Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Please, definitely post some pictures when you can...I'm especially interested in seeing the screen at that resolution.

 

ViDock 2 is what you are looking for.

 

Yup! They have 2 versions of it. One with the built in ATI card and another which allows you to slap in a card of your choice either Nvidia or ATI.

 

I don't know if I am envious or jealous.

.dj

 

I ordered 2/26, expected ship date 3/16. First time I talked to the rep they told me delayed until 3/23. That days rolled around with no update. Talked to the rep again and updated now to 4/6. <sigh>

 

Will do. Thx.

 

I will... I just need to find a place to host the pictures !
I want to try and see if I can video the screen to get a better idea of the viewing angle as well as the impact of the TN on colors, like on Arth1's avatar.

 

you ordered on 2/26 the Signature model, the Z11FHX/XQ? And you're now told 4/6? If this is the case, you should go tell the guys in the other thread as it'd mean everybody else is being pushed back at least that much

 

I am keeping trying!!!

*You are now chatting with 'Karen H'
Karen H: Hello and thank you for visiting Sonystyle. How may I help you today?
you: Hi Karen Good Morning
Karen H: Hello
you: I am really interested in buy the New VAIO Z signature Series
you: the VAIO Signature Collection Z Series
*Karen H: Yes, I can connect you to a sales specialist whom can assist you with your purchase. Would you like me to connect you now?
you: Ok, Please
Karen H: Thank you, One moment while I connect you.
Please allow a moment while I transfer the chat to 'Robert G'.
You are now chatting with 'Robert G'
Robert G: Hello and thank you for visiting Sonystyle. How may I help you today?
you: Hello Robert
you: I am really interested in buy the VAIO Signature Collection Z Series
Robert G: I am here to help./..
Robert G: Are you registered on sonystyle.com...?
El Rana sends:


El Rana says:
*you: I have been reading in some forums that they are getting pretty good discounts on this Z series
you: Yes, I am
Robert G: may I have the email address?
you: sure no problem, it is ***
Robert G: Thanks
Robert G:
Robert G: Can you provide the model number for the notebook you want
Robert G: That way I can get the Z series model you are interested in the cart...
Robert G: Jose?
you: Yes Sr
you: I am interested in this model
you: Model number: VPCZ11FHX/XQ
Robert G: Thanks so mcuh
Robert G: *much
Robert G: Excellent, are you interested in Extended service plans?
you: Actually Yes because it is a very expensive laptop. I am interested in the 3 Year Express Ship Service Plan with Accidental Damage from Handling Protection [Sony recommends] - [ $399.99 ]
Robert G: That is a awesome way to protect...
you: But that is why, I am trying to get a pretty good discount
you: OK, thank you
*Robert G: Backstage VIP Protection Suite if you add that for 69.99 I can offer you 100.00 off
Robert G: Would that be something you are interested in?
you: mmm nop I am just interested in the 3 Year Express Plan
Robert G: Ok
Robert G: I am able to offer you 50.00 off the notebook..

*you: mmmm nop
you: It is not enough
you: Many people is getting 17% discounts in this model
*Robert G: One moment
you: OK, thank you
*Robert G: I am very sorry to inform you I am only able to offer you 50.00 off the Z series notebook.
As far as the 17% discount customers are receiving , I am not aware of any notebook that is eligible for that high of a discount...
I am able to offer 10% off the notebook if you add 2 accessories, VIP backstage, and esp...
*you: mmmm nop, It is not enough, because I know many people got those high discounts.
you: Ok, Thnak you very much, maybe I am going to buy the new Mac Bro Pro, they offered me a good discount.
you: Thnak you very much
Robert G: I can understand where your coming from for sure...
*Robert G: Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?
you: No, Thank you very much
Robert G: If you have a moment, can you please take my 5 question survey? Please press the "CLOSE" button at the right corner to start. Your feedback is appreciated.
Robert G: Thank you for visiting Sonystyle. Have a great day!

HE JUST WANT TO OFFER ME 50 DOLLARS IN A 4500 DOLLARS LAPTOP!!!!

 

Ordered one.

