Mini review - my upgrade from S360 to SZ680

I bought a Sony S360 when they first came out and loved it, but recently I filled my hard disk up and I was starting to experience a ton of slow down in common tasks and knew it was time to upgrade. I was watching the new round of Santa Rosa laptops closely and was considering the Dell for a while but ultimately decided to wait and get the Sony. I purchased the 680 from P1 with 2gigs of RAM and the 7200 hard drive upgrade. Great service, arrived quickly and with a free neoprene case.

Initial thoughts are that the 680 is a LOT slimmer than my previous "S" series. Dont like the keyboard as much but I am getting used to it.

First thing I did was the F10 re-install of Vista. I had some problems figuring out the right task to kill on first boot, pretty sure it ended up being "Launcher.exe" but a few apps seem to have snuck through. They were all very easy to uninstall along with a ton of VAIO junk utils. Ive had no problems with any of the features working, battery charges quickly, function keys all work.

My main problems were Vista from XP related. My DVD drive stopped working and I thought I had a defective unit. Turns out these drives need a registry tweak to work in Vista! Found it and everything worked great. Also had a big problem with Outlook running very sluggishly, turns out theres some silly plugins from programs like iTunes that will auto-load and throttle your performance. Went in and killed them from Outlook startup and the speed seems to have improved quite a bit. I also had a lot of Vista driver issues with the 8400 video card (havent even tried "speed" yet) but was able to download a tweaked inf file and install the newest direct from nVidia which solved a LOT of my problems. Also found the post about the black flash on startup and killed the service that caused that.

The back bottom of the laptop gets very warm but not uncomfortably so. The left palmrest does run quite hot but is noticable mostly because of the metallic casing -- I doubt I would have felt it on my old plastic S360.

I have not done any gaming benchmarks yet but Vista feels pretty snappy. There is some leakage but nothing I wouldnt have noticed or cared about if I didnt read these forums every day. Updating my video drivers and killing off a bunch of services I didnt use made a big initial difference for me.

Very pleased with my upgrade so far and happy to answer any specific questions.

edit: I actually have a few questions of my own, Vista related. Is there a way to make desktop icons smaller? I have a bunch and they take up a ton of space. Also, is there a way to change the default OS font? The new one is real blurry and I hate it. Finally, you used to be able to drop a folder.jpg in a folder and have that be used as the icon. I still get the graphic but its stuck inside a manilla folder icon and only takes up half the usable space. Is there a way to display JUST my jpg and not have it inlayed in Vistas graphic?

 

Nice review, I ordered an SZ680 from P1 too, also went for the 7200rpm upgrade but 4GB instead of 2GB RAM.

Can I ask did you do a semi-clean install (like the one IIIaman posted about) or did you just uninstall all the bloatware?

Also, where did you find the DVD registry tweak, I'll probably have to do the same thing.

Next, how do you find Outlook startup? Itunes comes delivered with the SZ or did you install it yourself (after or before Outlook installation?).

And the tweaked inf file, did you find that from the Nvidia website or elsewhere? If not did you actually use the Nvidia original driver package? How about the Sony driver package on their FTP? Would that not work?


Its been a few months that I've had a look at Vista but can't you change the OS font just as with XP going to the Appearance/Desktop settings and changing it there somewhere under the Advanced settings?

(Btw mine still hasn't shipped, waiting for that and then afterwards have to ship it to Europe, I'm guessing 10days from now)

 

I did the semi-clean as IIIaman and others suggested.

This one worked for me: http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?p=73149

Hard to decipher but the info is here, I did it and it works: http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=54
Theres some additional info about the problem and fix here:
http://www.spendmatters.com/index.cfm/2007/2/27/Vista--Outlook-2007-is-a-Nightmare

There are 'tweaked' drivers out there but I was having problems with them so I just took the inf file and installed the standard nVidia ones. They're the right drivers, Sony just makes you check if they are from Sony, otherwise it pops up an error. Obviously Sony hasnt updated them as often as nVidia makes them.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13378
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8128

 

Thanks for the reply, hope to be looking back at it soon again... Heh the excitement of waiting...

Btw instead of that dvd tweak..wouldn't a firmware update work? I found the newest one which is only a few days old here:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?download_id=2411

Released: Mon Aug 20, 2007

Mat****a UJ-852 - 1.31 / 1.71 (Sony OEM)
RPC-2

Let me know if you decide to try it.

 

Neither that one or this one works -- it pops up saying its not meant for this drive even though thats the exact model number.

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/214631/sectionfirst?site=hp_en_AP_i&subpage=detail

 

To make the icons smaller, simply right click on the desktop, then View, then choose classic icons.
Alternatively, you can use the CTRL key and scroll wheel

 

ftp://ftp.vaio.sony.co.jp/pub/vaio/download/SP-014042-03/MTFOPD-01404203-UN.exe

that one doesn't work, should be the right one, no?

 

It def lists the part I have but when I try to install it I get an error stating this doesnt apply to my machine.

 

Damn thats a bit of an annoyance :/

Ok that registry tweak will solve the Roxio issue but still...having to remember that and do that after each format...

Sony should really fix this issue, complain about it, I will too once I get mine and I'd have the same problem as you.

 

does the sony sz680 come with a glossy screen or matte?

 

Its a glossy screen but I havent had a single problem with glare. Its much brighter (and dimmer on the dim settings) than my old VAIO.

 

can someone please tell em why anyone would buy a sz691? to me it seems very inferior to the the $400 less sz670 b/c of that idiotic 4200rpm harddrive. Am i missing something, or is Sony being very optismisitc that somebody is willing to shell out that kinda cash for a special weave and slower performance.

 

It has an extra premium version of the carbon-fiber coating, with a tad more gloss I hear.

It also has integrated WWAN though that is an option on the CTO's too.

I believe that's all though.

 

I actually own one of the older S series myself (s150p) and was wondering if the new SZ is alot cooler and quieter than the old one?

 

Who is this "P1" that you all refer to? What is their website?

 

Google Portable One.

 

THANK YOU!! Stuff like this is priceless... some brave soul should make a "Everything you would ever want to know about what to do with your new Vaio 6xx series laptop" thread...

They would be duely repped and loved by me

 

Yes, much much quieter, although I think my fan broke on my old S360 and made it louder than it was supposed to be. New SZ is whisper quiet although the bottom does get quite hot.