F Series Notebook opinion

I am contemplating a Sony F Series notebook. I have had Dells for years but their build quality has deteriorated and their keyboards usually always have too much flex. I know Sony builds excellent LCD TVs and may give them a try for a notebook. This notebook would be a backup to my Alienware desktop. It has to run MMORPGs well.

I would get the NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M graphics card, the i7 - 720QM processor, 7200 rpm drive and at least 4Gb of memory. Can this graphics card cut it for gaming? (I know it is less powerful than the card in my M6400)

I have also heard people have reported issues with a high pitch noise coming from the notebook, tinny sounding speakers, and an average looking LCD display. Thanks.

 

I own it and love it. However, if you're a keyboard flex nazi - you'll have to look elsewhere.

 

What's that supposed to mean?

 

Lol...the F keyboard panel flexes quite a bit especially around the enter key vicinity. It kinda bugged me when I had my F but most owners don't see it as a big deal. It doesn't really flex when you're typing lightly though I don't have heavy hands myself. I write fast though..

 

Thanks for the info. I had to put a shim under my M6400 keyboard. I should have used two. I have an old Inspiron 8600 that has virtually no keyboard flex. I replaced the original one after a year.

 

I, too, want to know what the speakers are like on this laptop. I'm caught choosing between an HD-less Asus or a Sony F Series laptop with (from what I've heard) a weak sound system.

 

I don't think the speakers on the F-series (like with pretty much all laptops around) are something that I am impressed with at all. Par for the course when it comes to mid-range laptop speakers, I guess, but nothing more.

 

I played the sample video(shared folder on both computers) in BestBuy on both this computer and the Dell Studio 1745. While the video was much better on the Sony (Sony 1080p, Dell is 900p) the sound was much better on the Dell (JBL speakers plus sub woofer) although not the worst sounding speakers on the Vaio, I was kind of expecting more.

I'm torn between these two systems and the Dell XPS 16
Decisions... decisions...

 

Choosing the right notebook isn't an easy task.

 

So does this notebook have the throttling issues on battery power with the core i7 chip?

 

Yes, on battery it throttles. Which means that when doing CPU intensive tasks, which needs the power of all 8 of those logical cores (4 cores, 8 threads), you need to be plugged in.

 

Whats the cause of that throttling issue? There are several models with i7 quads that have this issue (Dell XPS 1647, HP Envy 15, etc). This makes me want to avoid these models like the plague. Seems like false advertisement.

 

I am guessing it is the power from the quad-cores that uses up the battery quicker, when running on battery and hence the CPU throttles down to save battery power.

I need to point out when comparing the performance of the new i7-820QM (in the new F-series with 8GB DDR3-1333 RAM), a photo-processing batchjob that used to take around 30-45 minutes on the Core 2 Duo P9700 (2.8GHz) (with 8GB DDR2-800 RAM) is taking around 3-6 minutes on the i7-820QM. That is a HUGE leap in performance, however one wants to look at it.

Bottomline, when you need such CPU firepower, you better be plugged in and as long as you are plugged in, it will get the job done in a hurry.

Also, running on battery, the i7-820QM throttles down to 1.2GHz, which is more than sufficient for a majority of tasks, including wireless internet surfing, watching youtube videos, word processing jobs, running fairly complex Excel macros, playing a Blu-ray video and pretty much anything you can throw at it. In fact, I had no idea whatsoever that the machine was in a throttled state, till it was pointed out in one of the forum posts.

I am frankly okay with the throttling, since being aware of this is the key. I just have to adjust in the way I work with the laptop and for those tasks that need the CPU to be going all-out, I will make sure that I am plugged in (whether at the office, at the airport or wherever I am able to access a plug-point).

 

@Roweraay

what would a. 1.2ghz compare to in terms of core 2 duo and will it lock into using a single core at battery?

Your explanation just now about the F was very encouraging!

 

Has anyone experienced the high pitch noise?

Does it only come with a reinstall disk or a genuine windows 7 disk or both?

I am looking at this one. It appears to be less expensive than one configured on the Sony site.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+...154378383&skuId=9705382#tabbed-specifications

 

http://www.sonyinsider.com/2010/02/04/no-worries-the-sony-vaio-f-laptop-is-okay-and-back-on-sale/

 

For whatever reason, you can't cut and paste Best Buy links.

