Sony X Series Official Owners Thread

andricop, forget about his Wi-fi not working cos yours truly has got a world exclusive announcement: The GPS function on our Vaio X actually works!

It took about ten or twenty minutes to get the first fix but I've had subsequent 'cold starts' that were less than 60 seconds. So it seems to be a fairly powerful GPS chip. There's been a few problems with the SmartWi though, sometimes not switching properly and failing to detect the WWAN. And I got those wierd text labels like you did.

 

Great new vanilla !
Did you uninstall Smart Network first ?
Did you only install SmartWi or some other software from Sony ?
Will try again, perhaps I didn't wait long enough to have a fix ...

 

I suppose this means that all Vaio X models with Gobi 2000 WWAN actually have a fully functional GPS receiver built in.

The drivers were already installed at the factory:



All you need to do is, uninstall your present wireless connection utility. In UK & Europe, this is the 'Vaio Smart Network'

Then install the 'SmartWi' connection utility from the US Sony site, to turn on the GPS function. http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCX115KXN&upd_id=4901&os_id=44
The WWAN needs to be switched on whenever the GPS function is used.

You can then use software like Autoroute (pictured below) or Garmin Mobile PC.

 

I just got a Vaio X, and I love it so far! I badly need additional AC chargers, the 10.5V charger is difficult to come across. Anyone knows of compatible AC chargers? Would Vaio P chargers work with the X (they are 10.5v as well).. TIA

 

I purchased 2 additional adapters from Sony Style. The part number is
VGP-AC10V5. This is a complete set that includes the adapter and the power cord. I don't know if the Sony P adapter would work.

My only complaint is that I wish the standard battery would be the 4 cell battery supplied in Europe instead of the 2 cell battery. The 4 cell battery is not currently sold in the US.

Don

 

Cant you order 4 cell battery from Europe?? or ebay?

 

Ok, so I got my new best friend. 2GHZ 128GB (VPCX115KX/N) in Gold. In other words the US model.
Bought last week in LA, but will use it all over the place (right now in Sweden).
I have read through this whole thread, but are still sitting here with 2 important unanswered questions:
1. Will the GPS work outside of the US (i.e. Europe)?
2. I know I need other Navigation software, but would I need a different driver, or will it only run with the Gobi one?
3. Does the US model have a sim card reader behind the plastic, or is it really necessary to solder a new one in?

 

Answer 3: There is no sim slot behind the plastic.

 

Although they're both 10.5V, the Vaio P adaptor is only 1.9A, so I wouldn't recommend you using it. You need a 2.9A adaptor for the Vaio X.

The GPS should work outside of the US and you won't need any other drivers.

If you're travelling in Europe you can download the 60-day trial of Microsoft Autoroute 2010 (European equivalent of Microsoft Streets & Trips)
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/autoroute/default.mspx

 

Well...I doubt X uses that much power than P, since hardware is almost the same, and LCD should not be that hard on power. P adapter can be used, just watch for overheating, etc... For some normal charge during night, when X is OFF/hibernate/stand by, it should work just fine, IMO! There could be some spikes of power if its charging while X in use...

 

I think it's the other way around? You can use the same adapter as long as the voltage is exactly the same and the adapter has the same or higher amp rating.. The device will draw the amps that it requires. However if the adapter has a lower amp rating than that required by the device then it can cause damage? Because it's not getting enough power.

ie you can use the VAIO X adapter with the VAIO P as the voltage is 10.5V and the P will draw the 1.9A that it needs from the maximum of 2.9A.

I'm no expert here but this is my experience when it comes to routers and modems!

By the way, loving my X. Just wish the idiots at Intel would put some actual effort into their graphics driver as this is the bottleneck in the entire system...

 

We can calcuate this...

How much voltage and how much amps? 10 and 2? That is like 20W of power...i doubt X needs that much, but...any device is made "to be 100% sure", so many times the max amount is double the size of a normal one.

