Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

What exactly do you guys mean by that, the Display looks worse if you lower the resolution?

Why won't a 1920x1080 look good in 1366x768 for example? They are both 16:9!

Of course it's a given that the resolution won't be as crisp as it's fewer pixels, but I don't understand why it will look bad just because it's a LCD/LED display?

 

Is it possible to install Win 7 32-bit on the Vaio Z? (I may be forced to due to an application compatibility issue with Win 7 64. ) Are drivers available for 32-bit?

thanks

Kevin

 

LCD displays have a fixed amount of pixels. If you are using the native resolution, it's perfect. But if you're using another resolution the image pixels won't perfectly fall in the display pixels, so the actual display will use interpolation to simulate a lower resolution display. As a result, the image will be a little blurry...

Unless of course the resolution is round multiple of the native resolution, like displaying 800x600 on a 1600x1200 monitor which is the quarter (half on each dimension). But that's usually not the case ;-)

This is to oppose to the old-fashionned CRT where there is no fixed amount of pixel. These are made depending on the chosen resolution, that's one of the reasons why an old school CRT is better for emulations

I'll add that I just installed Baldur's Gate 2 on my Z and the game in 1024x768 looks really great despise the interpolation. I guess having a lot of small pixels make it harder to feel the blurriness of the interpolation process.

 

LCDs always display at their native resolution so anything less gets upscaled by the hardware and usually looks blocky and jagged.

But since 1920x1080 at 13.1" is such a crazy small size, I thought Sony might have designed something special allowing it to display the "normal" 1600x900 in addition to the FHD mode...

James Pond: Your comment is based on experience right? I see you've got the FHD model in your SIG so I assume you've tried it.

 

I hear what you are saying. problem is, i'd like to trash the recovery partition - 14gb wasted, I'll never use it. but do want the drivers. i ghosted the drive, so in the worst case i can come back to it.

 

My comment is based about all the LCDs I've experienced with so far.

About the FHD Z I use, I tend to play to old games (understand: which do not let you choose any high-def resolution) so I've definitely experienced the interpolation that "blurs" things. However as noted previously, with such a high DPI the result is quite pleasing anyway...

It's just that I wouldn't recommend it if you could use the native resolution... For games it's OK but for work you'd better bump the DPI or the application specific settings that going with a lower resolution.

 

Somebody has problems with scratches on the carbon fiber lid?

 

just make sure you never touch it with a hand covered in mosquito repellant (DEET). You WILL regret it

 

It's only 8GB, I reclaimed mine last night.

Does anyone know if there is a way to set the HD password? Do the proprietary SSDs even support HD passwords? I don't understand why more laptop manufacturers don't support it. Lenovo is the only maker that I know of that does. All 2.5" laptop drives come with support for a password. If the drive doesn't get the password, it refuses to work. It's a great feature. Someone steals your laptop and without that password, your data is safe because your drive is a brick.

 

Regarding the FHD screen - I'd just like to say that I don't think anyone should bother with the low-res one. the FHD is simply amazing, and the fonts are not small at all (that was my worry, on such a small screen). Worth it - that and the backlit keyboard for sure.

 

Only the huge one that mine came with fresh out of the box.

 

You can't change the DPI in a remote desktop session. And I use RDP from my laptops a *lot* so I would probably end up using a lower resolution regularly to make it legible. So unless scaled 1600x900 on the FHD looks as good as the native non-FHD, I guess I've got to go with the lame screen. Boo.

FYI, there's a mod for BG2 (and other infinity engine games) that will let you play it at the full 1920x1080 resolution. Have fun.
G3: Widescreen Mod

 

I don't get it - when you use RDP, it scales the remote screen to the resoluton of your local one. So if you use a 1920x1080 laptop, it will scale the remote screen to 1920x1080.

 

Right, but you can't change the remote machine's DPI (it's always default 96) so text will very very tiny running [email protected]".

 

I generally run my Windows laptops with Bitlocker. Sadly the US Z doesn't have a TPM rendering Bitlocker impractical. So I tried Truecrypt. It's not good. It seriously degrades performance. Disk speed is cut in half and CPU use goes up 5x. Here are some dumps of the benchmark screens.

 

My little review.

First impression. It's ungodly fast. The RAID SSDs make hibernation about the same speed as suspension on other computers. The looks have grown on me. When I first saw this in stores, I described it as a "$600 computer". But now, I think of it as a jewel. It's beautiful. But with every jewel, there are flaws.....