I think I bought that one you linked to. ($1349 ?)

The retail versions seem to differ in 5400 v. 7200rpm hard drive, 4GB v. 6GB ram and 310 v. 330 video cards.

The Best Buy one came with 6GB ram and the 330 video card, so I wanted that one. Even if I had to buy a 7200rpm drive, they are under $100, easy to replace and you get to use the OEM one for back-ups.

I went whole hog and installed a 128GB SSD and got an eSATA hard drive for extra storage when I'm not on the home studio network.

I have gotten a chance to fire drill this thing a little, I'm bought it Sunday and am using on location this week for some video production using Adobe CS4.

My initial impressions are mostly favorable. I'm used to Apple laptops and I do feel that the look better, are better made, not as thick, etc. But whatever, this thing is a $1349 POWERHOUSE.

Not too hot, even when compressing video. Fan does spool up, and I prop the rear up on a pickle jar lid, which I do with all my laptops.

I put it up against my desktop:

Desktop rendered the video in about 45 minutes. Laptop rendered the video in 90 minutes. Desktop is an i7 overclocked to 3.4GHz, so, nothing out of line there. I'm dying to render the video on my Core2Duo MacBook Pro 2.4GHz. I bet/predict it will be 3+ hours?

What' weird is, with the SSD, the laptop FEELS faster than my desktop in normal use.

If you care about battery life, I think it's obvious, you don't want an i7. Look at an i5 or the upcoming dual core i7. I did not buy this laptop planning to use it unplugged, so, I'm ok with that. Battery just protects me if the power goes out so I can save all my work, lol.

Screen is not an LED, and may not have as much RGB gamut as we'd like, not sure. The screen does look good, but does not seem as bright as even my 2 year old LED screened Macbook Pro which will burn your retinas.

It's a glossy screen. It's ok, I'd go for matte if possible, but it's not a religious war for me. I like glossy when there are no reflections. I like it less when there are. No biggie.

Mine is all modded up with the SSD and a clean install of OEM Windows 7 Professional (I did not feel like messing with recovery partitions and so forth) so, it's running very well so far.

I HATE 1920x1080 (and all 16:9 widescreens) screens. , I want 1920x1200 but nobody makes them anymore, which is just bullpoo. Who needs more width? We need more vertical. Argh. /petpeeve

Backlit keys are not all that. Tremendous light leak from underneath the keys that looks weird unless you are hovering right over the laptop. They are hard to keep on since they are automatic. I just put tape over the sensor. Ghetto.

I'd give the laptop a 7/10, with arguable/debatable/personal reasons for not giving it an 8/10. Hard to complain about the build quality (it's a little plasticy) for the price.

For the money, it feels like a borderline steal.

[edit] no interest in laptop gaming

 

I completely gave up on the f series because of the weak gaming GPU. Since I am a Mac user except for games, I only want a PC for games. I would buy asus, MSI or alienware if you care about high performance.

The 330 is weak especially at 1080p
cheers,

 

Count Schemula,

Did the computer come with a win 7 disk?
I am tempted to get it at Fry's for the 7200 rpm disk and take the 2Gb memory hit. They also offer silver/gray which i prefer over black. I can add memory later. Still deciding.
Thank you so much for the detailed report!

Panzer06,

Yes the 330 is a bit weak but the basic Alienware m17x is gonna run close to 2k which is hundreds more. If this was going to be my primary system I would not consider it. This would be my backup system for my Alienware Aurora.

roweraay,

Thanks for the info on throttling and battery power in your report!

lpc1,

Thanks for the links!

 

It did not come with a Windows 7 DVD.

For me, it was a time is money thing, so I just bought a $149 copy of Win 7 Pro OEM at Microcenter.

The computer comes with a recovery partition and you can make recovery DVDs. I'm not sure how that works, there are threads on this forum on it.

That sounded weird to me, and did not sound like a sure fire way to avoid bloatware and SonyWare and in my case, BestBuy ware, so the $149 was worth it to me to have a guaranteed solution ready to go.

 

a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive is ~$90. Plus you get to keep the 5400 and stick it in an external case and use it for backup.

a 4GB stick of ram is probably more than that?

That's why I went for the model with more ram.

 

Yes, you are right, RAM would be more expensive than a drive. I think I would also buy the Win 7 os. Thanks for the info.