How loud is the SR suppose to be?

When I'm in a room by myself, I can hear the fan or hd fairly loud. Is it suppose to be completely silent, or is it suppose to be noticeable?

 

lol
i don't think any laptops can be "completely" silent
i'm in my room by myself right now and my SR is VERY quiet
I have itunes, firefox, msn messenger, aim, and photoshop cs3 opened right now

 

If your in a silent room, can you hear the laptop? I think my laptop is just as loud as my Antec P180 computer.

 

yes, but only barely and if i really try to pay attention to the sound.
I don't know about the Antec P180 that you're talking about.
But this laptop is a lot quieter than my old dell xps, and a lot of other SR users have also said that this is a very quiet/cool running laptop.

maybe you're just paying too much attention to how much noise your laptop is making?

 

And did you clean up the bloatwares that came with the laptop?? cause if you have a bunch of processes running in the background, it causes the laptop to work more which causes more heat, which makes the fan runs louder..

and also if you go into the "VAIO Control Center" (Start -> All Programs -> VAIO Control Center)
and then click on Power Management -> Power Options, on the right hand side it lets you pick "Performance Mode" or "Silent Mode"
so if you think your laptop is too loud, switch it to silent mode, but make sure that the excessive noise is not caused by the ton loads of crapwares sony put on the laptop first..
cause I leave mine on performance mode all the time, and it barely makes any noise

I'm just telling you from my personal experience.. I'm not a pro or anything, but I hope it helps!

 

First time notebook owner, just got my SR today and its loaded with bloatware. I have about 79 processes running in the background and since its my first time with Vista, I have absolutely no clue as to what should get the ax or not.

Do you or anyone else know of a list that has all the things a-okay to get rid of? + Whats the deal with the battery? Im on power saving mode, turned off the cd/dvd drive, wifi, brightness as low as possible and at 100% battery life it says I have 2.4 hours left.
Blah

 

umm... i just took off all the sony entertainment stuff, microsoft one care, quickbook, napster, and all the other trial softwares that came with it..
79 is a lot for a new computer... i wonder when will sony stop putting bloatwares on their laptops..
after i removed all the crapwares, i only have 60 processes running atm.
type in msconfig into the search bar in start menu and then go to "startup" and "services" tabs and uncheck the things you don't need. also you can go to the control panel (control panel -> uninstall a program) and uninstall all those junks.

the battery usually lasts more than the estimate... like after you used the laptop for 30 mins but the estimate only went down 10 minutes.. the vista estimate is not that accurate..
Does your SR have the ATI card?
If it does, then it probably only gonna get around 3 hours of battery...
and then there's the battery drain problem..
if you haven't heard, go check out this thread.. Sony SR Battery Problems

hope it helps

 

First off, thanks for the quick reply. Ive gotten rid of mostly all the bloatware but still a ways off from 60. Hopefully its wont turn out to be that big of a problem.

Does the bad estimate mean I wont be told of having anywhere near the advertised 6 hours? Im on the go too much during the day and checking and rechecking to see if I have enough battery without charging may be a problem. No ATI card, pretty much the bare bones SR with Sony set forth a plan for that problem, or are people pretty much screwed? Any way to know for sure of the battery drain problem without spending many hours checking

Sorry for all the questions!

 

Well i guess you just have to go into msconfig and uncheck all those things that are slowing down your computer/eating your battery.

Umm.. i remember somebody from the SR thread said he/she got 5 hours from the intel integrated graphics.. the funny thing is its advertised as 5 hours in europe but 6 hours here in the US. well try to disable aero, and the sidebar, it can save you some battery life too.
yeah same here im at school all day and i check my battery all the time and see if i will have enough power for the rest of the day
well you dont have to wait a long time to notice it... today when i was in school, at the end of one class i shut off my computer (not sleep), and then 10 mins later in my next class, i turned my laptop on, and 13% of battery life was gone!!! i was SO pissed.. lol.. i dont think theres anything anybody can do about it.. i hope sony can come out with a new firmware that can fix the battery drain problem.
no problem, im glad i can help

check these out, they can help you save some battery life
NBR Vistaa Tips and Tweaks Guide
The "Undervolting" Guide

 

What's making your notebook so noisy is very simple, because the same thing was happening to me, look at my threat call "SR gets very hot". Once you turn off indexing, turn off some windows services(like faxing, multi monitor support, etc.) that you dont use, and some other easy/quick fixes, that will stop. The main culprit of the noise is indexing, so you can either look the on "Windows and other OS" section under the Vista tweaks guide to turn off that stuff or google "Top Ten Vista Tweaks".

Don't undervolt unless you know what your doing, but as of my quick little fixes, its silent at all times, AND I'm STILL averaging around 82 processes..although it tips to 75, depending on what i have running.

 

I changed the power mode from performance to silent mode, but the noise is exactly the same. The sound I hear is coming from the top right of the laptop. Is that the fan or hd?

When I have my head about 1.5 feet away from the screen, I can hear the hd or fan from the laptop? Is that normal? I think it might be the hd. How do I stop it from making noise if I already stopped indexing?

 

Is this fan/hd constantly on?

 

I went to the Sony Store today and saw the SR, and when I put my head to the machine, I couldn't hear anything. When I put my head to my SR at home, I can hear something fairly loud.

Should I get a replacement?

 

You could send it in to Sony and see if they'll find anything wrong. Even the tech people that fix it should be able to notice a loud noise that would be running, especially if it is noticeable. Even tell Sony or call them and ask them. If you have anything that can record the sound and a video of the SR on and running, then you would have proof.

Mine is pretty silent, I can hear the HDD only when I have my head somewhat closer to the laptop itself (I can hear it a few inches from the keyboard, otherwise I can't really hear it beyond that).

It could be a fan? I dunno.

 

With mine on idle or with nothing open (programs), I can hear the laptop from any place in the room.

 

Hmm, that would a problem. Document it for yourself, and then call up Sony and talk to them about how loud your fan is. Then tell them that you tested another SR out in a store and it wasn't even anywhere near as loud as yours seems to be. That's what I would do.

I definitely couldn't hear my laptop in any room idling. Only very close to the laptop itself. I would say that old HP I used was much louder *fan and HDD*.

 

The thing is, that my computer also seemed to be quite noisy before, as i mentioned in my previous post/thread, loud and hot. But, sometimes things like media plus are searching and analyzing your machine, or vista is caching or something else which is extremley resource heavy but hard to identify as a running item. I would disable some services and uninstall some bloatware and see if that fixes your overactive fan... it fixed mine and now it is totally silent.

Check out the vista tweaks guide before you send your laptop in... and turn off indexing and uninstall stuff like sony musicbox, movie story, media plus, oobe and welcome center, etc. It's all mostly useless crap that just hogs resources.

 

The fan is always on with my SR. Is that normal?

 

yes
the fan on mine is always on but i can barely hear it
even when i'm playing games or doing cpu intensive stuff

 

FYI, in general Core 2 Duo is louder than Pentium M machines, which is what i upgraded from. But, in general still barely audible, especially compared to other core 2 duo machines...

Watch what happens to a core 2 duo macbook or pro when even watching youtube, it sounds like a Toshiba laptop...(which are loud as hell)

In comparison, our laptop is whisper quiet...even during gaming as TonyTheTiger mentioned above.

 

Try powering down the hard drive in energy settings, and see if you still hear the noise.