Sony X Series Official Owners Thread

i encountered a problem when doing recovery. wonder if anyone has successfully did what i attempted to do. here's what happened:

many months ago, i installed a fresh copy of windows 7 on the x by removing the recovery partition and merging it and c drive into one. i have previously created an iso of the recovery disc since i do not have a portable dvd.

today, i wanted to recover my x to it's factory state using the the recovery disc iso. first, using iso-to-usb software, i managed to create a bootable disk on my sd card. however, i realized that x or in fact most laptops can't boot from sd card or other flash drives that use card reader interface.

next, i took my external usb hdd with already existing data and copied all the contents from the sd card into it. sure enough, when i restarted x, it booted from the external usb drive. here, i got the option to repair windows 7 or do recovery which i chose the latter. unfortunately, after few seconds of scanning, it reports that 'A recovery disc or partition cannot be found'. how is this so? anybody has any solution? i am thinking of getting a usb card reader and just boot from the sd card but i don't think there is any difference.

 

Thanks for your response. Yeah you are right. I'll wait and see and if not then I'll pick one up for half of what they were sold for initially. Writing papers and managing a website should be fine for this little wonder.

 

I scored one a couple weeks ago for $400... if you're patient you might find a more enticing deal.

 

Yeah I actually found a guy who bought one from the Sony Style about a month and a half ago. They said it was the last model VPCX115KX/B and that he couldn't buy the extended warranty since the laptop was discontinued. It's only been used for 3hrs and comes with a sony cd/dvd external + original box and accessories for $700. I'm still torn on whether or not to buy it at less than half price or wait till after CES taking the risk that he might sell it by then. :cry:

 

Does anybody have the AC-EYM90 AC adapter. Its a 9.5v and I noticed most X chargers are 10.5v but this came boxed in the X I just purchased and seems to work fine. Anyone else have this one? Is there a problem using a lower voltage? Thanks in advance guys.

 

Thanks so much for restoring faith into this community, Mr. B!

Long story short: I spent 10 hours (!!!) troubleshooting this issue, with lots of ppl in forums trying to help me. Finally I got the advice that fixed the issue: For some reason, possibly my backup imaging program (it's a guess, I'm not sure it was the cause, so I won't name it) may have messed with the System Reserved Partition which is necessary for S4 hibernation. The solution was to assign a drive letter to the System Reserved partition. Suddenly, hibernation was working again. It's a known but hard-to-find Win7 bug.
Also, something messed my bluetooth drivers, showin an unknow bluetooth peripheral device for which my x would constantly seach a driver and then fail. The solution was to completely uninstall bluetooth and re-install again (downloading from Sony).

Hope this may help those who run into trouble and save them the worst case of troubleshooting I have had in years.

Regarding Opera, 11.60 has been crashing constantly. Note that going back to 11.52 entails problems with E-Mail in case you use this, so back up before downgrading. Opera versions are not generally downgrade compatible.

 

Hello.

I made a custom EMGD 1.10 for vaio x. download available here (skydrive link)

it support same brightness as gma500 driver and brightness control too. (8 level)

I made it to play crayon physics on my vaio x, which game need opengl support. (and now it works well)

 

Hi Jeonghun,
This is great news! Is there anything you're finding is not working properly (e.g., Adobe Flash, etc.)? Thanks.

 

Youtube works properly. hibernate, dxva too.
at least in my usage, no problems.

 

Symantec NIS 2012 and various BSODs with ntkrpamp.exe (resp ntkrnlpa.exe), anyone?
Vaio X Win7 32, using 2024 video driver.
Thanks for feedback.

 

Tried out your driver jeonghun...

OK, it's the same 4-levels of brightness for me - installed through device manager. And i'm getting the same "The driver being installed is not validated for this computer..." msg when trying to run the setup.exe as I get with all of my EMGD driver.

Anything I'm doing wrong here jeonghun? How about a tutorial on how you installed the driver? This may be my shortcoming. Thanks!

 

Hello mmmsheen.
( first, I'm sorry for my poor english )
I'm glad for your reply. your emgd driver was good example for me.

mm... do not install driver through device manager.
instead, uninstall all video driver ( gma500 driver, installed emgd, etc ) first. (and reboot. ) then video driver will be default vga adapter (I mean, windows default driver)
and then, install my emgd through execute setup.exe ( after uninstall other driver, it will work properly, at lease in my case )

I hope it will help you install driver properly. and please leave reply about result.