I would try P charger on X, but if you are not familiar with what to be careful about, dont dont do it, it might overload the charger.

 

Thanks for the answer. Have this been physically confirmed? and if so, is there a link?

"The GPS should work outside of the US and you won't need any other drivers."

Thanks Vanalli, I thought the same, but have now tried to get a fixing on the gps for 2 days now here, so maybe it is not as simple.

Billy, Just recieved the following from Sony Style online in Sweden:
VGPCKX1 the bag aprox. $100 + VAT fits perfectly nice style and quality
VGPAC10V5 the 10.5 adapter aprox. $90 + vat. European plug + UK plug.
And finally VGPBPL19 the 4 cell aprox. $135 + vat.
Was in stock and with express shipping 2 days delivery.

 

Bangster - does the 4 cell battery add any noticeable weight or depth to the x?

thanks,

Don

 

Hi Don

When you hold the two batteries in different hands at the same time, you can feel the weight difference, but it doesn't feel like it would matter much, once mounted.
When you then mount it that changes. Strangely enough you loose the "wow" feeling. It is of course still light but I would say that it feels 100% more heavy instead of the 33% it is.
So a tip to the European buyers, get the 2 cell, it will feel like you have no battery in at all .

 

Regarding the extra charger it is probably interesting to notice that the 3 pole part of the charger is only 3 feet as opposed to the 6 feet one that I got in the original.

 

I don't think that the 2 cell battery is offered at all in Europe, only the VGP-BPX19 and VGP-BPL19 are on sale at Sonystyle in France.

 

Strange enough for a laptop officialy sold without GPS, on EU Sony's support page a new update just appeared today :

VAIO Location Search 1.3.0.10280

"What is this?
This tool provides GPS data to the Google Maps interface"

 

Was the GPS working when you were in the States? In Sweden, did you wait at least 20 minutes outside in full view of the sky to get the first fix?

When you open the SmartWi utility window and turn on the GPS, it should say something like "acquiring". Then in Autoroute, you need to set it to the correct port (com 5 on mine) and start the GPS tracking. The GPS status at the bottom left should say "Receiving Data Sats...".

If anyone else is trying their GPS, especially us European users using the little 'SmartWi hack', you can use a GPS tool like VisualGPS (freeware) to check if their GPS is working correctly whilst getting the first fix. It will show how many sats and other useful info. http://www.visualgps.net/VisualGPS/default.htm

 

I am going to save up some money and buy the Sony X for school and the Sony L for miscelleneous.

Sony VAIO X + Sony L = <3

EDIT; yall think that Sony will refresh both series before Aug '10?

 

how come the larger capacity batteries are not selling in the US? should I wait or order from Europe?

 

The GPS was working in the US.
I have waited a full hour, with no result.
I get all the things you mentioned in SmartWi, and have AutoRoute 2010 with European maps.
It is really strange actually. I downloaded visualgps which is very helpful. I have had it outside for a full hour, and in VisualGps it will find as many as 11 satellites with pretty good signal strenghts, but it still will not get a fix. Normally 4-5 satellites should be enough.
So bottom line: seems like the US GPS works in EU in principle, but something need to be changed to get a fix.
All ideas are most welcome.

 

The X will probably get a spec update around February. Although the new Atom "Pine View" chips will not offer any performance boost over the existing chips.

 

maybe they will at least optimise the drivers for the GPU since the same will be used in pine view? or maybe intel will not to that on purpose so people will swap their current netbooks to pineview when they come?

 

If I remember correctly Pineview will get SATA support. This may provide a boost to the SSD which is currently bottlenecked by the PATA interface. Also around that period Samsung is supposed to come up with new SSD drives. I would expect that they would offer TRIM support.

So we might get SSD performance boost (from SATA and newer SSD) and consistency of performance (with TRIM in the newer SSD) with the update.

