VAIO TZ Owner's Thread

Someone on this forum has/had a TZ with a 4200rpm with 1GB running vista. He/she returned it I believe. Can't find the thread, but it was almost unusable. I don't have any benchmarks but sometimes, it doesn't take a benchmark to express others' experience with vista. I sold my TZ with 32SSD to a woman that had the 4200rpm running vista. She returned it to Sony, said it was too slow to bear.

 

Good to know, thanks. Begs the question that why put something in the market if it sucks so bad with certain components...

 

i also bought a TZ150 2 days ago from BestBuy in Dallas and took it back and ate 15% restocking fee....

I tried uninstalling crapware and that didn't help much. I had to go through semi/clean install quite frankly and/or upgrade to 2GB.. Clearly the laptop is UNUSABLE as stock model, and quite frankly I bought it as an upgrade to my Asus U1F. Sadly, the U1F appears to be x5 times faster and is not loaded with crapware like Sony....

Right now I'm debating if the TZ190/195 would be any fast to the point of being more usable...

 

my tz is on 1gb and 8gb 4200rpm and it works fine! i did a full reinstall with vista home premium and it works really great with no driver or speed issues at all. I have done some basic video editing through firewire port,played counter strike and gta san andreas and everything woorked just as well as it dos on my desktop!

 

Is your desktop from 1982? Kidding but this is the first review I've read where someone with the standard HDD and 1 Gig RAM describes good performance. Good to see. I guess a clean install makes a big difference...

 

Let's make this point one *final* time, and please read the thread, the TZ is NOT usable with the 4200RPM drive and Vista. It's simply too ploddingly slow. You need the SSD drive to make the TZ workable.

 

You must like to wait, your experience runs counter to everyone else's.

 

Hmmm... Like I said my ASUS U1F that had no crapware installed and comes with 1.5GB RAM works x5 faster than the TZ150.. Agree with other comment if your desktop is from 1982 then for sure your TZ150 flies...

The big question is, how much of an improvement you think I'll see on the TZ190 or 195?

 

the reason my vaio works just as well as my desktop is that i never do anything labour intensive on it - gta san an is about my limit! i have no problems running vista on my tz at all, i dont care what anyone else thinks. when i click on something, it opens immediately, when i click close, it closes and it doesnt take long at all to boot. thats all i need

 

buddy, it took me 45' on the clock to install Adobe Reader 8 professional... When I did full system restore before I took it back at BestBuy the process probably took over 2 1/2 hours...

The concept of instant open and close is something that certainly doesn't lend itself on the TZ150. I just ordered the TZ190 and hope will more usable..

 

what point are u making? i did a clean install aswell

 

One question: Is there a more portable device for users to carry extra storage (at least 120GB) than the 160GB iPod? This is for Vaio TZ with optical drive.

 

I have the tz191 and it is the fastest computer I have ever used. Awesome, beautiful. The only CON is the storage, but i fixed that buying an 8gb memory stick.

 

You will be super happy. youll see...

 

I'm just waiting for USPS to drop it off

 

I remember when I opened my box, boy was I happy! You will see how awesome it looks. Let us know how it goes,

 

I already had a TZ150 from bestbuy ... design wise it's awesome but if you ask me I do prefer the more simplistic / leather infused Asus u1f which also has gorgeous LED based screen

still can't wait to get it, as I'm due to travel this weekend and really need it

 

I have been waiting to order until the TZ 195 came out based on what the forum's experiences have been. It has now come out--last night I placed my order and due to a credit card fraud department it didn't go through--hopefully that issue is resolved and I can get the order finalized today--however, overnight I started to ponder my one remaining issue--from the beginning I have wanted Vista Home Premium because of the media center apps--my resolution has been that since I've already spend a bundle I would buy and install and upgrade to Ultimate for about $140 from Amazon. I am now concerned that for some reason this won't work or I won't "enjoy" the full Vista experience and/or be able to keep everything working on my new TZ. Has anyone done this? I would love to hear--before I order--that it will work. I appreciate any input any of you have.

