Vaio FZ Owners Official Owners Thread

I had replaced the original 160GB HDD (Hitache 5400rpm) with a Western Digital 3200BEVT (320GB) a few days ago and the Vista performance index for the HDD jumped from 4.8 to 5.3. That and the extra gig of RAM has made the thing really speedy.

However, the RAM did not improve the memory subscore. Anyone have greater than a 4.8 subscore for RAM?

 

This forum have helped me in the past, I just thought I'd shared a good deal that I found... FZs extended battery (vgp-bpl8) is selling at tigerdirect for at outrageously low price of $20. I just got mine today and after a full charge, I was able to get ~3 hours from it, I left a dvd running... did some surfing, music, etc, brightness level 2 bars less than full.

 

Are there any date codes on the battery or the package?

Batteries do have a life span, even if they are just in a warehouse.

Still, the $20 price may to be too good to pass up if the battery is put into use quickly.

 

WOW!!!!!A $249 battery for $20 from TigerDirect? I jumped. TigerDirect is no fly by night operation, for $27 delivered how could I go wrong.

I'll report back when it arrives!

Gary

 

my thoughts exactly. and tigerdirect didn't disappoint; the battery was delivered to me in exactly 2 days.

@SFischer1 >> I didn't really bothered to check on the date codes and all that stuff.. when I saw that its a sony battery and that tigerdirect is the one selling, I just clicked "buy" without even thinking. Well for $27 (inc. shipping) I thought I'd be happy to get 3 months out of it The cheapest ones of these are selling for $215 elsewhere.

2 full charge and recharge later, I'd say these are the real thing 2.5 hours is a safe bet, and I like my screen nice and bright it could probably last longer when brightness is lowered some more. I will check the date codes tonight...although I just thought that the FZ was introduced 2007 so thats the worst age possible, which is not bad if its just sitting on a warehouse.

 

There must be a reason for the huge price drop. The ~ $20 must be below what it costs Sony to make it.

On my FZ485U I still have the sticker to the left of the touch pad suggesting the VGP-BPL8. Computer Purchased just 3 months ago.

New Model coming out? Maybe Sony too many? Life span too short requiring a redesign? We may never know.

I just got confirmation for my order.

Also on the sticker is the VGP-AC19V21 "Stick AC Adapter". Is that also being sold for a very low price. I can not see why I would want to purchase it.

BTY, the max power I have seen so far with my FZ485U is ~ 70 Watts with current idling power as I type this at ~ 37 Watts.

My UPC UPA9 12V DC / 120V AC works just fine. I searched and Sony does not offer an 12V DC adapter, at least I could not find one.

Stephen H. Fischer

 

Yeah, I just ordered one, too. Thanks a bunch, jetro.

With the arrival of FW and the discountinuation of FZ, they are probably just cleaning out the warehouse and has made an honest pricing mistake along the way. TigerDirect purchased part of CompUSA -- a store that, in my experience, used to carry more Sony accessories than BB or CC and ended up having to put them on clearance -- and a bunch of its stuff in the beginning of this year, so they may really have a lot that they want to get rid of.

 

Take a look at this page, the next two batteries are in the $250+ range!

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/search.asp?keywords=Sony&mnf=792

From the "More Sony Products" link just below the picture!

Sure looks like a pricing error!

SHF

 

Has anyone had any success with the newer nVidia drivers on laptopvideo2go?

@jetro, nice tip, ordered and waiting.

 

I've just had a nightmare problem with a brand new external lacie hard drive and want to replace my internal drive instead. I'd hope i'd get far better reliability in that.

My question is what hard drive specs do i have to look for on the purchase of a replacement hard drive? esata ?

aw and is it really as easy as four screws under the computer to install a new hard drive? i thought i'd have to open up the computer hence why i tried external first.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336

 

You just have to remove the hard drive cover, then the drive cage, then remove the old hard drive from the cage and put in the new one. Its really easy and you don't even need an anti-static strap.

That Seagate you linked to will work, just keep in mind it will run hotter than the original (i assume you have a 5400rpm) and your battery life will decrease slightly. I got a 4-6°F increase switching from the original 5400RPM 160GB drive to the 5400RPM WD 3200BEVT 320GB.

