New Vaio Z - Is the fan always on like with old Z model?

Hi, I have the z690, I was wondering if the new z model's fan is always on or if it's more quiet than the previous generation, given that the new model has the new nvidia gpu series and i'm assuming that the overheating problems that plagued the old nvidia 9x series is gone now? (I hope)

One more thing, is there anything different about the new model besides cpu/gpu/hd? I saw one in real life and i didn't understand what that shiny plastic thing lining the bezel above the screen is for (around the webcam)... decoration? it looks and felt cheap to me.. or am i missing something?

PS: I'm surprised sony redesigned the Z series in under 2 years, I'm wondering if i should jump onto this one or wait for the next redesign because I am getting annoyed by my fan, but can't justify spending 2+ grand on an illuminated keyboard unless the fan issue has been addressed at the very least

Thanks!

 

oh, seems that the z12 will have the fhd option, i already find 1600x900 makes everything small... won't 1920x1080 be extremely.. small?

 

Windows 7 DPI scaling is quite good, this isn't a problem.

Right click on the desktop, personalise, display, Set custom text size (DPI).

 

Yup and by default it is set to 125% so that it is not required to adjust it to your own test at first boot...

Personally I've set it to 100% and true this is *really* small. But I like to be able to display that much text.

 

I also use 100% setting...while I found the text really small at first...I got used to it. 1080p movies look awesome on the FHD screen.

 

My old Vaio Z46SD can turn off the fan when use power saver and silent mode. but when i switched to z117gg the fan is alway on.

 

Fan behavior between the old and new Z won't be that much different, GT330M is a more capable card and it generates more heat.

 

It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.

When you increase the system-wide font size, IE follows suit, but not Firefox, which remains having small fonts. If you use IE, then it's really ok. It varies from app to app.

 

Unfortunately, Firefox has its own rendering engine, and even more unfortunately, even though it has an about:config field for setting the DPI, it ignores it in Windows, but most unfortunately of all, it assumes that all Windows users have 96 DPI.
So to get a 12 pt font in Firefox that's really 12 pt (which is a physical measurement like cm and inches, and not pixel based), you have to check what DPI your screen has, and do a small calculation.
For the 1600x900 Z, the DPI is 140, so to get a 12 pt font in Firefox, you have to set it to (12 pt * 140 DPI / 96 DPI) = 17.5 pt. So choose 17 or 18.
For the 1920x1080 Z, the difference is even bigger.

Most other apps are well-behaved, and will adjust based on the DPI setting in Windows, and the (well hidden) control panel for default font sizes.

 

As an owner of the old Z and new Z here was my impressions of the fan:

The fan on the Old Z is less noticeable than the new Z. This is because the Old Z's fan is more of a "wooshing" but the new Z has more of a refrigerator-esq "whine".

Unscientific... and perhaps my unit is different but that's been my experience.

 

thanks for the info everyone

i just wish the guys at sony would set it so that the fan runs at a lower speed and speeds up at a higher temperature

i don't understand why they did this... i'd definitely rather my laptop be a bit hotter but quieter.. and i'm pretty sure the computer can handle being a little hotter

anyone have any idea how to adjust the fan settings? i think i recall the settings being controlled in the bios, and that it is locked so that we can't tamper with it

 

I've actually found it pretty quiet, unless of course, I set the Thermal Settings to Performance. I've never really need it to set to Silent Mode because I found Balanced is just fine. To me, it did make it a little hotter than normal but it was quiet when I've been using it in class (power saver, battery, word processing + browsing).

 

Hi guys

I used to own the previous Gen VGN-Z, an American model with C2D 2.26ghz and a UK spec with C2D 2.4ghz, now i have a VPC-Z116GA with i5-540 and I have to say that i can barely hear the fan on the new Z, on my old VGN-Z's the fan would go from on to off cycles and it would annoy the hell out of me !
maybe i got lucky with my new Z but in my case I would consider the the acoustics of the new Z a major improvement over the 2 examples of VGN-Z I had before!

 

strange.. seems like different people are having different experiences..
dart22, have you also noticed that the new fan makes more of a "refridgerator sound" mentioned in a previous post compared to the "wooshing" sound of the old Z? when i switched from my xps m1210 to the z, it was a pleasant change because.. although the fan volume remained the same, it changed from a high pitch noise to the "wooshing" sound, which i find much less annoying (although i wish it would be completely silent, like my very first m1210)

Ps. you got to own 3 different Z's? must have a lot of money lying around

 

See my signature below for the incarnations of the Vaio Z that I have. I never really notice the fan too much as a rule (until I'm gaming on either machine, when they both turn into hair dryers).

That said, my experience has been that at idle, the new Z11 is slightly quieter (lower decibels) than my older Z690. However, this only matters in silent environments like a business meeting or a library. In those environments, I'd rather be using the Z11.

 

Your business meetings are silent? In my experience, there's always at least one person talking loudly at all times, if nothing else to hear his or her own voice, plus various others whispering and slurping. I can hardly ever get a snooze in, and it's not the fault of the laptop's fan

For anyone looking to buy an external notebook cooler to prevent the Z from spinning up to full noisy fan speed so often, beware that many of them suck in air on the sides, and expel it under the laptop. However, the Z's air outtake is on the left side, so you end up sucking in the hot air exhaust and depositing it under the laptop, which doesn't help.

 

ROFL.

What I meant is during the awkward silence before the meeting starts or between a question and someone chiming in. My meetings, like yours eventually end up with everyone trying to talk at once - often about different things - but that's not what I was talking about. Bad example, I guess.

I suppose I could have used could have used the bathroom (for it's ability to reverberate even the quietest sounds) or church (for it moments of complete silence) as examples, but they'd be bad too for entirely different reasons! I should have just stuck with the library.