Sony X Series Official Owners Thread

I always thought the X used Pata- maybe that's the reason there's no trim?

 

The X has a PATA to SATA bridge just like the P, in fact they are practically the same computer just a different shape

 

@computercowboy, that doesn't surprise me.

Fun fact, the P has a larger capacity S and L battery than the X! The P's S battery is 2100 mah at 7.4V while the X's S battery is 2050 mah at 7.4V. The L batteries are double the mah for each. This means the X gets even worse battery life than the P due to its bigger screen and slightly higher voltage processor.

 

so far I have never drained my P large batter more than 20%
that is the best thing about it

 

You always plugged in then? I only get 2.5-3 hours of 60% backlight, wifi on, just taking notes with the standard battery.

 

Nope I always use the P when I go out to the cafe or something like that. I surf for a couple hours and have 80% left.

 

care to explain in layman's terms, what good is this TRIM function in SSD? something to do with completely erasing data rather than flagged as 're-writeable' in the case of HDD?

 

So I logon to my Vaio X yesterday and I get a "Startrep.exe" screen. I tried to restore to a previous restore point and got no where. For the life of me I can't find my backup restore disc (must have been tossed out by mistake). The only other disc I have is the restore disc that came with the laptop and it is in Japanese. So now I am stuck in this cycle of booting up and being asked if I want to start repair or restore. Either choice returns errors and I have no disc to boot from. Any suggestions besides buying a WIN7 disc and starting fresh? My biggest concern is that I will not be able to get back the Wimax feature that I had if I reinstall the English version of WIN7.

 

Isn't there a huge backup partition already installed on your hard drive?
I believe my X came with one. All you should have to do is boot into that partition and it should fix it.

Also, If anyone is interested - I am selling my XL battery (the huge one that screws on) on ebay.
Here is a link:
Sony VGP-BPX19 X Large Battery for Vaio X FREE SHIPPING | eBay

I promise I'm not trying to spam this board or anything and if this needs to be removed I will be happy to do so.

 

Hmmm that's a strange one, I've not seen it myself on the X but any time I've had boot errors with other laptops (including some with no CD / DVD drives) I've used a Windows 7 USB stick to run a Repair. You will need to get access to somebody's WIndows 7 disc alright, but then it's just a matter of copying the contents to a bootable USB stick and you can boot from this on the X. The Windows 7 boot repair has always done a great job fixing my other laptops that haven't been booting right. Rather than starting from scratch with the recovery partition. Hopefully this will work for you, best of luck.

 

I'm a bit late to the party but I'm the proud owner of a brand new Vaio X

It must've been one of the last new units available in the UK. Mine for the princely sum of £681 from Amazon Warehouse Deals! It seemed completely unused and unopened, so I'm very pleased. Maybe someone returned it without even using it?

I've been waiting and waiting for the new Vaio Z, but I saw this laptop get cheaper and cheaper on Amazon until it dipped below £700 and I just couldn't resist. I mean this X13 configuration with 128 GB SSD and WWAN was going for north of £1500 quite recently!

So far I'm pleased with my gamble. My main worry was performance. But after installing all the latest drivers and updates and removing every piece of crapware, this thing is very snappy indeed using Windows 7 Basic theme. I think the key is to install Version 2024 of the Intel drivers from Sony, then combine Chrome 11 with Flash 10.1 for the best results. 10.2 and 10.3 are poor in comparison.

The keyboard takes some getting used to but I'm getting there. The other thing I was worried about was the dreaded fan noise. I needn't have bothered. What fan noise?!

One other thing that might be helpful to fellow X-owners is gamma adjustment. Much to my disappointment, out of the box I noticed that the screen seemed very washed out. Fortunately this is fixable: I reduced the gamma to the lowest possible setting in Colour Calibration. This combined with the highest brightness setting almost gives the X the look of an iPhone retina display, it's so vibrant. It's probably the best non-glossy display I've used. It takes a bit of faffing about with the Colour Calibration tool to make the settings stick and you also have to disable Intel Color Management from Vaio Control Centre.