 

As far as I know, yeah, it's just a couple screws. It's really not that hard to replace a harddrive if the laptop was designed to allow easy access -- some of the Sony ultra-portables have to sacrifice this, but not FZ.

The 7200.3 320GB is probably the fastest you can find and it should work really well with your FZ -- my FZ4000 has a 200GB 7200RPM and it gives a WEI of 5.4.

 

Is that the subscore for the drive or the entire computer?
The WD 3200BEVT 5400RPM I have gets a 5.3 score for the drive. Which doesnt seem right...

 

Remember a 7200 RPM is not automatically faster than a 5400 RPM drive. The REAL numbers you want to look at are the transfer rates and the latency times. There have been numbers posted here before showing a higher density 5400 rpm drive out performing a lower density 7200 rpm one.

Gary

 

very good to hear. and i will definately get the fastest drive by the numbers not the rpms. thanks for the heads up on that. everyday video editor on my fz. loving it

 

I recently bought a FZ348E/B from Circuit City. Got it for a great price because it was an open box. The main reason I chose it out of all the others was the Blu-ray. I'm a victim of the HD DVD/Blu Ray war and didn't want to invest in a stand alone player or PS3 since I needed a laptop and wanted a Blu ray I accomplished both with one purchase, or maybe not......
Can the Laptop act as a fully functional Blu Ray player including decoding all or some of the latest sound formats? i.e. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD?

 

Just the sub-score for the harddrive. Even though WEI is not really the best benchmark, but like Gary said, density matters in some performance indices and yours is 1.6X denser than mine.

BTW, in response to you earlier comment, my memory WEI is 5.0.

 

Good point on the density differences, closer the bits, the less distance traveled, and the higher the throughput.

 

Hi there

I'm from UK and about to purchase a new FZ31S notebook and i believe the battery for it (VGP-BPS8A) is identical to VGP-BPL8 sold on Tigerdirect so very tempted to buy it for only $20....some questions though:

1) Can someone please confirm that this WILL fit the FZ31S notebook. why does the BPL8 look different here?
2) How much heavier will this 7800mAh battery be than the original supplied battery?

Thanks!

 

I tested out the Hometheater aspect of the FZ348E/B last night. I used the Night at the Museam Blu Ray dvd. The HDMI cable was plugged into a Marantz receiver that supports HDMI 1.3a. The receiver is connected to a
60" Sony LCD rear projection.

My receiver indicated that is was recieving a DTS signal, not sure if it was DTS MA though. The display seemed to be slightly overscanned, almost as though it was slightly zoomed. The picture was excellent though. The TV is from 2005 and only supports 720p.

All in all it looks like I accomplished my goal of getting a decent quality laptop and a Blu Ray player for only $619(CC open box). I also picked up a 2 gb chip ($16 off of ebay) and the extended battery for $20.

 

The hdmi on the fzs sends the audio aswell!!!? I didnt know this!

 

BPL8 is the extended battery so it has an extra "tube" of battery cells. It will stick out underneath your laptop and kind of raise the laptop to an angle once you put the battery in. It will fit all FZ laptops.

Weight of BPL8 is approx. 1.2 lb and the weight of BPS8 0.71 lbs, so you are looking at about half a pound.

 

Hi Skyshade

Thanks for your reply, it was much appreciated. However when you say the BPS8 will "raise the laptop angle", will it raise the front or the back of the laptop and by how much? Could you post some pics of any FZ notebook with the BPS8 installed? Sorry to ask too many questions but i don't want to purchase the extended battery and then end up regretting it

Cheers

 

Since the battery is at the rear of the machine, I bet you can guess which portion it will raise, no?

Just buy it. $20 for a $200+ battery. How can you possibly go wrong? I got mine yesterday.

If you really need more info. Use the search box at the top of the page to find previous discussions of this battery and how it raises the machine that occured a few months back.

Gary

 

Hi you all.

I was wondering, is it possible to upgrade the FZ´s to 4 gb of RAM?, i was reading the thread, but, all of them can?, or just the new models?.
I have a FZ250FE, , the problem, i bought the notebook in Mexico, so i was not able to match mine with yours, because the designation is diferent, this happens to me on each discussion forum y went through.