 

How come SSD is called a bottleneck in this system. Isnt the MAIN advantage of SSDs their awesome small random read times, etc? not the actuall speed, since most of the times OS do not copy large files around?

also, with SSD, there is no need for NCQ, indexing, defrag, and things like that, since their random access time is like 0.1ms ?

 

Well, we paying so much for the SSD, we definitely want to maximise the performance of what it can do. Anyway, also waiting for TRIM support. Although the Samsung SSD suppose to have garbage collection, some reviews don't seem to think it does that well. TRIM might be better.

So its a matter of timing and whether we can wait. I'm not in a hurry, and since its just round the corner, I rather wait. But if its 1 year down the road, then its probably better to buy now.

Here also the link to the Samsung SSD roadmap.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/ssd/2008/product/pcRoadmap.html

 

Actually the PineTrail platform will offer a performance boost. Graphics move into processor which reduces the number of chips in the platform to two, and should result in some significant size and power savings. Also is rumored that the GPU is going to be X3150 and not the crappy GMA500 (fingers crossed). I believe, a lot of people are holding back to pull the trigger for the X and the P, because of the GMA500. The bottleneck is the GPU, not the CPU or the SSD.
Anyway, in January in the CES we will know more.

 

We don't have to wait that long, come December 21st is when Intel is letting Pinetrail netbooks be announced. The only bad thing is that Pinetrail won't be replaced until Q3 or Q4 2011 with the 32nm Cedarview.

 

All I want for xmas....

.... is a decent set of drivers for my GMA500....

come on Intel!

 

Hi there, new X user here.

Finally, after 6 years of using my Dell X300 I have found a worthy replacement.
Been using the VAIO X (VPCX11S1E - EU model, 128GB) for a couple of days now and I'm more than happy with it. Performance wise it's more than adequate for my needs. I think they really hit the sweet spot for business users in terms of portabilty versus performance.

A question for other X owners: what power scheme / battery management options do you use and/or do you use the VAIO Power Management utility? I'm trying to do some (Google) research on it but have read a lot of contradicting information on this topic.

 

That's really weird, something similar happened to me this morning when I was trying it. I could see a 'bar chart' of 3 to 4 satellites in the signal quality window of VisualGPS but there were in grey and I could not get a fix at all for ages. So I switched off the "Verizon" in SmartWi. Waited a few moments, then switched it and the GPS switch back on. Then I opened up the VisualGPS app again and within two shakes of a lamb's tail, I was back in business with a fix and a blue bar chart of 8 satellites.

I remember a post about a Vaio P user having trouble with their GPS and they said that they had to uninstall a "Vaio Location Utility" in order to get their GPS to work again. What is this Vaio Location Utility, is it some sort location-aware app? Does Verizon on the US Vaio X use A-GPS using cell signals, along with regular satellite-based GPS? The Gobi 2000 chip does seem to support A-GPS too and I'd assume it'll need to hog a virtual com port to operate.

Although the 'SmartWi hack' allows the GPS to work fairly well on this UK Vaio X, it hasn't been all plain sailing with the actual SmartWi utility though. On quite a few occasions it has failed to detect or switch on the WWAN - which means no GPS. But it was usually solved by either toggling the Verizon WWAN switch or a reboot of the system.

Another problem is the text labels of the SmartWi have gone a bit funny with the SmartWi hack. The GPS part of SmartWi always says 'acquiring' whether you've got a fix or not. Any programmers here know what on earth has gone wrong!?



This is what the US version Smartwi should look like.

And when the GPS gets a fix it should display the number of satellites.