 

I just bought a Sony brand new TZ150N/B from craigslist for 1600 and I love this laptop. I had a TXN15P before and I absolutely love that laptop and thought it was one of the best laptop I ever used until I received the TZ. Build preformance and looks are upgraded from the TXN all is improved except battery life. unfortunately you can't win them all. The TXN will always hold a special place in my heart

 

Yeah,

I was quite convinced to take the TXN, but I was a little worried about the 4200 rpm HD. Few weeks after TZ was released... The SSD is so fast that Vista seems much more nice! Thanks God I didn't take TX!

 

In my never ending quest to answer this question I bit the bullet and bought the Lexar 16GB SSD express card. I know it's really pricey (got mine for $150), but I wanted to expand the 48GB that I have in my TZ195 without having to remove a USB flash drive or portable hard drive. As another supplement I bought a Seagate freeagent Go Small (160GB) in case I needed the larger capacity. It's the best I could settle for until the price of SSD's come down. Transcend have a similar product and if you have money to throw away get the 32GB version. No doubt by the time I hit the POST button on this they would have released the 64GB version!

All in all I chose the expresscard because it is located internally and doesn't ruin the look of this sexy laptop

 

I am a satisfied TZ190 owner. I had the TX17--gave it to one of my junior collegues and upgraded to this.

I am typing this as I sit on the runway at EWR today after a 4 hour delay. The sprint card works great, as does the 32G SSD. A few questions:

(1) Is the lightweight battery available? I have the standard weight battery (the little clip that holds it in broke) as well as the extended battery. I am going to return the standard battery, and I am wondering whether I can get a lightweight.

(2) In search of memory, I bought an 8G memory stick, a 4G SD card, and a 16G Lexar card. Only the Lexar card will ready boost with Vista, and it does not make a difference. Will "drop in" SSD memory in 64G and up be available?
Also, I am having trouble transferring files to the Lexar express card from the DVD reader. It is either very slow, or the DVD drive stops mid transfer. Anything I can do to increase these speeds?

(3) Anyone have trouble with the fingerprint reader? Mine apparently stopped working, and/or the software is messed up.

Thanks for any comments.

 

Its not available in North America, only Japan, so you'd have to import it, it sits perfectly flush with the chassis. The part number is VGP-BPS11.

 

I just upgraded to a TZ 190N from a 3-year old T-360-P. The TZ is beautiful! I am a bit taken aback by the tiny size of the flash drive 32Gb. It came with only about 9Gb available (and lots of Sony/AOL junk). For the time being I am leaving my 50Gb of files on a Smartdisk Firelite 160 Gb. Has anyone a better suggestion? Can the DVD be swapped out for a bigger hard drive?

So far Vista has been pretty good, not as horrible as some of the stories you read. I did have some encryption software that is not Vista compatible, but other than that so far, so good.

Carl

 

Has anyone tried Vista ReadyBoost with the TZ?

 

so I guess I'm not the only one with broken clip. at least you can return it to sony. I got mine from Japan...
Do you think SonyStyle USA will take Sony Japan's product?

 

Would anyone be so kind as to provide a link on how to do a clean vista install on a tz170? thanks would greatly appreciate it.

 

I encountered my first Vista issue. Terrible download sppeds. I have my old Vaio T360P with XP sitting right next to my new TZ190 with Vista on same wireless network. The the old XP machine downloads a 50mb Powerpoint from a remote server at ~200 kb/s, while the new TZ with Vista downloads the same file at ~50 kb/s. I uninstalled Norton from the beginnig so no Firewall. I tried disabling Windows Firewall -- no improvement. The strange thing is that download tests like Speakeasy and PCPitstop show the TZ with Vista giving faster download rates than the old XP Vaio. Real file downloads though are about 3-4 times slower. Also downloading binaries from Usenet arre much slow on the TZ with Vista. I am seriously considering an XP downgrade at this point, since Sony has now made the TZ drivers for XP available now on their website.

