Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Docking station is still listed on the Sony site: VGP-PRZ10 | VAIO® Z110 Series Docking Station | Sony | Sony Style USA

I have one. Works OK.

 

yup, that's what i saw, and what I'm confused about.

 

so... basically there are only 4 or 5 factors that are important? I've read through the 496 pages of the forum.... people posted different things, but never a full list of the 15-20 settings... for instance, when you are getting 6+ hours, where is the switch? auto or stamina? Have you created a specific power profile, or do you just change it each time? that's all - wanted to get the optimal settings for all factors, but if only a sub-set really matters, then why waste the time - right? Others concur?

 

I saw something yesterday, it didn't say out of stock, just said something like this product is no longer available. my bad.

 

The power options post would make a good stickey

 

Changed the power thread post (page 415) http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony-owners-lounge-forum/457519-sony-vaio-z-i5-i7-official-owners-thread-415.html#post6191465 to reflect these excellent suggestions ... where do you change the refresh rate from 60 - 40 hz in control center?

Also, as I'm going through this, I see that there are several nested and/or separate tools for controlling power, intel has theirs, then there is windows, then there is the vaio one.... so I think it would be good to figure out just which one to use... just having a reference for new buyers so they don't have to learn where all these settings are... <i.e> go to the power post, it will answer all your questions and you can set up your scheme by going down the list.

 

From Control Panel (Power Settings) >> Vaio Power Management

Essentially where you change the colour quality from.

Screenshot attached.

 

The short answer is all of them. The power option in the VAIO control center also has a decent impact.

If I were limited to three changes, I'd do these:

1. Refresh rate to 40
2. Color depth to 16 bit
3. Autodim after 1 min, turn off after 5 (Windows setting, not the ambient light setting from Sony).

 

I actually got mine from a 3rd party for a bit less money. Check Amazon for its offering and those of its partners.

 

Extra eject button, anyone?



LINK

 

I'm having a weird problem with my touchpad. In the Synaptics control panel (and also on the rest of the operating system - Windows 7) it doesn't recognize the correct area of the touchpad.
There are some areas which are non-functioning.

(See attachment)
The red/blue dots represent my finger position.
The thin lines represent the limits of the functioning area on each side.


If I uninstall the Synaptics driver, all the touchpad area works fine. But it isn't a valid solution. I also tried using the generic Synaptics drivers from synaptics.com, with no luck.

Looking through some webs and the registry, I found that the touchpad settings are stored in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Synaptics\SynTP\TouchPadPS2_1
So could anyone please send me a copy of that section of your registry?
Maybe overwriting my registry with it can solve my problem

 

Hi We just got two vaio Z delivered. one with 128G+256G and the other with 256+256GB. Can anyone tell me how to swap out the hard drives (i.e. disassemble/open up the laptops to pull out the hard drives)?

Thanks!

 

LOL, good point on the need to be online! I missed that point.

 

View attachment synaptics.zip

Why oh why is the 10 char limit in place? Why oh why? (Did someone put something in my drink?)

 

Search is your friend.

Video: YouTube - Sony Z11 Disassembly
Pictoral: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/466881-sony-vaio-z-vpcz1-unboxing-photos-movie.html

 

Yes, I believe they put something in mine too.

 

I was looking for something that had enough screen resolution, light, portable, and had enough muscles to develop and play games. After some research, found z series to fit the requirement, but the price was a little too much. After some consideration, finally caved in and bought. I'm glad I did. Keyed in my MSDN Windows 7 Ultimate cd key and anytime upgrade took 10 minutes to upgrade pro to ult. Cleaned the system of some bloatware and loaded all my apps (visual studio 2008 and CS3 design premium). Everything runs like a champ. I can see why there are so many happy owners here.

Micro Center - Sony VAIO VPC-Z112GX/S - Silver

If you care to know, microcenter had it for cheaper than newegg and other places. Even after tax I I payed less than newegg's price on the base model. Now here's an interesting question, does the base model have the ports ready for a quad ssd upgrade? As of now, it's dual ssd.

Happy Z owner.

 

Shouldn't there be a pinhole to jam a pin to force drive eject/open mechanically?

 

ZugZug: There is a emergency pinhole release. The pic shows a proper eject button that is covered by the bezel. Not sure why Sony would hide it like that, but they did.

The Z11 is the first Sony I've seen like this. My SZ170, TT and Z591 all had dedicated eject buttons and LED's on the drives themselves. The Z11 only has one on the keyboard.

EDIT: You can see the pinhole on this pic. No hole for the LED or button to engage the eject button on the drive itself.

 

Does anyone use bitlocker on they Z ?

What's the performance hit?

 

Well, now we're more Mac-y.

 

Does anyone have an answer to this question?

 

Hubeth, yes.

I recommend ghost

 

Has anyone overclocked the gt330?

 

Here's a link to a thread where Dio overclocked his GPU for benching purposes

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/473593-sony-z-m11x-3dmark06-scores.html

He uses EVGA Precision tools I believe. The rest of the thread discusses some of the actual clock speeds.

 

I would try if there was a way to, I tried using the Nvidia Performance tab but it would always error and revert back to stock settings.

 

Not sure if it's been discussed - Does anyone know what's the maximum theoretical SATA throughput of the HM57 chipset in RAID 0 mode? TIA

 

As far as battery life goes, here's my 2 pence worth...