Thanks.

 

You're a genius! Worked like a charm. I feel a bit silly having never tried that... your driver works. What modelines did you use?

After some extra one-try experimenting I've found Chrome with acceleration enabled to be the best Flash-playing browser (tested Opera, Chrome, IE9) with a flashmark of 660 followed by Opera 630 and IE9 624.

No change to WMI, Passmark errors (no DirectX 10 capable device found)
For what it did run Passmark scores were lower than posted vaio x benchmarks:
2d - 79.6 where average was 111.9
3d - 29.8 where average was 31.0

The real update, however, is OPenGL. For the first time, I'm able to load google bookcase. It's not fast, but it loads.

I'm going to go passmark the other drivers and I'll get back to you - thanks again for the work!

 

It works and it helps!

First of all, I lucked out and didn't have any issues installing it via the Device Manager ('update driver') -- I did it this way (instead of the perhaps-more-obvious running setup.exe) because I read and followed the installation instructions in Intel's readme file.

And the result? Well, it seems to be the real deal. Driver identifies itself as EMGD and the display as LVGS. I didn't run any tests but my anecdotal experience is positive. Win7 feels snappier, Chrome pages scroll faster. Youtube and Hulu are a *little* snapper too, it seems, and that little boost is enough to make full screen videos smoother to the point where they are barely watchable, but fullscreen is STILL not perfect. Also, as mmsheen pointed out, the few examples of accelerated web content I could find are improved using the driver, but NOT dramatically so as to blow me away -- makes me suspect that GMA500 always had some potential, but it can only do so much, even with the right driver.

Windows Experience Index - graphics improved from 3.7 to 4.5. But 3d graphics unchanged at 2.5...surprised it didn't register any improvement there.

But still, an improvement, and I'm happy. And importantly -- no problems/issues I've come across so far...all 8 backlight levels work...Win7 feels sort of new again...I'm keeping this. Thanks, Jeonghun, for this.

 

Thanks for sharing this driver. Everything does seem snappier in Windows 7. It's a keeper!

Even Aero works with this driver, but it seems to have a big impact on Chrome performance. I'll stick to Basic theme for now.

 

I've noticed one flaw. When the display turns itself off, it freaks out when you re-activate. Crazy colours and flickering. I've had to disable the feature in Power Manager.

On the other hand, not only does Windows feel quicker but I'm now getting a score of 675 in Peacekeeper, which is higher than before.

 

Just got my Vaio X the other day, even more of a beauty than I had imagined!
It came with the standard battery though, so I'm looking to get hold of the large battery (VGP-BPL19). Does anyone have a good current source? I'm expecting if I buy off eBay those won't be genuine, but perhaps it doesn't make a difference?

 

Hi guys and thanks for all the updates in the meantime.

Just wanted to share my experience after upgrading to Opera 12 ("Opera Next").

For some reason, youtube videos now play with like 40% CPU load (in 360p). I could even watch a few videos without the fan starting up at all. This is although Opera 12 (having a completely new graphics engine) does not report its hardware acceleration being compatible with the X (by entering "about:gpu" in the address box).

Further, below is an update of my Autohotkey "helper" script for easier scrolling etc. in Opera:

Code:

#Persistent  
#SingleInstance force
#InstallKeybdHook

RAlt & F1::Send,{F1} ;dummy hotkey that is needed in order to keep AltGR & [Key] combinations working despite the following line
RAlt::Send,{Up 5} ;Quickly scroll up a few lines on hitting "Right Alt key" -- fires on "RAlt Up" only, because of the previous line
RCtrl & F1::Send,{F1} ;dummy hotkey that is needed in order to keep Ctrl & [Key] combinations working despite the following line
AppsKey::Send,{Home} ;Quickly jump to top of page by hitting the "Apps" Key (don't forget to scroll down conveniently using the Spacebar!)

#IfWinActive, ahk_class OperaWindowClass ;open links in Background tab on right click in Opera
$RButton::
If (A_Cursor != "IBeam")
Send, ^+{LButton}
Else
Send, {RButton}
#IfWinActive

Cheers
David

 

Nice one, hope you enjoy your X! I like its minimal design very much. In the UK we were lucky enough to get the L battery by default so I don't know the answer to your question I'm afraid.