One of the coolest things is how quickly it sleeps and wakes up. Using Vaio Control Centre you can configure it to wake up on lifting the lid, so we effectively have the much vaunted Apple 'Instant On' feature on the X!

The only thing left on the list is overclocking with SetFSB. I've tried ramped it up to 2GHz (from 1.86) with no adverse effects, but I'm not sure it's worth sticking with the long term. I like the silence of the machine as it is, and 1.86Ghz seems fine documents, web and video. Plus it will take a lot of faffing about with Task Scheduler to make the settings stick after suspending the laptop. Has anyone got an opinion on the long term effects of overclocking the FSB? I want this laptop to be a 5-year job!

All in all an amazing piece of design that is surprisingly satisfying to use for such an underpowered system. No need to spend £1800 on that Vaio Z after all.

 

So anyone know what is the official situation with the X? Its off the US Sony site, is it completely discontinued? How about for Europe or Japan? This thing is awesome and I keep getting complements how awesome it looks and about the size. Why on earth did Sony decided not to advertise this thing is beyond me. If they did a little bit of advertising comparing to Apple Air and actually offered them in some chain stores like Best Buy, I'm sure they would have some real sales.

 

Welcome to the small-ish club! Congrats on getting it at a great price, if I had the money today I'd get another one at this price for my wife. Still using my own X after 20 months; battery is still good and despite some damage I did to a corner it's still working great! I experimented myself with overclocking from 1.86Ghz up to about 2Ghz, but didn't really notice any performance increase, and I'm happier when it's 100% quiet and the fan (as quiet as it is) is not on. I wouldn't imagine there would be any problems having it run at 2Ghz for the longterm provided you're not leaving it on your lap for too long; it would be better to have it on a flat surface so that the vents aren't obstructed.

I'm really disappointed that they seem to have abandoned the concept of the X. It's a fantastic portable computer; even a 13inch slimline machine seems like a monster in comparison. I still find the design amazing. A version 2 with dual core processor, HDMI port instead of VGA and a more capable graphics card would be amazing. But it seems we have to look to Samsung for this type of technology with their 9 series laptop, although I don't consider the design to match that of the X. And I am NOT interested in any Apple product In a way I'm kind of happy they didn't advertise it too much because it is now almost a collectible item, and I don't know a single other person who owns one. Pretty exclusive!

All in all I'm still mad about my Vaio X. I'm going on holidays soon for 2 weeks and like last year it will be the ideal travel laptop; weighs nothing, fits in any bag, takes a beating, great battery life. Hope I don't completely destroy it in future though as few of the parts are user replaceable, and those that are are impossible to find and cost a fortune...

 

Thanks for the welcome jd, it does indeed feel like I've bought a collector's item.

After a week of use I only really have one criticism: the screen has horrible viewing angles. If you reduce the red tones and lower the gamma in Windows 7 it looks amazing, but only if you position the screen at a certain angle and sit up straight! Perhaps this computer will be good for my posture

Has anyone dared to install the new Intel IEGD 10.4 drivers yet?

 

Hello

I been trying to watch hd 720p movies on my laptop but without success the picture is jumping and sound doesnt match.

What to do?

Maybe install Ubuntu or remove Sp1.

Please your commits

 

Try VLC media player? Honestly, with the integrated graphics and atom processor, I wouldn't expect much in terms of performance. 720 on my P (pretty much same hardware as your X) is not very good either.

 

Hi people, just got this baby, and i cant seems to run the iegd 10.4 drivers on it. Using the intel version, mine booted up with rainbow colors on the screen. can someone upload the working 10.4 drivers that support the vaio x 1366X768?

 

With version 2024 of the Intel Drivers downloaded from Vaio Update, I seem to be able to play 720p and 1080p videos in Windows Media Player. I'm not sure what codec the file in question is using but it's in an mp4 container.

 

To be honest I've not messed with any of the display settings (gamma etc) as the display is already a marked improvement over my Vaio SZ (an elderly laptop for sure).

The IEGD drivers, if I understand correctly, are embedded-device drivers? ie even if you can install them, there won't be DXVA or Aero support? Or am I remebering this wrong? I've not tried installing them but would be interested to see if they provide better desktop graphics performance for the X.

