:confused: Arrrgg, the fan .. c.a.n.'t ..stop..the...faaan [SZ160 Rans and Raves]

Hey ppl !

So finally I got my SZ160 from JR (last piece thay had!) and suddenly I am not that impressed !

The carbon fiber, the metal touch, all the bills and whistles, they're fine, but what's up with Sony ? They mastered space-age fibers and stylish deign yet they failed to create a normal-clicking keyboard ?! I dont think its that bad, my other laptop - an HP NX7000 has a better one than this one, and its 3 years old ! Can't they make a better kb ?

And don't get me started on the DVD Recovery thing. I called up Sony to tell them i couldn't find my recovery DVDs or even a Windows installation CD, and they went like, oh thats usual, press F10 and you'll get them - how cheap can that be, and oh, how INSECURE. I was amazed to see that anybody can press F10 while booting your laptop, and get the whole drive formatted in less than 5-10 minutes, WITHOUT even asking for a PASSWORD or a double-confirmation or whatever !

But anyways, back to the main issue - the fan ! Now I don't understand how some people were saying that the fan never came up, even after playing WoW or something for an hour -do you guys live in Alaska or did you have, like, a 5-inch thick cooling pad ? My SZ160 starts off cool, but once you are using it, (even at 1Ghz 'underclocked' mode), the fan kicks off (at low speed though), and just keep like that. I've got the temperature reading 44-45 degree celsius (is that high or regular?) , and yet it is always on. Of course playing with Sony's fan options doesn;t do a thing, neither does pressing the infamous S2 button to 'cool down' the fan ! And with Intel preventing undervolting for Intel Core Duo - we are out of options here !!

Have the laptop industry stopped making silent laptops anymore ? I returned two dv5000s from HP last month coz they had the fan on all the time, even when you're chit-chatting. I've got my lovely NX7000 (which died to an ATI grx card failure, which i'm replacing this week), its a 1.4G Centrino and the fan NEVER kicks in unless CPU utilizatoin is 100% for more than a minute, and once that it solved, it goes silent again. Hasn't technology advanced in the past 3 years that they can make a 'cool' and 'silent' notebook ?

For the $2,500 I paid, I expected to receive top-of-the-line. I know some of you won't agree with what I'm saying, but I know most knows what I'm talking about. I use my laptop for pogramming, business and sometimes just IM. The fan noise even at its lowest - drives me crazy already and give me one heck of a headache.

Sony, you could've done 5x better. Bad, bad,baaaad Sony.

Oh and I'm now stuck with J&R policy that says laptops from HP, Sony (and a bunch of other manufacturers) can't be returned once the hard disk has been 'initialized' - as if you can't restore the thing, but anyways, this sucks, now I would have to deal with Sony's support *if* i wanted to return it, UNLESS I can get this fan thing worked out... anyone out there, any help .. pleeeeeeeeeeease ?

Sansa

 

I don't know what's up with your 160, but I can BARELY even hear the fan on mine when it's on...and I have VERY sensitive ears. See how cool it runs, it IS surprising that the fan stays on so constantly...but it certainly isn't loud on mine.

-Mark

 

Same here - my I can NEVER hear my fan. I'm typing this on my SZ160 right now in my SILENT apartment and NOTHING... you could hear a pin drop in here right now! My ThinkPad T42 was noisier than my new SZ, especially when you consider the keyboard. I know, I know, the FEEL of the ThinkPad may be better, but it is much noisier than the quiet SZ... just my $.02

Javier

 

I tried almost everything, from capping the CPU @ 1Ghz and running on battery power on lowest settings ..etc, with no luck. The laptop runs pretty cool, and this is whats driving me crazy. Only a bit warm around the left-top corner where the fan is.

I downloaded Notebook Hardware Control, and although it doesnt do much to control the cpu..etc,at least it reports the temperature to be hovering around 40 degrees. I noticed that 41 is the 'threshold' for the fan to come. Once the laptop goes to 41 degrees for a couple of secs, the fan goes on, once it goes back to 40 degrees for 5 secs or so, it goes off.

Can you guys or anyone tell me what their power management scheme is, what is the temperature while you are browsing/no fan, and/or cpu speed ?

I hope mine is not a defect and that I can do something about it ! Any other fan-annoyed ppl out there BTW ?