Intel T7250 2 Ghz. x 2 (core dos duo) santa rosa chip
2 gb RAM
nvidia geforce 8400M GT gpu
HDD 200 GB at 5400 rpm.

can tell me wich model is similar to yours in the us, uk, spain, etc.?

So as i am using vista 32 bit (x86), i thought using 3 gb RAM and the last gb for the vidio gpu, as it says that max memory is of 880 mb of video RAM.

One more thing, the other day, i was playing WoW when sudenly an error took place with a blue window, it sayed somethin lie hardware halt, so y tur it off using the button, after that i had a boot up error when starting the notebook. When i go to problem and solutions to find out what happened, it says video hardware error and tells me that there is a solution, the drivers, but i already intalled the newest drivers for my nvidia.
This is the first time in 8 month this happens, could it be a hardware issue, because when the blue screen apeared i was using a vent to cool the laptop. Do u guys suggest me to re-install windows to fabric conditions? By the way now when playing WoW somethimes it stucks for few seconds and then continues, so in the desktop the warning icon shows me thar the screen drivers stoped working but recovered succesfully.

Thanks for any help.

 

Hi

Does anyone know if the FZ series support the newer RAM modules DDR2 PC2-6400 (800mhz)? I ask this because i'm looking to upgrade my RAM on the FZ31S and Crucial UK also gave me the option of PC2-6400 (800mhz) in addition to the standard PC2-5300 (667mhz), but the 6400 is more expensive so don't want to waste my money if i don't see any benefit in speed.

Thanks

 

I have this in my FZ190E:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227251
It will clock down to PC2-5300 speeds, so there not much point to getting PC2-6400 modules.

 

How do you know it will slow down the speed, because of the procesor, motherbord, or both.

I have 2x1 gb ram memories, y want to upgrade to 4 as well.

Can u help me with my model?

Thanks.

 

It clocks down because of the speed of the FSB.

Basically any decent brand of DDR2-5300/5400 will work just fine. Keep in mind though you will only see 3GB of the 4GB on a 32bit OS.

 

I have the FZ180E. Has anyone had the problem of the Blu-Ray drive not recognizing a CD/DVD/BR DVD? My FZ keeps asking to have a disc to be inserted. OS of course is Vista. Thanks for the help.

 

So the speed of the Front Side Bus, in the FZ series is 800 mhz?

http://www.memoryx.net/intelpm9652.html = this is my motherboard chipset

Sorry for been so insistent in asking this.

Yes i am going to share the 4 th gb of RAM with my nvideia gpu.

 

The front side bus for the CPU is 800MHz and the chipset can handle 800MHz, but the memory bus is bottlenecked at 667MHz, so if you put a 800MHz memory in there it will down clock to 667MHz.

Basically, if you think of BUS as the roads connecting the chipset and CPU/GPU, the chipset has a gate that is 8-lane wide, as is the road between CPU and chipset, but the road between memory and chipset is only 7-lane wide. If you buy a memory that has a 8-lane gate, it still has to squeeze through the 7-lane wide road between the memory and the chipset -- so it downclocks to 667MHz.

 

I have downloaded the forceware 167.43, good ones, very stable, and also improved the RAM from 4.8 to 4.9, graphics ( windows aero) from 4.0 to 4.1, game graphics from 4.7 to 4.8.*

Adds few more options to the graphic management.

I´ve beet told that are better than the forceware 169.

*My gpu is an nvidia 8400M gt.

 

I've been using it that for a while, works great and no crashes due to poor nVidia drivers. I meant to ask if anyone tried the 17x.xx drivers.

 

Sorry.

No, i haven´t heard about those, do they have the modded .inf file as well?

I will check them.

 

what timing is best for our ram upgrades? im looking for the best performing 2x2gb dual channel sticks there are. =)

 

It really isn't going to make much of a difference.
Theres some CAS4 DDR2 RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...60381 1052910525 1309121118 1052508081&name=4

But honestly, its not really worth the extra $20-30.

 

I had the same problem - I own a FZ31Z. It has nothing to do with vista. I had installed a nvida graphics driver that was not WQHL sertified, since the one that the vaio comes with is over one year old and I whanted to play some newer computor games. I rolled back and installed the driver that came with the Vaio and voila - The blue ray WinDVD worked like a charm. The blue-ray disk have a copy protection that sends a signal to the windvd software - if the graphiccard doesnt have a digitaly signed driver from SONY it doesnt work.

