave it be - you will see the difference in benchmarks, but not in real life. Remove the bloatware? Yes, you can if you are annoyed - but just leave it if you don't want to.

I just want to take peoples fear away that they won't get what they have paid for if they do not everything that is listed here.

 

thanks for your response...ill try calling sometime later this week

 

thanks a lot, haha deals exactly with what i was afraid of.. that and the supposedly poor sound quality!!

 

Thanks for the info. I've had a Z48 for almost a year - the best I've ever had.

 

Writeback cache can be turned on in the Intel Rapid Storage Tech (RST) application. Click on Manage | See the checkbox for write back cache.

If you then run a benchmark, like say CrystalDiskMarks, you will see the small block write speed looks artificially high. This is because when writeback cache is enabled, the disk delays the actual write process for a bit, groups them, ad writes them out a little later.

Downside is that if you were ever to inadverdently lose power you might lose more info with cache enabled than not. On the bright side. These are laptops and laptops have batteries so, unlike desktops, it is uncommon for a laptop to just not have power all of a sudden.

Virtualization allows programs like VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, etc. to execute a completely different operating system in a virtual window. So for example you can run Linux on your Vaio while still in Windows. When you install the XP option for Windows 7, you are actually using VirtualPC to create a virtualized runtime environment.
You can run just about anything virtualized: Windows, Linux, OS2, DOS...
For example, when it first came out I ran the Windows 7 beta release, in a virtual window in XP. It worked just fine.

The operating system running does not necessarily realize it is virtualized. (It's kind of like the movie The Matrix where people don't know they inhabit a virtual world).

Turning on the VT extensions, which is a checkbox in the BIOS, makes virtualization work better because special instructions, built into the processor, are enabled.

 

Are you looking to upgrade? It's a great time with the End of Financial Year coming up and the free PS3 with any Z

 

5. Turn off boot time re-arranger: In Regedit: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction\Enable -> “N” (For same reason as #4).


So I tried to do turn off the boot time rearranger, but in the boot optimize function folder, I don't see anything that says "Enable". All I can find there are: (Default), LcnEndLocation, LcnStartLocation, OptimizeComplete, Optimize Error.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

 

Same for me - could not find this......

 

But they freeze. Although I recommend having writeback cache turned on, people having problems with freezes or BSODs increase their chance of losing data.

You might give tools like GigaTweaker a break. They provide a nifty user interface for various tweaks. Nevertheless they just ensure that the right thing is done for the selected task - you are still reponsible for the decision what tweak to turn on or off.

 

I have a Z11 from beginning of may.
Crossing fingers I didn't have any of the above reported problems: nor mechanical alignement nor video lines or blank screen.
Only one freeze (black screen) happened to me after installing a game, but it will never happened again.

In Italy one can configure a custom Z12, 3-4 weeks delivery; the only difference with old Z11 is that, for same configuration, Z12 costs 20-30 euro more.

 

I will say that I have really tried, to weigh down the Pro's and the Con's of the Vaio Z. The premium cost of the machine, having only one config in my Country for over 3500 USD(256 GB SSD, no Blu-Ray or Engraving) is such a hefty fee, particularly for a person on a heavy budget.


Here is what I have gathered from things posted here, and in reviews and videos;


Pro:
- Incredible Slim and Light
- Wonderful high resolution screen. The best screen on a Notebook of this size.
- Incredible unmatched keyboard, and great trackpad.
- Good array of ports.
- Powerful Graphics for a sub 14'' Notebook(only m11x and Acer 3820 can compete)
- Backlit Keyboard
- Sturdy build quality, of Carbon Fibre
- Sound Quality is more than average
- Great support of ports
- Sexiest Design, period.


Con:
- Incredible pricey. Will the technology be long lasting enough before the worth of the machines price?
- The high native resolutions forces compromises like having to increase fonts, and lower games resolutions.
- The 330 GPU is downclocked.
- Battery has taken a hit due to powerful CPU, even though it's still okay.
- Higher right hinge
- Higherish temperatures, but not deal breaking. Could have been lower for such expenssive tech.
- Wrist area fades after a while.
- Non upgradeable SSDs in raid, that they dont give performance boosts in many applications. You are forced to use this FOREVER.
- Horrible driver support, means being behind in many fields.. particularly related to the GPU, as normal Nvidia drivers won't work.
- No Optimus. It seems like it would have solved many problems.





I'm not really sure, if the Con's outweight the Pro's or whatnot. The alternatives in the <13'' range, are not taken lightly either.