 

wow that is just brutal. It seems like the people who preordered back in early february got bigger discounts. Maybe it's because that model is selling so well lately that they decided to stop giving such large discounts...

 

Take the standard warrenty and then ask for a discount. They will probably give you more discount. If not, try an other person.

 

Sweet! Would love to know how it works out for you once you try it out! I've been thinking about getting one too.

 

Got it!! I am going to do it

I want to get the VPCZ11FHX/XQ just because has the Full HD display. I am living in USA, and just they offer it with the signature series.

 

Also, I think you need to call in. I think everyone that got the discount called in. When people tried chatting online, they didn't get it.

 

IzzyB68 I did it, and they just offered me 50 dollars off!!!. Maybe I am going to wait for the next refresh of z model, and probably they have the Full HD display en customize.

 

I got a 10% discount on a corporate perks plan although I've read a lot of people being able to get that sans such plan. I tried chatting with 2 reps to get the additional 5% off to no avail. Finally I called in and told them I know others are getting the additional 5%. The rep went to check with her supervisor and came back and told me they're only able to offer the 5% if you buy an extended warranty. I told her to look at my order and see the 399 I dropped on the 3yr warranty. She added the extra 5% discount for a total of 15%.

 

You can add me in there, I live in the US; ordered 3-09 received 3-25 (i hope! )

 

In case anybody wanted to shrink their Windows partition, Windows refused to let me resize below a certain point because of locked system files, and I couldn't be bothered to mess around placating it. gparted live worked just fine on the Z11, apart from the touchpad not being recognised (but using alt to pull down the menus then ctrl-f2 and typing 'reboot' worked fine).

I figured I'd try booting an Ubuntu live CD in a bit and see what I get.

 

I had the EXACT same guy on the phone, i was looking for a 15-20% discount.

He told me the max he could give was 10%, and that was if I bought the signature collection and extended warranty. Also, he said that the education discount that I would normally get doesn't stack. I also had to buy 2 accessories to get the 10%. So instead of 15% + 7% = 22% like some of you have had, maybe even 20% + 7% = 27%, i got 10%. I am really hating sonystyle right about now.

 

What country are you in?
Did you try calling in or only chat?

 

I am living in Napa CA, USA, and I called by phone, and I also Chat with a sales rep.

 

Unless I missed a post somewhere, no one has gotten more than 20% and only a couple people (I think 2 or 3) have gotten 20%. Most people were getting 15% if they bought the warrenty.

 

Several days ago someone posted in this thread that Sony USA was starting to investigate these 15%+ discounts that many phone reps (and their supervisors) were authorizing, and that they were putting an end to them. Not sure how legitimate that is, but based on the evidence that not many people who have ordered recently have been getting very good discounts, it wouldn't surprise me if it was true.

 

Run PerfectDisk on the windows partition, then allow it to run on reboot (system files). It will move the files and allow you to further shrink the volume.

 

yeah, I posted that after a conversation over the phone I had with a couple of sales reps and so far it looks to be the case.

 

As I said, I didn't need to as I used gparted.

 

No one has reported getting stacked discounts. There is no 15% + 7%. Most folks who got discounts in the u.s. got either 10% or 15% TOTAL.

A couple of people got 20, almost as a kind of a freak thing, early on, but I think that if you start out asking for 20 you will probably get nothing.

I started out by politely asking for 15%. I was told that because I had the 7% educational discount that they couldn't do it. But the order taker was nice and she created a new account for me, they could not sell me a laptop that didn't have the 7% discount, on that account.

We canceled my 7% sale and created a new sale on a new account for 15%. That's why I'm pretty certain that no one gets stacked discounts.

 

Should be here early next week.

 

Does anyone with experience with the VAIO control panel know if there is a way to programatically (ie from a commandline or script or something) enable/disable the Automatic Brightness Control. I *love* it when I'm on battery, but I'd like to be able to disable it when plugged in or on High Performance power mode -- unfortunately that feature does not appear to be tied to power modes... Any chance there is a commandline tool that can manage that setting?

Oddly, while it clearly interacts with the system brightness control, it is not directly in control of it (ie full brightness on the system control with Automatic Brightness enabled equals something definately not full brightness).