The 2024 drivers definitely seem to have been the best drivers released (of a bad bunch admittedly); 2026 and 2030 were noticeably bad enough that I always went back to 2024.

On 2024, I am happily watching AVCHD 1080i HD video files from my HD camera (both windowed and fullscreen) and also MKV / MP4 files with 720p h264 video (both windows and fullscreen). For the AVCHD I'm using Windows Media Player, for everything else I'm using Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) with default settings. I have not installed any codec packs or anything like that, and it's important to note that when playing these videos you should minimise the software running in the background (eg Skype, system monitoring apps, Internet Explorer etc). Playback is perfect as a result. DivX and basic SD video is always fine provided you avoid Quicktime or iTunes as media players; always try to use Windows Media Player or MPC-HC and everything works great.

720p flash video in Internet Explorer 9 (eg Youtube) is acceptable but not always perfect, thanks to Flash not being particularly CPU-conservative.

 

Do you have Aero enabled, Reverence? I found that with animations turned off it performed quite well for desktop use, but it absolutely kills full-screen video playback in WMP. I've settled on the Windows 7 Basic theme and have perfect HD playback. As jd says, 2024 are the drivers you need. I've tested two sets either side and they produce the best results.

Also of note is Flash. I've found that installing 10.1 and disabling Chrome's built-in Flash plugin (10.3) makes a significant difference.

After two weeks I'm feeling great about the X and I'm usually a remorseful buyer The keyboard feels natural now and the viewing angle issue has gone away - you just have to tilt the screen further forward than you have to with other laptops. Looking at the other 'ultralights' (either on the market or in prospect), they're 40-50% heavier and have no WWAN, ethernet, conventional display port or SD card reader and come with either glossy screens or dodgy WiFi chips, depending on which brand you choose.

 

hi jdbrookes & hello to the rest of the forum...!

I have many questions regarding the video driver, thanks for everyone who is going to answer.. =)

jd, can you point out how exactly the 2030 driver was worse than the 2024? and how does the original sony current (yeah, they never updated it, it's the old 8.14.10.2015 on my x) driver compare to the 2024, were there any disadvantages of the 2024? issues? fan noise?

on the intel website, the 2024 driver does not show up, only 26 and 30. can anyone recommend where to get the 2024?

is it difficult to install the original sony driver back on? will everything be just as it was?

can anyone tell why sony won't update their drivers? it's kind of annoying.

thanks to anyone!

matthias

 

Hello,

my X is getting strange panic attacks - it started, conspiciously, somewhere around the time when I I installed and soon later uninstalled Win7 SP1. (I also installed and uninstalled IE9 beta around that time, though I doubt this is the cause.) It's also speculation whethere SP1 has to do with it.

Here is what happens: Ca. once a day, the computer, noticeably the mouse pointer, but also windows and applications themselves, become unresponsive, for some 30 seconds (this is a guess). It's at different times. CPU temp goes up. I cannot reasonaly work on the computer at these moments,, and it comes from nowhere. In task manager ,process list, I cannot see any process going up. I was fearing it could have to do with the SSD (paranoid, probably). I have an antivirus installed, KIS 2010, so the system is likely to be clean. Thinking of it, the automatic update of KIS caused similar issues, but I have had it disabled long since.

It's a mystery, really. If anyone has seen similar problems, or if anyone can point to a diagnostics tool that will track down the cause, please do so.

matthias

 

Thanks for suggestions I will look into them and try them out on my Sony X.

 

Hi Mattias. Sony have updated their driver to 2024 and you can download it here:

VAIO : Sony Europe

Regarding SP1, I didn't install it. Much further back in the thread I believe some folks installed it and found it was problematic.

 

My tests were purely subjective really; but having used 2016 for a few months, upgrading manually to 2024 provided notable HD and Aero improvements (ie HD video was no longer skipping frames every half-minute or so, and the flashing glitches in Aero disappeared). However, when trying any of the updates past 2024 I found that the desktop Aero experience went back a step (flashing glitches returned) and HD video performance was not as good. It might have been my imagination, but the fan on the X seemed to be on practically all the time with these drivers. Which is unusual, considering the Intel changelogs for each driver version seemed to suggest that very little changes exist between driver updates.