I asked SONY if they had any idea when they would update their driver and the aswer was that they had no timeline for that. So at corruntly one have to choose between using the graphic crad for computorgames or for playing blue-ray disks - not both - wich is not good customer support in my point of view. Perhaps if more ppl whould ask SONY through direkt contact they would understand that not having a updated graphics driver hinders the customer to use the computor.

 

After further TS I have found that the CD drive doesn't recognize any CD/DVD or Blu-Ray disc. System info reports the drive is operating correctly. I am using the original installed NVIDIA drivers. It looks like I will have to try an external USB drive. Does the Ma****a drive have a reliability problem?

 

By chance have you installed any third party CD or DVD burner software? If so there have been issues with such software messing up a particular registry entry. Easily fixed: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060 or here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2434648&highlight=registry#post2434648

Gary

 

Hello

New member here and I have a couple of questions.
I'm interested in buying the FZ11e Vaio and replacing the hdd so I was wondering is the HDD 2.5" or 1.8" ?
Also, how bad is the failure rate of the nVidia 8400gt?

Thanks in advance.

 

The hard drive is a 2.5" SATA drive.

I believe the failure of the 8400GT is heat related. I game quite a bit on my laptop but I use a notebook cooler to help reduce the temperature. I think if you do play games on it, keep it on a decent cooler (recommend the Zalman NC1000) and it should do just fine.

 

It is heat related but not in the way you think. The problem is with the chip substrate separating from the rest of the chip due to heating and cooling cycles not by overheating. Now, keeping it cooler so that the cycles are not as extreme is a good think it is not a solution to the problem. At best it will buy you some time, but if your chip is one prone to failure, it will still fail. The rate at which these are failing SEEMS to be higher in Dell and HP machines. That may be attributed to one of two scenarios. Scenario one, the Dell and HP machines don't have as good a cooling architecture as the Sony machines. Scenario 2 there are more HP and Dells in the field.

Bottom line no one knows for sure the extend of this problem. Sony has clammed up and is refusing to say anything (unlike Dell or HP.) Nvidia is being very cryptic in telling the specifics of the problem.

Gary

 

Definitely, Dell increased fan speeds with BIOS updates so the failures are postponed by sometime (or as people have said, its just enough so it fails outside the warranty period).

I'm hoping Sony extends our warranties on account of this or at least offers free repairs on a case by case situation.

 

Was wondering does anyone have any experience in doing a clean install with Vista x64 on the FZ series - or even more specifically - the FZ21M (UK - Europe)?

If so - any problems? And where did you get any drivers etc from as Sony don't support them from what they're telling me :S

 

I've considered it, but 32bit drivers DO NOT work in 64bit Vista, and thats a fact. Drivers must be written for the 64bit OS. So you will definitely lose a bunch of the hotkey functionality.

-----------

About the nVidia chip heat thing, I highly recommend anyone who games to let their laptop cool down (powered on - fans running) for 10 minutes before turning the computer off after long periods of gaming.

 

Wow, this sucks... HDMI can output Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 from regular DVD's, On Blu Ray it appears that DTS MA can be down converted to DTS 5.1, but Dolby Digital TrueHD is downcoverted to two channel stereo. Most Blu Rays will now sound like crap on any decent Home theater.

Anybody have any ideas????

 

My fz180e had a 8400gt failure -- Sony told me that to their knowledge there is NO PROBLEM w/ the 8400gt --- I tried arguing but they just said I was one month out of warranty and tough luck...

any one know a good place to get a new mother board?

 

hello
does any one know how can i make FN+F5 and FN+F6 work in vista 64 on a VGN-FZ21M
is there a driver for the keyboard?
another question: can someone provide a driver for the ALPS touchpad (for vista 64 bit and to be other that the one from dell)
if someone wants, i will attach some drivers for vista 64 (for VGN-FZ21M)

ow, the last question: this model supports EAX ?
in everest i have no EAX supported ...

 

I have exactly the same model as you and had no success in finding any 64bit drivers - have you found some already? Even for the GFX card? If so - wer did u find them as I would appreciate any you could link me to or send me.

When I used Vista x64 I could not use Aero as I did not have the GFX card drivers. Have you overcome this?

Thanks
Simon Hunter