The keyboard.... I find it hard to type on. I'm used to a Thinkpad keyboard and it's just not as good. It's nice and firm with no flex but there is way too much space between the island keys. Sometimes I find myself hitting the space in between. The trackpad buttons are also not good. They are right on the edge of the machine and are curved.

The screen.... lovely for pictures and video. But it's "harsh" for text. It feels very similar to using a TV as a monitor. It's not very evenly lit. There's a horizontal hot band thats brighter than the rest. You can really see it if you tilt the machine up and down. Once again, I'm used to Thinkpads. Their much misalign screens are much better for text if not as good for video. They are insanely evenly lit and well... paper like. I can spend 16 hours a day staring at Thinkpad screen, I'm not sure I can with the Z.

The security.... what security? I work on my laptops and definitely do not want my data being stolen. Thus I run bitlocker on my Thinkpad. Sadly, the US Z doesn't include a TPM chip. It's there for the rest of the world but in the US, it's just a blank spot where the chip should be. Thus bitlocker is impractical. I tried Truecrypt and it seriously degrades performance. Disk speed is cut in half and CPU use goes up 5x when accessing the disk. I guess it's back to EFS. Also, why no harddisk password? With that alone, your drive is pretty safe since it's just a brick if someone steals it.

All in all, I like the Z but I'm not sure it can replace my Thinkpad. I love the speed. I really love the speed but the harsh screen and the lack of security kind of doom it as my work laptop. It may just have to be my portable gaming/cuda rig. I'm keeping an eye out for the return of the X201s.

 

Mine's in for repair at the moment to replace the hard drive that failed (after 2 months!) - they promised 1-2 weeks. For almost a week it was "awaiting parts". They've had it for 8 days and now it's "repair in progress".

 

I tried to search the forums but I haven't come up with anything...

I am currently running Evernote and google talk. When I switch graphics mode (typically when I unplug, I get a popup that says i must close both programs in order for the computer to automatically change. I always just hit the "make change" button without any issues. Sometimes, the box will actually pop up and there isn't a program listed... Any ideas why this is?

 

of all the vaio model chiclets in 2010, only the z has this bizarre exaggerated spacing

sony - what on earth were you thinking?

 

Well I picked up the VPC-Z112GX/S at retail. Got the display model for $1500 (Yeah, I know ... some of you got better deals on new ones ). But at least I can play with it for a week and return if I decide I'm not satisfied.

This has the regular 1600x900 display and I think I am satisfied. I can definately tell the difference between the local DPI (default 125%) and the remote desktop's 100% (96) default.

Anybody have tips about color adjustment? By default it feels seriously oversaturated (like the "vibrant" torch mode most TVs ship with). I found the sliders in the intel GMA control panel, but I was hoping for something more basic to get it to a baseline color profile first.

My only other complaint so far is that the keyboard has no dedicated home/end keys! As a programmer, and even typing in Firefox, I feel the lack of them constantly. Maybe I can remap something like the right side alt/ctrl junk I never touch...

By the way, I did a restore to factory defaults from the VAIO tool. This had the very welcome option not to install any bull software. It installed Windows 7 Pro x64 and only the drivers/software actually needed to use the laptop features. I approve!

 

Someone in this thread said that the center-to-center distance on the Z's keys was the same as on Thinkpads.

 

If plugged in this is normal. If not there may be a problem. Perhaps you should check the power settings. It may be set to max performance mode?

 

hey guys i did a few z1 gaming tests and made a small video

YouTube - Cenkaetaya Reviews: Sony Vaio Z - VPCZ112GX/S Gaming Benchmarks COD4 - CSS - COH

check it out. Its a demo of:

Call of Duty 4
Company of Heroes
Counter Strike Source

 

Where did you get one for that amount?

 

Microcenter. They had it listed at $1699 since it's a discontinued model (replaced by some Z12) then 10% off as a display unit.

 

I've been messing with this all night long and I cannot get the colors right.

In Windows 7 color management I can add the supplied color profile (Sony VAIO display profile_D65) in the device page and also set it as the Device Profile under the Advanced tab. This causes Windows Picture Viewer to display proper colors, but I can't get the whole screen to follow suit. For example, the desktop background is still horribly oversaturated.

I think I want the video card LUT values changed (like Adobe Gamma used to). Windows 7 supposedly can do it when you check "Use Windows Display calibration", but that seems to only clear out any existing LUT values.

Anyway I don't want to bore you with all the things I've tried. But it seems strange to me that it's so hard to get this nice laptop to display realistic color. Is it because the screen is Wide Gamut?