I would say the most likely cause is your antivirus; if your SSD and CPU are simultaneously being hammered then the X becomes practically unresponsive. This happened often with the original version of Microsoft Security Essentials, which was the first AV I used on the X. MSE unfortunately used to regularly hog the CPU and seemed to randomaly choose times to scan random parts of the SSD, and it got annoying, so I uninstalled MSE and voila; problem solved. For a month or two I didn't run any AV at all, until Security Essentials 2.0 was released. I've been using this for the last few months and it is a flawless AV; it catches practically everything but it does not impact performance, especially on the X. I would recommend running this as your AV.

Also, after some initial relucatance, I've installed SP1. From reading on this forum I was worried there would be a performance impact so I made a diskimage jsut before the update so I could roll back just in case. However I have had no problems, and in fact I find that the X is now more responsive in the first few seconds when resuming from sleep (as I've said previously, the X needs about 10-15 seconds when resuming from sleep before it's at 100% performance). I would imagine that installing / uninstalling SP1 and also IE9 could cause all sorts of nitty gritty problems. At this point it may be best to restore your X to factory settings and start from scratch!

 

hello jd, quiff, and forum,
thanks a lot for your input.
it is indeed an idea to deactivate kaspersky just to rule it out completely as a cause. KIS 2010 is fairly lightweight though and I am really happy with it.

more important, I am really shaking my head at sony's update policy, when I run vaio update (it's a Vaio from Sony German), I do not get any updates for the driver. Yet when I log into the .EU (!) website and enter my serial, I do indeed get the 2024 driver. duh. I could have had it for months! I was just skeptical all the time not to install anything that's not from sony update.

even more intersting, on the .eu site, I am seing an update of VAIO Power management - 5.1.1.06180. Vaio power management doesn't even show up in my vaio update app. just for completeness's sake, i'll give you what does show up in my vaio update:
smart network 3.3.1.08110
transfer suppoer 1.1.2.06030
event service 5.03.05060
pointing device driver 7.5. ...
setting utitliy series 5.0.3.202040
peripherals metadata 1.0 1 12090
bios r0084u4
wireless 8.0 0 238
itunes crap
grapics 8.14.10.2015
, and it says, the only update that's available would be "click to disk upgrader" (which I really do not need ^^)

-- my SPMService.exe (which has to do with vaio power management, cf. windows services)) is exe version 4.0.0.4200.

...hmm.

matthias

EDIT: PS: looking in C:\Program Files\Sony\VAIO Power Management, i see a file version.txt, that mentions 4.0.0.08240, which seems to be my verison of vaio power management. So, (sry), why am I not getting these updates? Did you all get them, in the US and elsewhere? ... =(

 

I think you likely have the answer there. I've disabled Security Essentials and the Search/indexing services, which are the most likely cause of any unexplained lagginess.

I've been keeping my work organised into folders for so long I've never really used the search function of any OS. Plus all MS Office tools index their own content well enough so I can happily search OneNote for data.

 

Hi Matthias, I can confirm that my version of SPMgr.exe is indeed 5.1.1.06180. I got this from Vaio Update after I bought the computer a few weeks ago.

 

hello,

here are my results..

gma --> update worked flawlessly to 2024. (vaio update now wants to sell 2015 as a new "update". ignored.)

power management version 5: won't install. claims there was no "previous version" of it found. strange. as i said, there is the power manangement folder with mentioned version 4, and the service is running.

event service (claims to fix problems with fin-f3/f4, which I do have) -> installer will start for a second or so, then terminate. won't run either.

(all this on a sony vaio x 2ghz 256, bought directly from sony Germany, dec 2009.)

matthias

 

ps. i was hoping for an update of power management in terms of fan control. though I believe this is controlled by bios. thought not absolutely sure.

btw, can you confirm r008404 is still the latest bios? thx

there's now a nice blue intel graphics icon in the tray that does absolutely nothing. no matter how one clicks. w.t.f...? what are they thinking?

as to the fan control, my fan kicks in at tyipically 37°C, i e when temperature is slightly over 37°C for circa one minute; or even faster, when temperature is much over 37°C for e.g. 20 seconds. that's empirical, i watched it dozens of times. i am using coretemp, which i really recommend to all vaio x users, it helps you get your fan under control. i also use the commercial program yawffer to freeze processes of applications that are not in use yet consume cpu. use with care though. i use it with opera and roboform. I can also recommend opera on the x, it seems to make use of its resources best. other browsers are significantly more sluggish.