Anyone has this problem or know of a fix?

Thanks,

Carl

 

Is anywhere around here written what temperatures do you have in your TZ?
My is
U7600/1GB/160GB HDD/WiFi ABGN/BT/L battery
Idle: 59°C just internet
Load: 71°C (playing Call of Duty) 67°C when extracting two large files at once, browsing inet, miranda...
Temperatures taken with RMClock

 

Could you (or anyone else who is running a SSD Expresscard) please give some feedback on how well this setup works in practice? There was a review posted on this site earlier which cited pretty mixed performance from the 16GB Lexar unit. I am wondering how well it is working as supplemental storage? I was envisioning a similar configuration, with the 48GB main SSD with the OS, apps, and some data files and a 16GB or 32GB SSD ExpressCard providing additional storage for data files and/or media files.

Thanks!

 

Not as far as I know. You need to have Sony Japan repair it.

 

I just installed a 32G Transcend SSD in my ExpressCard slot (had a Lexar 8G but needed more space). Seems to work well -- I've put almost all my programs on it, rather than the C drive, so I'm having to accept the data speed penalty of working through the USB speeds. Give my druthers I'd opt for a larger primary SSD (64G or larger) but have to wait on that. In terms of functionality, it works OK -- how fast? Hard to say but if there are delays they seem to be minimal. The biggest disadvantage is that Windows is setup to rely on the root drive "C" so by using the ExpressCard as a program holder, there's a bit of swapping as Vista figures out where everything is. This is probably complicated a bit because I'm using an 8G ProDuo card for my document files..... bottomline: it works!

 

I have used ReadyBoost via an 8G Lexar ExpressCard and now a 32G Transcend ExpressCard -- both worked flawlessly and I was able to observe the RAM available was definitely greater with ReadyBoost vs. when I didn't have it.... probably ~20% or so.

 

Bruce, just wonder: If you had 64GB SSD, would you store your main programs there and the document files on the 32GB ExpressCard?

 

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like you are indeed experiencing USB-level speeds as the reviews have indicated -- not great given the speeds the ExpressCard format is supposed to be capable of, but I suppose liveable as you note. I suppose if I have a 48GB SSD then I should put less speed-intensive files on the supplemental storage -- eg, maybe Word/Excel and other productivity data files plus audio files -- but keep apps and video/heavy media on the main drive. Maybe it will require some trial and error to see what organization would be optimal. I have a 60GB drive in my current laptop, with just 5GB free, so I wish Sony offered the 64GB sku in the US (I'd prefer to buy locally) -- I could definitely get by with that. 48GB is still tight.

 

On another note - the TZ's screen is very pretty. However for an 11" screen it has a tremendous number of pixels (1366x768 iirc), making the dot pitch microscopic. I haven't been 21 for a long time so my eyes are long past their prime -- making such tiny dot pitch really hard to read for me.

I went to Fry's and looked at the TZ with Vista. Also next to it was an older Fujitsu 72xx series with XP and a similar screen.

I was looking at an XP system (eg via PortableOne, which having recently noticed just put the TZ back on my short list with the Toshiba R500) because of my existing software set and better performance, but it occurred to me that the UI/font scaling in Vista seemed superior and made the screen a lot easier to read than I remember the old TX's running XP (which doesn't scale fonts and the UI too well). This was confirmed by looking at the Fujitsu's microscopic XP presentation right next to the TZ running Vista.

I know you can change font settings for the UI and IE/etc but it gets kinda clunky in XP, esp when you print and switch back/forth between laptop and external display.

Would appreciate any thoughts about readability from folks with bad eyes running Vista on their TZ's... Or from folks running XP on their TZs. Thanks!