I have a UK model Z11X9E/B (i5-520, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD) with both standard and extended batteries. I ran an experiment whereby I ran a long playlist of div-x movies through media player (full screen), whilst running a little counting program in the background that would write to a file.

Bearing in mind that this is not an idle test, but a test where both the CPU and GPU are constantly doing something (albeit not much), this is what I achieved:

Standard Battery: 4h 40mins
Extended Batery: 7h 08mins

The status of the machine at the time was:
stamina mode,
radios off,
screen at 40Hz (no blanking),
brightness low-ish (not lowest),
dvd drive off.

Since I mainly need battery power for short haul flights, these results are excellent for me.
(Expect idle times to be much longer, but then what's the point the thing being on if it isn't doing anything, lol )

 

Guy, just quesion who ordered sony Z with extended battery. Do you feel its losely attached? im using the extended battery but you can wiggle it?


please share your thought.

 

I can't wiggle my extended battery. Everything is very solidly built to me.

 

All batteries are slightly loose. I stuck two pieces of foam tape in the battery bay. No giggles on either battery size.

 

Both my batteries wiggle a little, but it doesn't bother me...
(My SR wiggles too, but my TZ doesn't.)

 

On the Microsoft Streets and Trips application, I don't have it installed after I did a Sony recovery.

That said, I don't recall ever having it.

What am I missing? Is it included at all?

 

I ordered mine with standard but then bought extended battery from Amazon. Both batteries attach firmly, no wiggle at all. VPCZ1190X here.

 

Don't think it is/was ever part of the package.

 

Damn that was quick. I sold my last z today! Sony distributed round 2000 units in Germany and they were sold out after 6 weeks. New models will be released in mid june. There will be three new z models. One limited edition with a bluray burner integrated.

 

The interface on the motherboard can support quad SSD (same interface). I think the question is whether the cable can do that. If it can't, then I think we can replace it. Probably will be $$ though...

(Not theoretical...) From the RAID sets I saw the rule of thumb seems to be 5 drives' throughput is the max for 1 SATA channel (not sure if it's HDD or SSD). Which is why I'm not sure if SATA3 is that necessary (for consumers)...

 

I asked the same question in the NR general hardware forum. Here are the comments:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...maximum-sata-raid-bandwidth-hm57-chipset.html

 

So do many people have a problem with the loose battery? I'm getting my Vaio Z(it's SHIPPED! =D) soon and I want to be prepared for any surprises.

 

Most Z's suffer from a slightly loose battery. I think it just depends on the person, and if it bothers them. It doesn't bother me much.

 

Oh, but they do have PCIe backplanes too:
Magma - Welcome

The problem is that the ExpressCard slot on the Z runs in USB mode, not PCIe mode, so it's too bandwidth limited for this to be too useful.

 

The battery on mine is very solid, does not wiggle at all. The battery on my old Let's Note wiggled quite a lot and the lock mechanism would often come loose on its own. The battery on my Z seems very tightly locked.

The LCD, on the other hand, is still having problems with the bezel fitting. I.e. opening/closing the lid and typing causes the LCD to distort in the corners. I'm kind of resigned to just living with it.

That's interesting about the Expresscard slot. I bought a eSATA SATA 3.0 expresscard to use w/ my Z and I was getting read speeds of about 100MB and write speeds of about 80MB. That sounds faster than USB, but I should be getting faster overall speeds if Expresscard is basically equivalent to PCIe. When I plug the same enclosure into my desktop PC, I get read speeds of about 200MB and write speeds of about 100MB. (The enclosure is a 4-bay RAID enclosure w/ eSATA).

However the Expresscard slot seems to have problems w/ the hybrid graphics. If i try to boot with the card in, I get BSOD before windows even comes up. If I insert it after windows is loaded, it works OK. However, if I try to safely remove the card, the display corrupts and I have to hard reset.

 

Oops, I got mixed up, I thought you were asking how many drives can share the same SATA channel. Sorry about that

 

re: high-pitched noise

I did a bit of experimenting and found out that the high-pitched noise only gets annoying when I am using the HDMI monitor (which I do 95% of the time).

Perhaps the high-pitched noise does not come from the fan at all, but from the GPU (or CPU)?

That may account for the fact that for many Vaio Z11 users it is not an issue, since they are not using the HDMI port?

(Sony Vaio VPCZ119GX - i5 - 256GB SSD - 8GB RAM)

 

how do u know that the expresscard slot uses the usb bridge and not the pcie one?

 

Mine definitely moves a slight bit, as have all of my 4 Vaio's before have. It doesn't bother me that much in using it, just that a 3k machine should be really perfect in fit and finish.

I'm very happy with the new Z, only thing is the mouse hangs for a couple seconds now and again when on Stamina mode.

Also I get my Booq Vyper XS2 case today, if it really fits nice I'll put some pics on here.

 

Z's ExpressCard runs in PCI-e mode just fine: I use Indigo IOx (it is a PCI-e device) in it.

 

Looks like there are going to be a lot more good options for I7 ultraportable laptops

Intel said to be prepping 1.46GHz Core i7 ULV processor for this Fall -- Engadget

 

On the Lenovo forums they are complaining about a similar high pitched sound on the T410s model, which is an ultralight 14" unit. One theory is that its an issue related to the CPU power supply.

 

Do you guys prefer the silver chassis or the premium carbon fiber? Which one is stronger also, some people have the i7 620 and i would like to know how does the heat distribution change during gaming and also during regular or intense photo and video editing sessions.