 

in the blue-ish intel gma config dialog, can you choose a "performance mode"? i saw this on some screenshot somewhere. i can't.
yeah, you can disable the homeopathic tray icon.

matthias

 

I found something interesting on an Intel forum thread:

"Also, you might want to consider upgrading to EMGD as that is our best solution now for Z500 and E600 chipsets (and is likely to be faster with less CPU overhead).

There is also a native Windows 7 version that is in Beta right now that should be out soon (if it has not already been released). That will be designed FOR Win7 (WDDM mode) rather then using the XP driver model (XPDM) that Win7 supports."

Could there be some light at the end of the tunnel for GMA500 users? I won't get my hopes up, but a Windows 7 version of EMGD sounds very promising. Presumably this would support Aero and video playback.

 

Nice find!!

 

Yep, I hope this will be answer to my laptop prayers! Aero with fast Flash and browser performance please!

Has anyone tried the EMGD drivers on the X using Windows XP?

 

Has anyone tried using Spashtop on their Vaio X? I would appreciate comments on the experience. Thanks.

 

Has anyone done a fresh install of a "light" version of Windows 7? I have a 64GB version on the Vaio X and was looking to free up more space. Again, your comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Hi forum, I was searching around about video driver upadates and reading about IEGD on intel's site and found this gem: IEGD and Windows 7 Embedded Standard: Embedded Community.

Long story short, you can install IEGD on Win7 using WinXP drivers - I'm going to do it now, I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

Ok, I was admittedly overzealous about that find. It works kinda like the Catalyst driver - installs the latest driver across a number of devices and chipsets. Just updated my 2024 to 2030. Nothing spectacular.

50SQuiff talked a bit about the EMGD driver - which can be installed in compatibility mode as well. However, it doesn't seem to take. My driver version is still 2030. No noticeable difference for either "update".

Too bad, full screen 720P youtube will have to wait.

 

Just for the hell of it I tried installing the current EMGD driver. You have to build the driver first using a somewhat complex configuration tool. Unfortunately I'm not savvy enough to get it completely right, so although Windows 7 was operable, the colours were crazy and the everything on the screen flickered. I could just about make out the text on the screen in order to use System Restore and roll back to the previous driver.

Whenever this new EMGD driver comes out (with native support for Windows 7), we're going to need someone competent in complex display mode settings to build a version for the X.

 

Using System Information my BIOS version is R1020U4, 13/03/2010

 

You're braver than I am. I looked through the config and realized that a lot of information is needed. For someone savvy to the tech specs of the monitor, gma500, chipset, etc. (like someone at Sony???) this seems like it'd be a breeze, right? I think I'll wait. It's truly unfortunate that the gma500 is capable of so much and because of poor drivers we're stuck with crappy video being the X's Achilles heel.

 

Hardware acceleration! I stayed home sick from work and spent the better part of the day working on this. Here's a link with video proof: YouTube - ‪Vaio X Series Hardware Acceleration possible in IE9, Flash 10.1+‬‏

I know it's underwhelming, what with the washed out, mirrored screen but wait till you see the Star Trek trailer 3 footage. It's noticeably better than software rendering.

Thanks to 50sQuiff for the EMGD find - now we have some work to do forum. We need to find the configuration settings that work for the Vaio X. Here are the values we need: (this is the output data from a Vaio P running Ubuntu)
Ubuntu Pastebin

If I could get my eyes on those values for the Vaio X I'm fairly confident I could produce a 10.x driver with hardware acceleration WAAAAY before Sony does. So what do you say, are we a forum with a mission?