The 3820 with average Display, and Keyboard, with a mediocre Design, and being an Acer, or the Alienware M11x with a smaller screen(11,5''), weak CPU but more powerful GPU, and 1/4 heavier than the Vaio Z.


At the end of the day, I don't understand why they are forcing people to use their SSD's... And in Raid. It would have been much more attractive to be able to do the upgrades yourself. I would start with a normal Hard Drive, and then shop around.
In 3 years, if the laptop last that long, I don't think 128GB, 256GB or perhaps even 512GB SSD would be enough.

It's one of those overkill situations I think!

 

Thankyou very much for your informative reply and I think I'll be leaving mine as it is. All I've done is disable the weekly defrag option.

 

You can go for the HDD option via Conics like I did. I'm finishing up a custom PCB that will host 2 non-Sony SSDs in RAID.

I think the GPU is underclocked because it overheats and gets throttled easily, resulting in stuttering of graphics. Then again, the temperature I measured was only ~73 deg Celsius, so that seemed rather strange

 

73? under load?

 

Yeah, quite low isn't it? Something else must be going on...

It's ok, I'm not too hung up on that, I still managed to complete DoW2

 

I fully agree

Sound is worse than average

I agree

I don't know the answer but there is no other Notebook fully comparable, than the leader sets the price.

In my experience no need to increase fonts, characters are small but very sharp and brilliant

With extended battery it seems to me to have a netbook with 9 cells battery, but lighter and full HD.

Only if you measure it with a caliber

Never noticed so higher, but I play intensive graphic games only occasionally, in that case you are right

My wrist area is very clean, but I used it for a short period (40 days), in future I will see.

Right

IMHO Pro's outweight the Con's

 

can anyone tell me how Battlefield Bad Company 2 runs?

 

From this review;


"The built-in Nvidia GeForce GT330 M loses in gaming performance against other GT 330M notebooks due to its low clock rate. The Samsung R580, for example is faster by 5 fps in the integrated benchmark of Far Cry 2 (35 versus 30 fps). The Alienware M11x has a faster graphic card (GT335M) but the slow 1.7 GH7 Core 2 Duo slows down its performance. It has to admit a clear defeat in Far Cry 2 in low details, whereas it wins slightly with 31 fps in high details. Thus, either the one or the other will win in the comparison of M11x versus Z11, depending on the game and required processor performance.

The graphics solution in the Z11X9E/B is still very fast despite it being downclocked (especially if you consider the case size) and can even present modern and demanding games, like Battlefield Bad Company 2, smoothly (51 fps in the lowest settings in the test)."

Notebookcheck: Review Sony Vaio VPCZ11X9E/B Notebook



They say, the 330, is downclocked to around the same performance as a 325, which according to notebookcheck ( Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GT 325M ) can run BF Bad Company 2 at lowest with 45ish FPS.

 

- Hinges are perfectly aligned on my Z (Euro CTO), both are ~0.3mm (0.01in) lower than the aluminum chassis
- Wrist area is also perfect after ~3 months and heavy use (8h a day)

 

Well, sort of. Remember that the writeback caching is done by the little controller inside the drive. So even if your computer locks up, this doesn't mean that the controller inside the drive is in any way affected. In fact with the operating system ceasing its incessant demands, the drive should very quickly catch up with its disk writes.

 

there's an easy fix.

take out all the screws and shift it little bit to make it aligned (top lid and palm rest) and re-screw it carefully and slowly....

 

Could someone tell me where to go to adjust webcam settings, such as lowlight compensation? I was skyping today and when I turned off the light the video from my webcam was completely black.

I also tried reinstalling the WebCam companion that came with the laptop but for some reason I can't get it and Skype to work at the same time. Only one can use the webcam and it becomes unavailable to the other.

EDIT: Figured out the issue. Lowlight compensation was turned on in Skype but when I turned off the lights, the auto brightness would turn down my screen brightness so low that my webcam would be completely dark. Just turned off auto brightness in Vaio Control Center and problem solved.

 

omg so excited 3 weeks till my life is complete!!!11!!

 

Haha, well it's those three weeks that are the hardest =). But congratz! You won't be let down =p

 

I'll comment the same way Ricardo_Ric did:

Not really sure the keyboard is "increadible unmatched"... But I agree, it's a really good keyboard, and a great trackpad. Just not the best ever.

Well, I previously wrote in this thread that the sound was OK and, well... It is enough to chit-chat on Skype, enough to hear the Windows notifications, enough to quickly look at some irrelevant videos, but really disappointing for listening to any music or film. In that case you have to go with the headphones. There is no bass at all and even at max volume it's still not very loud.

It's not the worst sound ever, but far from the best, very far.

As said Ricardo_Ric: worse than average.