On the browser front, I've switched from Opera back to a combination of all the betas: Chrome 18 beta, Adblock Plus Dev version and Flash 11.2 beta. Overall my X browsing experience is now pretty close to my clunky but powerful office laptop. Enable pipelining in Chrome and use the Adversity Antisocial list with Adblock for an extra boost.

 

Another trick for watching youtube videos: There is SMPlayer which simply opens plain youtube links and beautifully plays 480p video (change this in the SMPlayer settings) with like 30% CPU usage.

BTW, I have tried and installed Linux via the supposedly "incredibly light and fast Joli OS". What should I say, I don't like it because a) it doesn't feel fast at all, b) the font rendering in the browser is terrible (much more blurred than in Windows, and c) the fan runs almost ALL the time, even when only browsing files in the file manager.

Cheers David

 

Yep, I tested Joli by booting from a USB drive and it felt very slow graphically. Probably that GMA500 again!

Interesting to hear about SMPlayer, I'll try that.

 

Actually, Joli OS officially supports the X and its GMA 500 (via something called "Poulsbo" driver). Youtube and browser performance are not bad. But it can't be really efficient since the fan runs all the time. Honestly, I'd much rather run XP on the X than Joli OS.

 

Here's how to make an entry in Opera's context menu for opening youtube (and possibly other) videos directly in SMPlayer:

First, have a look at this:
"Open in Firefox & Internet Explorer" in Opera right click menu

then, add the following lines under the [Open Link in Menu] section in your new standard_menu (1).ini file:

Code:

Item, Open in SMPlayer = Execute program, "smplayer.exe","%l"

After this, you can right-click on (youtube) video links and directly watch the videos in SMPlayer.

 

Hi guys,

I bought a verizon firmware equipped X in the US last year and of course that won't work here in Europe. Could anyone please post somewhere the AT&T/Telus firmware for the Gobi2000 modem so I can use it in Linux? Many thanks in advance!

 

Hi, I selling off couple aftermarket power bricks and a car charger for the X. I used them for several months before I got the Z2. Oh yes, the X is for sale as well its the gold one

 

Hi, i just heard about someone selling his 2009 X model with 1.86 processor and 128 ssd. The unit is pretty clean, no scratch, screen ok and ask for 600$ here in France. Is it good price and worth to grab it.
Note that I already have a first gen Z with P9600 that still enough for my need.
I expect the X for travel purpose and ppt presentation, unload my video camerasd card
Any advice will be appreciated

Thanks

 

Living in France actually, anyone living in France or travelling plan to sell a X series?? don't hesitate to pm if any information.
thks

 

Anyone tried installing Windows 8 CP on their X already?
Can't adjust the brightness; it always stays on full.

 

hello, may i ask if anyone is using opera 11.6x and experiences frequent bluescreens? (might have to do with youtube?) thanks! (i would also be grateful for opera 11.6x users (with or without youtube) who ca report no bsods ever. (i read about the opera bsod thing, even though it might be more complicated, or have nothing to do with opera. in fact i am getting a bsod every avg. 30hours, and many of my bsods have memory_management as the cause, so there's a chance my x is dying and repair is a 6 week wait. not an option therefore.

so, as a sidenote has anyone heard of upcoming alternatives to the X? i.e., same form factor, and most importantly, with a fan that does NOT run all the time, unlike the x's? tablets? I have seen a sony windows 8 tablet (with keyboard) prototype and I was wondering if it had a fan. eventhough, I really don't need a touchscreen... seems like there is still no competition for the X at that point? i also took a close look at the new Z, and frankly, i really prefer the X. only points for the Z is even less key travel (love this) (but it has a full sie keyboard, which is bad for me (slower typing)), and another point is the super high resolution. but other than that, i need no i5 for web surfing, at double the weight and less battery runtime.

thanks for your thoughts.

 

I've been using opera for a month or longer (11.60) and never had a BSOD because of it but quite frequenly opera just hangs.
Very often there is another problem: after closing (opera) the process is still running thus I cannot start it again unless I kill old process manualy.

About the fan - that is quite strange (that is running all the time) - on my X it starts when I watch "heavy" videos and SOMETIMES while browsing with opera - mostly it stays silent.

@smurfchang
how does win 8 run on X - fast enough? - is it worth a try?

eta:
couple of days ago I found a program called: batteryCare
it shows some information about battery and one of them is battery degradation - I was suprised (in positive way) that after 1.5 year of running X (half on battery, half pluged in) my battery degradation was only 3.5% - don't know how accurate it was but I liked it - have to mention that I'm charging my battery to max and discharging to min (~5% remaining)

 

My experience is the same as pch's. My X is completely silent except when I watch a YouTube video or do something else processor intensive. In normal web/Office use you never hear the fan. Mine is one of the later X13 1.8ghz versions. Perhaps that makes a difference.

