Kudos to Portable One (and some questions on SZ6)

Thanks to Ivan @ P1 for their custom install, minus bloatware. I bought an SZ680 from them last week and it's running great. Delivered on time, at the right price and most importantly I didn't need to tweak/reinstall Vista and was up and running the next day. I don't miss the megs of bloatware wasting RAM and disk space!

I'll be ordering more Vaio's from P1 for our office. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Windows Easy Transfer worked for me.

I'm very happy with how fast this Vaio is. I've got the 160 gig 7200 rpm drive and 2 gigs of RAM which seems to be enough (even though the Sony steals so much RAM for the video). Booting is very quick and overall the system feels very snappy. With Bitlocker I can finally relax about the financial data on my laptop.

I do have some questions:

- What's the correct dock/undock procedure? The Sony documentation doesn't say and I've had some weird behavior so I must be doing it wrong. Do I dock/undock powered up or powered down?

- I can't get the DVI to work on my dock. VGA works fine. Am I missing something obvious? The Intel utility claims no screen is connected when I use the DVI port.

- I read a thread here about the 'black screen' flashes, especially when UAC comes up. Is there a fix for that? It's mildly annoying.

8ball

 

I don't have a Vaio yet but with my HPs I put into standby before undocking which works just fine. Interestingly, the HP dock documentation didn't specify a procedure either!

 

I don't have an external monitor (yet) so I can't help with the DVI issue. However, I do have a docking station. To undock, there is an "Undock" button which I press to undock. After pressing the button, there is a message that pops up that says its safe to undock.

As for docking, I just dock the laptop and have not had an issue doing so.

 

I found the solution to the black flash issue in this thread. Thanks NinjaNoodles!

The undocking seems to work OK for me and I get the balloon saying it's OK to undock.

My main problem is docking. I've tried docking on standby, powered off and running and I seem to get either (a) random hangs when the Vaio appears to be on but mouse and keys are frozen or (b) Vaio running with a black screen and doesn't respond.

 

In order to use the DVI port on the docking station you need to be in "Speed" mode on the notebook, and using the NVIDIA card, and not the "Stamina" mode with it's Intel x3100.

 

i dock when my laptop is powered or when its off, doesnt matter. i havent noticed any of the weird behavior you have, but when you undock you should press the button and wait for the dialog that says its safe to undock

 

I agree with Roor, but I'll add that I've found it's best not to dock/undock while in 'sleep' mode. 'Off' is fine, 'on' is fine using the hardware undock button or Vista Button, >, Undock, but 'sleep' makes it do weird things.

Also, once I turned off the TMM thing (which I believe tries to autodetect external screens) many of the issues similar to yours ceased. I don't like TMM because it second guesses what you want to do.

Also, with respect to the DVI, there should be no need to use the intel graphics when you're on the dock, because you should always have AC power (so no need to be power efficient).

So here's a summary of my daily procedure that requires no settings changes:

> Get to work, put SZ in dock and switch it on in Speed Mode, 13.3 and DVI external light up perfectly having remembered their settings from the first time I configured it.

> Having a meeting, so hit the Undock button, close the lid, and take it to meeting. Get back to office, wake the SZ up, dock it, and external moniter lights up.

> End of the day, switch SZ off, take it off the dock, go home.

> Get home, flick to Stamina mode (power supply lives at work), switch SZ on, only one 13.3 screen configured. Switch it off at night, flick it back to speed mode for when I boot it up the next morning in the office.

> Get back to work, repeat, and wonder where I'm going in life.

This routine leaves me never getting the wrong resolution from boot up or wakeup, and never having to configure multiple moniters after the first time. However, I'm pretty sure this relies on switching off TMM as it will try to be smart and turn things on and off automatically for you.

Cheers.

 

How did you get the external monitor to remember your resolution? I'm not even undocking/docking and I can't get it to remember. I press FN+F7 and switch to Monitor only and it shows resolution of 1024x768 so i goto display properties and change it to 1680x1050. Then I press FN+F7 again and choose LCD only. Now when I got back to external monitor FN+F7 it's back at 1024x768. It's so frustrating. Am I missing something?

 

Thanks for the pointers. Yes, I had my graphics switched to Stamina mode hence no DVI. You would think Sony might mention this in the documentation?!

Using the DVI, I seem to get the right resolution every time. With VGA I had to configure a profile using the Intel Graphics utility. I also killed off the IMM process since it doesn't seem to add much except black flashes.

Docking seems to be working OK now so I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before.

I'm extremely happy with the SZ6.