BTW: I've uploaded the 10.x driver .inf file here if you'd like to try it out: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32136358/mmmsheen EMGD driver test.inf

 

^ this should work on my P also... right? I'll be glad to help with testing

 

YES, in fact I believe I have the values I need for the P in this file: Ubuntu Pastebin

I'm sorry if my focus is on the X for now - tell me how the driver attached to my last post works on the P. (it's the .inf file at the bottom)

 

Ok, here's the first "working" driver based on EMGD. It has rough edges, I know. A bit fuzzy (some pixel draw and refresh values must be off) and the power management and screen brightness function button are broken. All-in-all pretty good for a day's work though. This does allow hardware acceleration of ie9 and chrome. Haven't checked Firefox.

Screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32136358/driver1.png
Files (zip): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32136358/mmmsheen 13x7_attempt7.zip

Step 1: Extract files, find utilities folder, right click setup. properties, compatibility tab, run in XP SP3 mode, OK. Right click setup, run as admin. The program will error, this is ok.

Step 2: Go to Device Manager, display adapters, right click on gma500, update driver, browse, have disc, navigate to extracted folder "drivers", find ini file, install driver.

Sorry, you have to do this the hard way, found out through lots of trial and error. ENJOY - I need some sleep.

 

This is brilliant. It proves that our GMA500 is capable of so much more than we're getting from Intel. You might want to put 'GMA500' in your video title so more people come across it.

From what I've read the PowerVR chip in the GMA500 is similar to the PowerVR chips used by Apple, Nokia and Samsung in their mobile devices. I mean, if Sony were attempting to produce an impossibly light machine with long battery life, wouldn't you go with a chipset that purports to deliver high performance at low power?

Thanks for your efforts mmmsheen and let's hope we can make more progress. I wonder if we can't unpick the display timing settings from the Sony 2024 driver somehow...

 

Thanks- I did update the title on youtube with GMA500.

The speedbump I'm running into now is extracting monitor info from the windows registry. I've been using WMI (and I'm a total nub). Here are the monitor display classes: Monitor Display Classes (Windows). It seems like installing the new driver wiped my registry of this information because now I just get blank values. Maybe someone else, with a stock driver, can figure out how to get these values. Here's a list of the ones we need - VideoModeDescriptor Class (Windows). Another alternative is finding an EDID viewer that'll show us the values that VideoModeDescriptor shows.

 

I feel like I'm hijacking this thread - sorry.

I'm getting pretty darn close to correct color and sync settings - here's a screenshot of my latest revision. I've been using the config gui that comes in the package to color correct after driver installation, that's how i got it to look so nice. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32136358/driver8.png
Videos look amazing. Still lots of work to do - video out, power management, brightness function buttons (not sure I'll ever get this working), and more display modes need work - I just found out that this monitor will support modes up to 1600x1200. And video out can do even higher!

 

Now the X is gone, fixing the GMA500 is practically all there is left to talk about

It really looks like you've made progress from the flickering Youtube video. When you say Power Management, do you mean you have problems with suspending the laptop (sleep mode)?

 

Sleep mode - exactly, but I've fixed that in v_9 and I fixed the external display in v_10. Yes, I've done 10 trial/error builds.

The goods - Obviously hardware acceleration in flash, webGL. 1080P video out, tested working. Power management fixed. Color correction gui available in "Utilities" folder for tweaks (nothing big necessary, and the best part is it works cross-driver so you don't have to keep correcting for every new driver).

The bads - No matter what I do, I can't get the resolution above 1366x768 on main display. No Intel supported software (besides simple config gui mentioned in the goods). Screen brightness and display switch function buttons broken. Exterior display always on (not THAT bad, I guess). Driver-specific clone or extended desktop - meaning that if you like to clone your 2nd display you need a different driver than if you like to extend your desktop on your 2nd display (maybe a workaround or 3rd party app to fix this).

Still needs testing - pixel clock adjustment, phase adjustment, how does it affect battery life? not sure if Aero works or not, gpu benchmarking, legacy games (StarCraft, anyone?), not sure what version of OpenGL it's on (2.0, I believe), DX10?

Anyway, I'll try to button down some issues and I'll be on tonight with driver links. Hey - thanks again 50sQuiff - and ComputerCowboy I'll get to work on a driver for the P tonight!