The couple of months I used Opera I can confirm I experienced no crashes. Although I've since switched to Chrome 18. Its page-rendering isn't quite as quick as Opera but the javascript performance is no contest.

 

hello thanks for your replies!

- my X is a first-generation X. I wonder if this has to do with the fan.
- my X is running 10hours a day. there is a chance it has dust, but I doubt
it. as far as i remenber the situation was like this from the beginning.
- i have the max configuration at 2ghz and 256 GB, i wonder if the 256 hdd has to do with the heat. I doubt it though.
- when doing very light web browsing with opera with 3 tabs, and the balanced power scheme enabled (0,8-2,0), then CoreTemp mostly shows 0,8-1,6 ghz and temperature is ALWAY just above the a. 37 °C -threshold (mostly ca. 40°C), so the fan is costantly running at lowest speed, which is very disturbing in a silent room, and when there are people, they ask me "what's that buzzing noise, can't you stop that". (it's the normal sound of the fan, been that way since the beginning, it's the usual sound. heard it in another X too. nothing defective here.)
- btw. i can recommend coretemp 1.0 RC3 or later, it's great and bugs all mentionable bugs seem fixed. i also recommend meminfo 3.0 to keep track of ram usage with opera. you can configure it so it warns at e g 80% and 90%. great.
- when I use a limited power scheme e.g. ~0,8-1,4 ghz, and suspend opera, I can manage to get the fan to go off. there are NO other mentionable processes consuming cpu in taskmgr.
- seems like heat has it's own "inner life". sometimes, though rarely, it drobs way below 37, like 33, and stays there for an hour or so, when I have no processes running other than notebook. i have been wondering if the SSD is doing some auto-rearrangement tasks that causes the heat.
- i have been resorting to the stick-something into the fan method again, but now I use core temp to warn me when heat goes over 42°. else the laptop will shut down with no warning even at temperatures way lower than 50°C. when the fan is running, it won't shut down even at 60°C (which is the max i ever saw afaicr).
- i have the latest bios.
- perhaps i should give a 2nd gen vaio x a chance after all. good to have a spare PC anyway.
- does anyone have experiences with restoring OEM from an image to another PC? windows key issues? (using macrium, which i recommend over acronis)
- with 30 tabs open, i always get temps around 44-48°C + -. i know i know, i keep complaining about this.
- i would be really interested if the fan issue has to do with 1st vs 2nd gen X.
---
- the bsods keep coming, it's mostly the win kernel. i believe my ram is defective due to high strain over 2 years... if this is realistic. this would be the 4th subnotebook (sharp mm10, mm20, vaio x505 and now vaio X) failing after 2 years.
- i have seen vaio repair shops here in germany, who do quick repair (1-3 days). i also wonder if i could buy a new motherboard from sony and put it in myself, according to Sony Vaio X teardown: Case without motherboard | 59 of 89
- i know, i should memtest my ram, i only did 1 run instead of 7. i still wonder why 6-8runs/passes are recommended. why not 3, why not 20? what's the statistic...? i'll report on the memtest once i did it.
- i wonder what happens when you swap an 256 ssd from a 1st gen X into a 2nd gen, with the OS installed. will there be issues with vaio drivers...?...

- @Opera: thanks for the recommendation of chrome 18. will give chrome another try. i have seem stability improvements from opera 11.60 to 11.61 and recommend the update. other than that found 11.52 to be more stable, though perhaps not quite as fast (placebo though, perhaps), and i am quite sure it needed more RAM.

- careful with opera and many tabs (i mean lots!), it will crash with no warning. keep an eye on ram usage (see meminfo). to be on the save side, you can use a script or backup applicaiotn to copy autosave.win every e.g. 5 minutes. on rare occasions, opera loses this.



ps. wow. chrome 17 seems to be faster than opera 11.61 on certain websites indeed. i think i will switch to using both. thanks for the information. i still dislike the few options of chrome, and opera seems a lot more comfortable and customizable. i also remember stabiliby issues with chrome. let's see. will perhaps post a comparison on opera 11.61 vs chrom 17 on the X. unless anyone else wants to.