Surely one of you other Z owners cares about color. Have you got the color settings calibrated properly for the whole system (desktop etc), and not just color-managed applications like Windows Picture Viewer and Photoshop?

 

has anyone tried or planning to mod their vaio Zs to add 3G capability now that sony has released the Z127 with that feature?

 

I remember reading somewhere maybe it was in the video settings that if you change something the vertical lines disappear I'm almost certain of it.

 

have a z 12 headed my way, couple thing was concerned with
lots of people talkng about the battery life, esp those with the i7 core?
if the i5 doesnt even reach the advertised 6.5 hours, in optimal conditions, how much worse is the i7??

 

Hi mate, still waiting like me? I have waited for just over 2 weeks now

Anyway, it really depends how you use the laptop. You should still get 5.5 hours with the i7.

 

Dear all, is it possible to partition the SSD and install an additional OS? I have the 4x64G RAID model (European). I tried once with the Paragon Partition Manager 10, but it failed (it restarted without a problem, though).
Any ideas?
Also, I replaced the RAM modules with 2x4GB Trancend 1333 (instead of 1066), but there was no improvement in the windows experience index. Is that normal?

 

yes but the keys are smaller on the z

 

Sorry if this is already covered here - just scanned a few pages and could not find an answer.

Is the Sony Vaio Z series available in Canada? I have been looking at the sony web page for Canada, and can not find a reference to the Z series at all.

I had a look at one in Best Buy, but that one has only 128Gb of SSD. I need at least 256Gb for my application. Since they don't use standard SATA drives, I have no idea how to upgrade it if that is even possible. The alternative is to order one from the web site....if I can find it!

Thanks in advance!

 

If I understand correctly how the display works, the FHD screen would be less bright then the 1600x900 one for purely technical reasons (in short, the pixels are smaller but the obturator is the same size, which leaves less room for the backlighting to pass trough). If it's indeed the case it might be a good reason to avoid the FHD if you don't need it at all.

Also there is the price to take into account... In CTO the FHD option is really cheap and I'd recommend it. However in the pre-configured models only the "high-end" model (with i7) provides the FHD so it makes sense to avoid it just to be able to get the lower-end model that are reaaaally cheaper.

For instance, here are the typical Z11 prices I've seen when they were available (not Sony Style) :
- 1375€ for Z11 with 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, i5 CPU, 1600x900 display (damn cheap!)
- 1700€ for Z11 with 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, i5 CPU, 1600x900 display (ouch! the SSD upgrade hurts!)
- 2300€+ for Z11 with 256GB SSD, 6GB RAM, i7 CPU, 1920x1080 display (costy isn't it? especially if you don't need the i7 extra horse power...)

 

It scales pretty good to 1600x900 but it is not as good as the native non-FHD. It a fact for any LCD.

Thanks! I've already heard of it but since I'm already using some mod (BGT to name it, which enables to play Baldur's Gate with BG2 engine) I'd rather not break anything! And that way I get a more "old school" experience ;-)

 

I used a Thinkpad for many years and did indeed enjoy the keyboard.

But as I recall, the usable surface area of the keys is about the same. Doesn't the Thinkpad have a top surface area that then slopes down toward the surface of the unit?

I don't have a problem with the spacing or the size of the Z keys. The thing I do miss, though, is that indented top surface on each Thinkpad keycap.

That was somehow "comforting" as I typed.

 

Truecrypt and BitLocker aren't the same thing at all.

Truecrypt doesn't use the TPM hardware but according to them TPM is not secure at all (as opposed to its name "Trusted" Platform Module).

Sure Truecrypt consumes much more ressources since all the work is done by the CPU but I'd say Truecrypt is more secure than BitLocker.

I'd recommend Truecrypt if you ask me. That's what I use for both my personal sensitive data and my work data.

 

Has anyone some serious benchmarks on full disk encryption ?
I'm still a little bit concerned about the fact that we are having SSDs with no TRIM support (as FDE requires the disk to completly rewritten once).

As far as i know the TPM is only used as key storage (not for accelleration) - but Bitlocker should support i5/i7 aes instructions.

 

I posted a little bench of Truecrypt yesterday. To sum up, it'll cut your disk performance in half. It's CPU bound. With slow HD, you can't tell. With the superfast SSDs on the Z, it'll kill you.

Bitlocker does support AES-NI but, if you have a US Z1, no TPM so Bitlocker will be cumbersome.

 

I think the MBR of the drive needs to be changed to accommodate more OSes. Linux's GRUB does this, I'm not sure that Paragon Partition Manager does the same (I have the impression it just partitions, not multi-boot).