 

You know, you were perfectly right in this case. They would not have left it by the door. In fact, they don't allow much but to get it to the person that REALLY ordered it !!!



I mean, 'No Rerouting, no holding for pickup, no address corrections, deliver only to the named recipient, NO EXCEPTIONS !'. Gee, what did I order: plutonium?

In other news, 'Yeah, it's here! My Z11FHX/XQ is here'

Now, I'll go buy a decent camera at my local Best Buy since I seem to have misplaced mine

 

I am curious as to whether anyone else has this problem.

I have the Vaio Bluetooth mouse: VGP-VMS30, which I have had for quite some time. It works with my vaio tx without running into this issue. I notice they still sell this mouse. Its model# now is now a 33 instead of a 30 but it looks exactly the same, specs are the same. I assume it's effectively the same mouse.

When I use said mouse with the Z, If I don't touch the mouse for about a minute, then when I do go to use it, it won't respond for a couple of seconds. After that it works fine (until I ignore it for a minute again).

I verified that the mouse stays on, the led is on. In fact any mouse motion I perform during the 2 sec is in fact registered because when the cursor starts moving it is not from where it last was but rather from where it would be if it had been registering all along.

I have looked at the Bluetooth as well as Mouse configuration settings and none of the settings seem to affect this behavior.

Any ideas?

 

Just got my brand new Z. In love with it, some impressions.

1. Keyboard has improved from the past. Doesn't make as much noise as before. Keys feel really good and smooth.

2. Fan noise decrease a LITTLE.

3. Screen is beautiful. (1600x900). No lines or dead pixels.

4. No flex as far as I know.

5. Jesus this thing is LIGHT!

6. This thing is very COOL. Palmrest isn't hot underload nor keyboard.

Now for cons,

1. Wish the touchpad was a little bigger. I feel the previous Z had a bigger touchpad?

2. Hate the fact that the audio inputs are on the front.

3. Not free. =D

4. Battery wiggles a little. Some electric tape on it fixed it.

I might make a nice review for this machine, but it seems unncessary since there are so many comments about it from everyone else.

 

Only problem with electrical tape is that over time it tends to make things very gooey and sticky.

Besides, it wiggles by design. Lots of things are designed to work that way. Go check out the glove compartment in your car, I guarantee you it wiggles in much the same way. The way this battery angles in is much the same as a glove compartment (esp. ones that hang down opening to below). The batteries that slide in often don't wiggle only because there is so much more friction there, not because they don't have to put in mechanical compliance, they still do. Also think about the battery contacts and the way they are arranged on this laptop. The wiggle turns out to be an ancillary benefit in this case (because of the slight scrubbing action contact resistance won't increase so much over time due to oxidation buildup between the electrical contacts).

Anyway, that's just my thoughts on that. I only bring it up because so many people on here have been mentioning this as an issue.

 

On my SZ I used little sticky felt dots to steady the battery, the kind you put under knickknacks. Probably do the same on my new Z.

 

Why's everyone concerned if the battery wiggles?

 

probably more of an annoyance than a concern

 

danke danke

sorry, i'm really trying hard to 'double dip,' can you pm me some tips please?

 

You have a good eye.

They are pretty close to identical horizontally, the new versions are about 1/8" smaller vertically. Personally, I didn't notice until I read your post.

 

Agreed. Goo becomes a problem

I'm going to use single-coated "closed cell" neoprene tape (foam tape). It won't stick and the stuff will deform to the surface.

 

I just got back from the pentagon city sonystyle to check out the z and I brought a Ubuntu 9.1 boot CD to quickly test out Linux.

With intel graphics enabled, an all black screen loaded with some green spots flickering. Obviously somethings wrong there. With Nvidia, I got to the Desktop but something kept on making the panels reload which meant i couldn't test anything out (i was hoping to click on the notification indicating that i could enable restricted drivers). Also the touch pad didn't work, which made things pretty difficult.

Thats all I've got, wish I had some more time with it to actually try and install and mess with the drivers.

If anyone else has or can test Linux out and fill us in on how it goes, please do so. Its the only thing keeping me from purchasing at the moment.