 

Absolutely! I only opted for this arrgt because when I used the C drive for my software it kept running out of headroom and giving me problems.

 

"Would appreciate any thoughts about readability from folks with bad eyes running Vista on their TZ's... Or from folks running XP on their TZs. Thanks!"

My eyes are beyond their prime as well and that was one of my concerns when I purchased the TZ -- I'd already tried several UMPC but gave up on them for this reason -- couldn't comfortably read the screen. I was pleasantly surprised when I rec'd the TZ and discovered that, because of the high pixel concentration I can read the screen reasonably comfortably -- and I haven't changed the DPI. Believe me, this screen is very sharp -- much sharper than my SZ and I consider that one of the best screens on any notebook/laptop I've had.

 

it has more pixels per sq inch too though. isnt the tz like 1336x768? and on a 11.1" screen, no wonder its so sharp

 

I am a new owner of sony vaio vgn tz 17n, this is my very first laptop. It is installed with windows vista business and I set the resolution at 1366x768 . When I tried to play back a video and put it in full screen, the video only cover the center part of my screen, it won't fill up the whole screen. Is this normal for this laptop? or there are drivers I need to install so that the video can be played full screen on my laptop? thank you for the answers
btw I already did install the divx codec and I play back the video using VLC player

 

Your video probably has a 4:3 ratio, rather than a 16:9 ration, in which case this is perfectly normal. Only wide screen (16:9) videos will fill the screen.

Benjamin

 

Thank you for the reply, for my understanding, only video with certain aspect ration can be played full screen on our screen?

 

Any video can be played in full-screen mode but, yes, only a wide screen movie will fill up our screen because, well, it is wide screen. New movies are wide screen (16:9) but some DVDs do what is called "pan and scan" to fit standard (old) television sets, so you get 4:3 video, which is closer to a square. Classic movies (black and white, etc.) are 4:3.

The only way around this is to do what some wide screen television sets do: either stretch the image (which I think looks terrible) or zoom in on the image (which also isn't great).

 

Thanks for the fast reply, I will take note of your advice. voipben you've been great help. Appreciate for all your answers. This is my very first laptop and I still think the screen looks great! =D

 

It's a pleasure. Yeah, the TZ's screen is amazing...

 

A member of the forum wrote this:

"The only real exciting thing are the new ultraportable Intel chips with claims of 10 times lower power consumption. Now that would be cool in a new generation Sony Vaio G".

Do you know something more about this? When Sony will gonna start putting these new chips on their ultraportables? I am in the market for an ultraportable ( Sony TZ or Sony G), maybe if I wait few months they will have these low power chips?

 

Jack -

There will always be something better/newer/faster. I knew when I bought my G1 that something would replace it, maybe even within a few months (as it what has happened). Such is life.

At some point, put a stake in the ground and be done with it. Newer chips mean new motherboard designs, etc. Sony hasn't even incorporated the new integrated graphics, so I would say that the U7600 is going to be in the Sony line for the forseeable future.

 

On the sidebar, where it lists Sprint, WLAN, Bluetooth and GPS, if I select the WLAN it shows that my connection rate is 54 mbps to my home wireless n router, but if I select Network and Sharing Center, then click details to my wireless setting, it shows 130-144mbps. Anyone else having this issue or have found a solution?

 

I have been unable to resolve this, anyone have any ideas?

 

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the forum so I haven't been able to read through all the pages in this thread (Sorry in advance if this has already been covered/answered).

I've recently bought a Sony VAIO TZ-91 laptop from pricejapan & have (for the most part) successfully installed all the drivers for the laptop. There's one thing I want to see if I can fix... the AV Mode.

The interface/menu is Japanese (what you get for ordering it from Japan) & I was wondering if there was an update or anything which would change it to English?

If anyone knows how to do this or where to get the files I need, it would be greatly appreciated because I definately see myself using this feature alot while on the train or long trips...etc!


Thanks in advance,

Funkay