The other option is to use VMs, they're very convenient!

As for the memory, IIRC the max speed is 1066, so no I don't think there is an impact. In the thread on BIOS hacking, there's talk of changing the bus speed. I don't quite remember if it works or not

 

I know they aren't identical, but I wouldn't say they aren't the same at all. They are very similar. It's like comparing two cars. They might look different but they still have 4 wheels and an engine. Why do you think TC is more secure?

My problem with TC is that it's slow. On a 30MB/sec HD, that's not a problem. With or without TC you'll get 30MB/sec. On a 400MB/sec RAID SSD it's a problem. You'll get 160MB/sec with TC. That's a problem. Bitlocker has the advantage in that it supports AES-NI. On the Z, that matters since it has AES-NI. TC has that as a future option. I'll wait for that before trying TC again or suck it up and memorize that 40 digit key for Bitlocker.

 

TrueCrypt is open-source and the inner-workings of it are available for everybody. Also when setting up your encrypted partition you choose which algorithms are used... Again you know exactly what you are up to.

On the other hand, and from what I understand, TPM chips aren't secure because the keys can persist inside whereas in TrueCrypt the keys are only stored in volatile memory (RAM) and are lost when the power is off.

It's true however that on the Z TrueCrypt litterally sucks the CPU because of the speedy SSD. I ran some CrystalDiskMark on the encrypted partition and the speed is roughly 10x slower (50MB/s instead of 500MB/s) and the bottleneck was clearly the CPU: it was maxed out.

Of course it depends of the encryption algorithm used (I'm not using the fastest one).

 

Yes, that's the point of a TPM chip. It stores your key securely so that you don't have to elsewhere. The keyword here is securely. Think of it as a SD card permanently soldered onto your laptop but with password protection. There's talk about disassembling your TPM chip blah blah blah. Whatever. Just set your BIOS password and they'll never get the chance. So it comes down to defeating a password which is no different from defeating your Truecrypt password. Bitlocker and Truecrypt are equivalent in terms of security.

But..... I've found the winner. Not Truecrypt. Not Bitlocker. I brushed up on my Russian and downloaded Diskcryptor. Think of it as a fast Truecrypt. It offers the same algorithms but is blindingly fast since it supports AES-NI like Bitlocker. It's 10 times faster than Truecrypt on a i5 for AES. It's so godlike fast that I didn't think it was doing anything. Disk speed is the same with Diskcryptor as without. So I booted off my Windows 7 disk and tried to mount the encrypted volume. Nothing. It is indeed encrypted. Here's are benchmarks. One is with Diskcryptor and one is non encrypted. For all intents and purposes they are the same. Same MB/S and same CPU utilization. Finally disk encryption without penalty.

Diskcryptor is open source. I'm running the beta version that has SSD extensions. It even supports trim.

 

Woah, sounds too good to be true!

I'll check it out when I can, then. Well done for the finding and thanks for sharing!

 

Here's the official site. For some reason it's kind of hard to find. If you google "diskcryptor" a bunch of free software sites come up instead of the official site.

There is an "english" button but it's all the way at the bottom.

DiskCryptor wiki

 

I've installed it. I just tried the "Blue screen" option

Reminds me of the pre-R5 BeOS days, where you could deactivate on the fly all your processors. Wonder what happens when you deactivate the last of them?

Oh and a quick Google search here returns the SourceForge site as a first link. Maybe you're not doing the search in english?

DiskCryptor | Download DiskCryptor software for free at SourceForge.net

 

Well, too bad DiskCryptor does not support (yet) file containers. That's what I use and I'm not willing to give away this convenience.

In the forum people says it is planned for a future version. I'll wait, then...

 

Containers are far slower than doing whole disk encryption. I was wondering why you were only getting 50mb/s instead of 160mb/s.

 

Slower but much more convenient! My backup strategy consists of copying the containers. Nothing easier!

 

Well.... it's inefficient. If you are copying the whole container then you can be backing up a lot that you don't need to because you aren't doing differentials. So if you have a 50GB container and only change 1% then you are backing up the other 99% for no reason. I do differentials, I only back up what's changed. I back up my laptops to a server which has a big TC'd drive. Doing differentials, instead of backing up the whole 50GB over and over again as in this example. I only back up the 1% that changed. No need to backup the rest since it's the same.

If you want to keep the ease of your strategy, why not just encrypt the whole drive and back up a directory. In essence, there's no difference between a container and a directory for data. Both are as easy to copy and you get the speed of whole disk encryption.