 

My new Z has been having problem connecting to my home wireless route. OCCASIONALLY after reboot, it connects to the router using the 168.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address and unable to connect to internet.

I've set my router to assign a 192.xxx.xxx.xxx ip address to every connected device.
to solve this, i will have to reset my router and let it re-establish the connection again.

this doesnt happen to my old SZ, is there an alternative solution? because resetting my router ALMOST everytime i switch my Z on is somewhat irritating.

thanksss

 

When no DHCP server is available to assign an IP address a network card will use APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing) to generate its own IP. This generally means that the wireless NIC hasn't properly registered with the access point and hasn't been able to request an IP address.

Stefan

 

http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/sony-vaio-vgn-sz691nx-cases-covers-skins-shields.php

Think this might be the same size as the current Z's specs? I thought the SZ was the old Z.

 

i'm ordering pretty soon - is there a consensus on i5 vs i7 when considering battery/performance?

quite the price difference in the US, seeing if it is worth that much.

 

The SZ is two generations removed from this one. It has the more traditional screen shape, which is significantly taller than this one.

 

SZ is 13.3" 16x10, the Z is 13.1" 16x9.

 

OK, so I just opened my brand new CTO Z...

i7-620M
8GB RAM
512GB SSD
1600x900
DVDRW
7 Pro w/Fresh Start
Premium Carbon

My initial thoughts:

* Built very nicely. No physical defects that I can see. Very very lightweight, but it still feels quite solid.

* Battery isn't anywhere near as sloppy a fit as my SZ. On the SZ the thing wobbled something horrible, but here it only moves if I try to make it move.

* No creaking in the palm rest.

* Based on reports here, the fan isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting (and I'm veeeerrryyy picky on fan noise on my computers). It has more of a low "whirring" sound than my SZ, but also doesn't seem to run as fast as my SZ does when just doing basic stuff (so less "whoosh" sound). No horrible high pitched sound as someone else reported. Quite a bit of "new electronics" smell to work through, though.

* The 1600x900 screen is better than I was expecting - certainly better than my SZ's 1280x800 screen. It seems about as bright as the SZ's LED screen, but has much better colors and blacks. Gamma is also far closer to my NEC LCD2490WUXI monitors - the SZ had horrible gamma that I could *never* calibrate to even vaguely accurate (dark colors way too dark, light colors disappear, etc). So I'm pretty happy with the screen, and am very happy I went with 1600 and not the full HD model.

* Note that I can see the infamous diagonal lines if I get close enough and move my head just right, but I don't see them at all from a normal distance with normal head movement, so no problems for me. Incidentally, even my SZ had those lines if I got close enough and looked hard enough.

* Faaast! This is my first SSD-based system, and with the quad RAID this thing rips! Right now I'm doing my first WHS backup and it seems my gigabit network is the bottleneck now...

* Green power light is rather bright in a dark room.

* Keyboard does indeed show grease marks fairly strongly, but I expect that to "even out" over time, especially as the matte texture wears off (which it will).

* The palm rest is kind of a dark graphite grey versus the jet black anodized aluminum. The premium carbon lid is also jet black, and very matte, with a kind of horizontal brushed look to it (on my premium carbon SZ it just looked like black paint, and unless you shone a light just right you couldn't even tell if there was any carbon fiber there - actually a point of much discussion 4 years ago). If I didn't know the new Z was carbon fiber, from the visible texture/pattern I'd think it was a piece of milled aluminum.

* Speakers are horrible, even worse in terms of frequency response than my SZ, but I don't have a problem with the maximum available volume versus the SZ. As long as you don't mind your ears bleeding.

* Like everyone else, VAIO Update doesn't work.

Edit: my Fresh Start did come with webcam drivers and software ("ArcSoft WebCam Companion")... also a light version of Roxio, but no multimedia software.

 

When that happens to me, I usually just right click on the connection icon and select repair. Or just toggle the WiFi-switch on the Vaio. Somewhat easier to restart the Vaio's connection instead of the routers. Still annoying though.

Perhaps you could try another WiFi channel on the router or something, perhaps the Vaio will have an easier time connecting to it for some reason.

 

Glad that there's no high pitched whining sound from the fan, I guess some are just defective.