 

So, anybody tried Windows 8 Consumer Preview on their X yet? Seems like it would look pretty nifty with the new Start screen, kinda like an 11inch Windows Phone..

 

I wanted to try but it says (on their page - win 8 cp) that recovery partition will be lost - so I gave up.

 

EDIT: double post

 

anyone know if the Vaio U (win 8 tablet) has a fan?
see http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-content/2012/03/SonyHybrid02.jpg
seems like this has no trackstick or touchpad. so one will have to resort to using ones fingernail (with the palm of your hands towards you) for accuracy. there are situations though, where a mouse pointer is really needed for total accuracy. anyone know how this is solvable? seems like a dealbreaker. also think it looks stupid if you constanly raise your hand to fumble around on the screen. and it's tiring if you have to hold your hands up all the time. damn, no trackstick, i can't believe it... what do you think?

just been wondering: is there a function that would allow a part of the touchscreen to act like a touchpad, temporarily? i have no experience with tablets so far... (i won't touch apple. ever. )

@pch - why not make an image of your harddrive - you could simply restore the image, in case. (and the image would even, in addition, contain the recovery partition.) (disclaimer: it's up to you to decide what to do, I can't give support in case you get into unexpected trouble.)

 

iPad4 3G with smart case (so you can type on it or prop the screen up): 797g

Vaio X (actual computer): 780g

 

Hello everyone!

I tried out jeonghun's driver with considerable improvements in performance as a result, nice! I, however, can not use an external display.

Anyone know if I can fix this because I really want to keep this driver but I need to work with an external display.

 

Never mind my last post, the problem solved itself somehow after coming back from sleep. Waching HD on my external display and my fan just turned off, so I love my Vaio X even more now!

Chrome users should try this: write "about:flags" in the adress bar and experiment with some of the HW acceleration options avaliable. I ended up just using "GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D".

Cheers!

And by the way, run Windows ThinPC instead of 7!

 

Hello, I am willing to test jeonghun's driver, but may I ask ...

... what's the chance this may cause damage, or pose problems in case I want to go back?
... do I understand this replaces my currently installed GMA 8.14.10.2024?
... does 8.14.10.2024 have any advantages over jeonghun's driver?
... does jeonghun's driver have any other side effects other than the nonfunctioning of the display-off function? will display-off cause a freeze or just weird colors and that's all? Has the display-off problem been solved in the meann time, and do all users report this bug?
... I encourage all users of jeonghun's driver to post their experiences
... will Fn-F5 as well as powerscheme brightness percentages work?
... Will Intel's GMA driver properties, where you can adjust gamma, brightness and contrast, still work? (properties of pnp monitor and gma --> tab "Intel GMA driver for ultra mobile"

thanks to jeonghun, btw!!

Once installed, I will post some feedback, too, of course!

Thanks for your replies!

 

from my experience I can say:
-you can go back without any problems
-i've been using ...30 and yes it replaces it
-...
-i've had this problem couple of times ("burned out colors"), it doesnt happen too often, when the colors get "burned" just wait and let the monitor go off then activate it - this USUALLY fixes that problem (but not always). Never had any problems because of it.
- fn F5/F6 display (and brightness) works fine
- gamma, bright., contr. are working

problems:
blender 2.6 and up - cannot display fonts - so no joy
notepad++ - auto completion choices not always show up (just a border - nothing else)

 

hello pch, thanks a lot!!

this is interesting that it affects notepad++. that really makes me think twice. sure the driver is the cause?

blender seems to be a graphics/3D program, so problems don't surprise me that much.

In any case, thanks for your feedback. Now I know that such small bugs can well be caused by a video driver. I would never have thought that auto completion choices could be affected... hmm.

 

after your post I decided to go back to ...30 to check notepad++

and it's ... the same (mostly just a border) - looks like some faulty api file.

blender's fonts are displayed correctly with .30 driver

 

dear pch, thanks a lot for your effort!!! @mods: --> give pch reputation!

 

I also have a problem with the fan running all the time. My model is VPSX11S1E, 128gbSSD. Even when I switch to Silent mode in Vaio Control Center the fan keeps running on normal web browsing. Temperatures around 52C.

Setting the maximum processor state to 56% (maximum) in windows power manager makes the processor only use the lowest multiplier (x6), still the fan keeps running even with less than 10% CPU usage.