 

I know. SmartWi detect your location + language to use the right language file. I guess you use EN_UK but Sony doesn't make a language file for it yes. As for me, I made the file myself for the FR_fr

 

Aha! Could you tell us what you did? In C:\Program\Files\Sony\SmartWi Connection Utility, I can see an empty localization folder and also a localization xml.

andricop, remember our little chat about a mobile broadband connection manager? Well, it does look like Sony had actually forgotten to install one on our machines, so they've sneakily put one up on their drivers page a week or two ago...It's pretty handy for keeping an eye on how much data you're using.
WWAN Connection Manager 13.63 Mb
http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/downloads/preinstalled/index.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VPCX11S1E_B

 

Well spotted! I've been looking for something like this for ages, there was an Orange-branded connection manager installed on my machine but it would refuse to recognise my SIM. Had no way to receive text messages or keep a proper eye on my usage. Thanks!

 

jdbrookes, yeah, it was a bit of a chore to have to check my mobile broadband usage on my online account page, so this WebToGo utility should make life a lot easier.

Regarding the use of a 1.9 amp Sony Vaio P power adaptor, I've done some tests with a power meter on a Vaio X.

Vaio X: on a quite full battery, say 90%, machine completely switched off, it's 7 to 15 watts whilst trickle charging. When the machine is switched on, it goes up to around 18 to 19 watts. After it's finished booting and the machine is idle with WiFi on, it around 5 to 7 watts. Using Ohm's law, that's 19 watts divided by 10.5 volts, which equals 1.80952 amps. so in this situation the Sony Vaio P, 1.9 amp power adaptor should be okay.

However...
Vaio X: on 'low' battery, say 40%, machine completely switched off, it's 15 to 18 watts whilst charging. Then when you switch on the machine, it shoots up to 24 watts and reaches a (momentary) high of 30 watts. After it's finished booting and the machine is idle with WiFi on, it stays around the 18 to 22 watts mark, gradually decreasing to about 7 watts as the battery reaches full capacity. So using Ohm's law again on the maximum figure, 30 watts divided by 10.5 volts, which equals 2.85714 amps! It's defintely not a good idea to use the Vaio P adaptor in this scenario then.

I suppose you might get away with using the Sony Vaio P adaptor in an emergency - just don't switch on the Vaio X and keep an eye on the adaptor for overheating.

During these tests, I've been fairly impressed by the relatively low power consumption of the Vaio X, which was typically 7 to 15 watts, so it's no wonder it managed to earn itself that bright blue Energy Star sticker (which I've already peeled off...).

 

One of the first thing I did to my X too

 

Can anyone who owns the X chime in on whether or not they are seeing the dreaded "Vaio battery drain" on this model?

It's being reported by someone in response to this review:

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/sony-vaio-x-series-ultra-thin-notebook-review-05-12-2009/

(see comments at bottom of page).

I have the drain on my Vaio TZ and it is incredibly annoying. I have to remove the battery from the notebook or else it will be dead inside a week.

I have an X en route, but if it has the same issue I will return it immediately. Having to carry it around with the battery out just to keep it from draining defeats the entire point of mobility.

 

Only had it for a week but so far it loses up to 15% overnight, still trying to figure out what's causing it.

 

I always leave my X on standby but even then I'd only lose a maximum of 10% overnight, typically less. Is your Vaio totally powered down when it loses the 15%?

My VAIO SZ still loses loads of battery when on sleep (50 - 70% overnight!), but barely anything when it's powered down. Certainly nowhere near 15%

 

Yup, on standby it loses even more. I'll be doing some tests with different settings over the next few days.

 

my friend bought one of these and it is soo nice, it's just soo slooow :[

if it got a cpu upgrade, i would buy one without hesitation

/crosses fingers for upgrades before or on August '10!

 

It does indeed sound like something is wrong..

As a test, I charged my X to 100% overnight, and this morning at 8am I set it to Sleep and unplugged it. The only change I have made in the Windows 7 power plan is to hibernate after 600 minutes, which is quite a long time. But 8 hours later I resumed from sleep, and after 5 minutes the battery now reads 95% and has been stable at that reading. So, definitely no problems here with battery drain. I have the 1.86Ghz model with standard European L battery.