It's the kind of compromise you are willing to go with given all the pros. (basically to have great speakers you need at least some space in the case !)

I don't know how to describe it but when I'm working on my Z I have a strong feeling of sturdiness and quality that I don't have with any other (cheaper) notebooks I've ever had. It's hard to explain... I don't know if it's the feeling of the aluminium frame, the great keyboard or what, but I have this impression at the tip of my fingers. Really strange but reassuring.

Cf. my previous comment: I don't know if it will last long enough but my inner feelings are confidents. That's my hope at least for this machine to last at least 4 to 6 years.

Like Ricardo_Ric I keep the DPI at 100%. Also I've set the hotkey to launch the Windows magnfier, really handy.

I'd say the high-res may be a problem for casual user (and then, they would use the default setting of 125% DPI and Internet Explorer so it's fine) but for the power user that's not really a problem: the extra pixels are useful and there are many tools to compensate if necessary (change the DPI, magnifier...)

About the games, it's true only if you'd were playing at native resolution. 1366x720 is better on a 1366x720 display than on a 1920x1080 display. If the resolution is not 1366x720 then none of the displays are at native resolution and in that case I'd say the higher res the better interpolation!

I tried OCCT and FurMark (on the nVidia GPU) and it never reaches 80°C here. I should try to use both at the same to see where it would go...

Notice that even at 80°C, the fan is clearly more audible but still I find it manageable and not too annoying.

Also I've made my own little list of "could be better" things about the Z11:
- It looks like the "noise-cancelling" feature is useless : adds a little "buzz" sound (definitely noticeable when no music at all) but doesn't seem to cancel much noise
- The noise-cancelling headphones may not work properly with every other devices
- The noise-cancelling headphones can be used as a complete headset (i.e. phones + mic) but the mic is crappier than the mic integrated in the Z, so not really useful
- USB ports are not very conveniently placed
- The fan sound could be more pleasing or even more quiet
- My "Zoon out" key (Fn+F9) doesn't seem to work here!
- The "Zoom in" key (Fn+F10) doesn't work either in Firefox... Firefox probably doesn't suppor this feature. (it works in Adobe Reader for instance)
- Only one out of three hotkeys can be (easilly) redefined
- Keeping accessible the eject button on the DVD drive and providing a fourth hotkey would have been welcome
- Changing the hybrid graphics toggle button while in standby mode leads to bad things
- My thumb sometimes happens to lay just on the wireless switch, making it easy to disable Wifi by mistake while I'm just surfing in the bed
- Battery life could be even better... Couldn't it be possible for Sony+Intel to provide a way to underclock the CPU? Like a "low-voltage" CPU which would still able to run at stock speed when needed!
- Crappy loud-speakers; no bass at all and maximum volume is barely enough sometimes
- Black carbon fiber finish is nice but not sure it is worth the additional 50€
- The Ethernet port is so tight that I must "strip" my Ethernet cord to be able to plug it!


I should add that however I'm very happy with my purchase. Things could be better, but they are already GREAT!!!

 

DITTO; Ive had a lot of laptops & this is by far the best, having great performance, light weight & robust while being feature rich......
Cheers,
T

 

I've assigned the buttons on my mice (which I've recently realized are all Logitech) to zoom in / out. So it's very convenient when using FireFox.

I just overclocked (ok clocked to normal rates) the GPU. I used Nvidia inspector, that seems to work without any drama. I'll check the temperatures again tonight. I would imagine you could use that same program to underclock, and check how much battery you might save. But that would be a manual process...

What I thought too...

 

I've been thinking about the palm rests for a while. There are places where we can submit CAD designs and have them milled out of metal. So I'm toying with the idea of designing a palm rest, and having it milled out of aluminum and coated with black oxide (I don't know how that feels like). The designing part seems to be the worst: I looked at the insides and there are multiple holes for the screws, and clasps which secure the palm rest to the keyboard. I'm not sure how straight-forward it is to deal with those at the moment.

 

I was speaking about the CPU, not the GPU. For the GPU is not a concern since I'm always in the Intel IGP unless I'm playing (in which I rather have better performances even if I must plug in the power cord).

So about the CPU, it looks like it's a dead-end. The new 'i core' CPU can't be under/over-clocked or under/over-clocked anymore; it's all in Intel hands only.

 

To improve battery I have adjusted the 'power settings' where an option to set minimum and/or maximum process performance can be set by pecentage (eg. for Stamina mode I set max CPU value at 50%). This seems to work well & save battery.
Cheers,
T

 

This is my current setup, before I order, should I change anything?



*it's Dutch, but you will understand most.
**zonder means without.