The machine is however mostly silent when I run it on battery power. Any further ideas on how to make it silent or is this some hardware problem?

Edit: Using Vaio and Windows power management I would only need to raise the temperature when the fan kicks in with a couple of degrees to make it completely silent when I want to. Anyone knows a program for controlling the fan which recognizes the Vaio X fan?

 

Hello, to my knowledge, the X was once updated, insignificantly.
Are there any superusers here who might be able to tell me what exactly has been updated? Only thing I know is that later X versions support SDXC cards >32GB (though only via usb). I also think I somewhere noticed that later models have certain different drivers though I am unsure. I know there was no major change, but what WERE the changes...? Thanks to anyone who will answer

 

there is no fan program that is compatible with the X. it is impossible.

- disable windows search indexing, put laptop on its feet.
- use pssuspend to suspend cpu intensive exes when not in use. or use yawffer, also take a look at BES battle encoder.
- stick a piece of tape into the fan but be careful, pc will shut down when 42° are exceeded for a longer time. when, tape is in fan, set overheat protection popup of coretemp to

the pc will shut off after use coretemp 42°. remove the tape should you use the pc for heavier tasks that will exceed 42°.

(strangely, laptop will not shut down even with 55° and fan running.)

I am afraid there might be something to it that temperatues increase when plugged in. I too noticed that the laptop is more quite when on battery, but I haven't done enough tests. Input welcome, please do some tests if you like, an report here. you'll have to wait for some time, and do several tests. This thing's alive, sometimes it behaves differently under the same circumstances, tempature-wise.

use e.g. norton 2011, it's light on cpu and one of the best (despite symantec). it's really good. 2012 may be ok too.

I found speedstepping up to 85% processor to be the best compromise.

 

I was looking to sell my Vaio X (VPCX115KX).

Does anyone have any advice as to the best route to go and prospective price to sell.

Its the 2.0 GHZ model, 2 Gigs or Ram, latest drivers.
Included are
> 3 batteries:
- L battery: VGP-BPL19 (4100 mAh)
- X battery: VGP-BPX19 (8200 mAh)
- S battery: VGP-BPS19 (2050 mAh)
> 2 carry cases:
- Herringbone/leather (VGP-CKX2) Slim Case FROM JAPAN
- Neoprene Case FROM SONY STYLE USA
>power adapter
>user giude
>unused cleaning cloth
>box
- vaio is in excellent condition, no scratches, US version + Verizon 3G

What would be a good selling price?

 

For the love of all that is SLOW!!!

I purchased my VPCX135KX (Win 7 Ult) NEW from the Sony store about 16 months ago. Sorry for just finding this thread now...

Does anyone know any tricks to speeding this thing up?? I know it is meant for light use, and all I use it for is web and a little lite MS Office work. I have done all the start-up and services tweeks (that I know of), but for the love of GOD, this thing is rediculously slow!

I have been a loyal Vaio owner for about 8 years and own nothing BUT Vaio. Was this discontinued because it is retardedly slow??

I am assuming this has been addressed in previous posts, but at over 120 pages, it would take me 264 days to browse through them on this slow F*&#@*ER.

Please help. If not, does anyone know someone in the market for a light weight frisbee with the sony vaio logo on it....?

THANKS!!!

 

Use Opera (or Chrome), not Firefox. Use a lightweight AV. I never had any complaints about speed (2Ghz, but the Z540 is probably not much slower). I have _hybrid_ standby/hibernation activated to get it back quicker when plugged in.

Still, I'd be very interested in your concrete complaints. When exactly is it slow, at what tasks?

I use Directory Opus and WLM 2009, and have them loaded all the time to avoid launching. I use OpenOffice but I doubt it's faster than MS. I frequently switch to a full Balanced (08GHz-2Ghz) power scheme when I need max power, and then also suspend Opera with pssuspend / yawffer.
Areo disabled, it wastes space and has no advantages, and has worse contrast. Also check out "7 taskbar tweaker". I also use battery bar pro and power plan assistant, both of which can handle multiple power schemes. You can also switch schemes with e.g.
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe -setactive [ID]
(use the -list command to see the IDs)

AND DISABLE SILENT MODE in vaio control center. it will throttle your cpu when temperature goes up too much. in contrast, power and balanced mode will NOT throttle your cpu. I found no diffence between power and balanced mode except that power mode substantially increases fan noise. note that vaio control center modes have nothing to do with power schemes, even though they are also called "balanced" etc.