Is there any unusual system tray software running that might prevent a "deep" sleep, or any USB devices connected when it goes to sleep?

 

I received my gold "Signature Collection" X yesterday afternoon.

The good:

I LOVE the size and weight. This is almost perfect in its physical execution. The trackpad size is definitely usable and the scroll areas work fine. I actually prefer the short travel of this keyboard compared to my TZ. The finish of the gold/champagne with the darker bronze "Vaio" lettering is just dead gorgeous. Screen color is bright and saturated; I use it 2-3 notches down from max. Performance is actually better than I was expecting, having worked with other Atom devices. I don't know if it's the dual-core Atom or Windows 7, but I found the system to be fairly snappy and responsive, all things considered. Granted, I only expect the machine to do web browsing, email, and office apps. The bootup and shutdown times were shorter than expected.

The bad:

The speaker is so far beneath anemic, it's pathetic. Even on max volume it's subpar. Sony bloatware = UGH, although there's actually less of it than there was on my TZ.

The ugly:

If not for this one issue, it would be a keeper. It has the dreaded Vaio battery drain.

There's a reason that the X is set so that you have to boot for the first time on AC power: since it ships with the standard battery installed, they know it's going to drain, so by forcing you to boot it on AC, the odds are people won't notice.

Mine arrived with the battery at 81%. I charged up the battery to 100% (which took almost no time at all; it charges quickly). After playing with the machine on AC power for about an hour, I figured I'd do an overnight drain test. With the battery fully charged I shut down the computer (not sleep or hibernate).

In the 12 hours from 6pm last night to 6am this morning, the battery drained 8% down to 92%. I shut it down again and will see how much farther down it goes by the time I get home from work.

This would jive with other people's reports of 15% loss per day. Unfortunately, this is a complete and utter dealbreaker. I need to be able to pull the laptop out and rely on it, not worry about how many hours or days it's been since I last plugged it in.

Vaios have had this problem for YEARS now. Why the hell can't Sony get this right? Other makers can.

I tolerate the problem with my TZ, taking the battery out every time I shut down the computer and carrying the battery outside of the computer, which avoids the problem, but that's doable because of the size of the leather portfolio I use with the TZ.

With the X, I'm not about to store it or carry it around with the battery separate. It's the perfect size to fit in my meeting binder at work, but ONLY if the battery is in the unit, which should be doable.

Sony screwed the pooch yet again. It's an otherwise virtually perfect device, and Sony killed it.

EDIT: I just got off the phone with Sony tech support, and the party line is that the battery drain is not a bug or problem. It is intentionally designed that way. You are supposed to remove the battery when the computer is turned off to prevent battery drain or you are supposed to constantly recharge the battery.

Support reference:

http://www.kb.sony.com/selfservice/...nalId=C223674&sonymodel=VPCX115KX/N&sliceId=1

Absolute idiocy! Back it goes.

 

What different built-in tools and functions ???

 

Maybe there are devices that does not shut down, I mean its curcuit is not shut down, even if we shut down the computer.

I dont know why such devices are and which could they be, but this could be the reason. I wonder if other brands have similar problems and which.

 

I have a Fujitsu siemens Q2010, I can turn it off and come back after a holiday of 2 weeks, battery is 97%...

 

Interesting, since all VAIO models have this effect on battery and there must be something that they all have in common...blem it on the battery curcuit, or the motherboard design?

 

Hey guys, I have a Sony X Series notebook with the 2.0 ghz processor and the 128 ssd drive. I really like the notebook and it does fine as far as speed and processing power is concerned. I was wondering, however, if there was any way I could squeeze off just a bit more power out of the machine to make it just a tad quicker. Would removing the Sony bloatware take care of this and if so how does one remove these file?? Sorry for the noob question but I just came from the Mac crowd and am getting used to using a PC again.

 

Hello, laser21. Can you help me? I try to remove cover of my q2010, but I can't to remove the keyboard, what should I make?