SZ650NC for $1916 delivered

Please tell me you're joking when you said its been 20 min and you're on your first boot. I know sony is nortorius in loading with crapware, but 20 min is a bit too much. I would gladly pay money and get an oem or retail vista/xp and do a fresh install. looks very nice though. however, I hate that they made the bezel so thick on the SZ and the TZ.

 

sony has 0 driver for x64 right now. its more trouble than its worth, maybe a couple of more years down the road when x64 will make a noticeable difference. its really unfortunate that sony's support site sucks.

 

After thirty minutes, I launched task manager and killed the Sony process. After that, it was only another 10 minutes until it was useable.

The thing is totally crapped up, really bad. There are hundreds of services running, pages and pages of launched tasks. Ridiculous.

My GF is out doing errends and she'll stop by CompUSA and get a fresh disk. Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out how to burn a set of recovery disks so I don't have to download everything.

My plan is to install XP, then install Vista. First trial will be to see if I can put them both on the same partition. If that fails, I'll wipe it again and start over with XP only.

I'm sure this will be very painful, but is necessary.

So far, I like it. Though it is bigger than I expected.
There is quite a bit of light leakage at both the top and bottom of the LCD, but it's not noticeable once anything is running, only noticeable on a black screen.

 

I have a few questions:

1. On the bottom of the notebook it should say where the notebook was manufactured. Would you mind telling us if it was made in China, Japan, or the USA?

2. There is a program called SmartWi located in C:\Program Files\Sony\SmartWi Connection Utility and inside of that directory is a version.txt file. Can you please tell us what version is listed in that file?

3. Are there any of these problems on your notebook?

Thanks

 

Vista Performance Index is
Pcsr: 5.1
Mem: 4.8
Graphics: 3.5
Gaming Graphics: 4.6
Disk: 4.8

overall: 3.5


Made in Japan


Nothing like SmartWi is found on the machine, nor is there a file called 'version.txt'


In terms of 'problems'
you mean other than Vista being so crapped up it can barely run?
Only thing I'd say is that there is signifigant light leakage all along the lower and upper parts of the screen. The screen itself is very flexable and bows under it's own weight. There are no latches for the screen to keep it closed, though it does close nicely and seems to stay there - maybe latches aren't needed, but it's the first machine I've ever seen without.


I've tested suspend and hibernate. Both work w/o BSODs (which the Lenovo crowd is reporting are severe problems on the T61)

 

That's unusual, when you press Fn key + F1 does anything happen?

Would you mind posting all the subdirectories in C:\Program Files\Sony so we know what utilities are installed? An easy way to copy the directory listing is to go to Command Prompt and type "dir /b" in C:\Program Files\Sony.

Thanks

 

Amazon.com now has it in stock. Monstermaxx, do you think it is better than the M1330?

 

Posting from SZ lappy

C:\Program Files\Sony>dir /b
Battery Care Function
Click to DVD 2
Digital Document Shredder
Diskeeper
DRCU
DSD Direct
DSD Direct Player
DSD to PCM Playback Plug-in Setup
Extended Service Plans
First Experience
Image Converter 3
IOLO System Mechanic
ISB Utility
LocationFreePlayer
Network Utility
OpenMG Jukebox
Setting Utility Series
SonicStage
SonicStage Mastering Studio
VAIO Camera Capture Utility
VAIO Camera Utility
VAIO Center Access Bar
VAIO Central
VAIO Entertainment Center
VAIO Event Service
VAIO HDD Protection
VAIO Help And Support
VAIO Media 6.0
VAIO Media Installer
VAIO Media Integrated Server
VAIO Media Registration Tool
VAIO Power Management
VAIO Productivity Center
Vaio Recovery
VAIO Security Center
VAIO Service Utility
VAIO Status Monitor
VAIO Survey
VAIO Update 3
VAIO VP Utilities

 

Fn+F1 does nothing. However, I've already been into sysconfig and unchecked just about everything so I may have already disabled it.

the AOL virus has taken over the system even though I specifically told it NOT to install it and also removed it completely from installed programs.

Every time I launch the browser the AOL Virus promts me to register with AOL. To me, this alone is enough to Fdisk the hard drive.

 

Gotta say, Vista is beginning to piss me off. WTF does it prompt me 'allow deny' on nearly everything I try to do? Is there any way to shut off this useless nagware?

(yes, first vista experience)

 

Here's a video tutorial of the clean XP SP2 installation process for SZ1-SZ5. I'd imagine everything will work for you except the ability to control brightness under speed mode with the Fn+F5 and Fn+F6 keys, since Sony hasn't yet released their nvidia 8x00 drivers for XP. If there's anything else that doesn't work, please let me know and I'll try to find a solution.

 

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov


yes, apparently you can turn it off.

 

To turn that nagging box off, you have to go into the control panel, then I don't remember, but I turned it off, it was the first thing I did.

 

The 650 plays DVDs nicely and the screen has very good viewing angles. Sound is acceptable too.

Ya, I figured it's 'somewhere' in the 50 some icons in CP, but where?

I can clearly muck this install up as much as I like, because it's going to get formatted soon.

 

The version is 1.0.00.06150

It's located under the network utility folder.


I received my sz650 on Monday and I'm currently enjoying it very much after going through some cleaning.

 

basing it off of this thread, I really think I might be able to pull it off

 

MonsterMaxx> I'm curious about the quality of the sz6's VGA output, could you please try to drive your 2407fpw in its native resolution through it and compare the quality to the DVI output of your desktop computer? I've always been having issues with the VGA output on my laptops... (picture quality far from DVI using VGA on ibm t43p and samsung X20, both having a discrete ati video card)

 

OK, first bad experience.
The GF says that CompUSA doesn't have the disks. Put a clueless on the phone and they have no idea what I'm talking about. Scratch that.

Called Sony. After dancing thru a myrid of phone options for ten minutes listening to one drolling message after another I get a tech.

Sorry sir, but we will not supprot any clean installs of vista, only our preconfigured crapware loaded version. So Sorry.

What about the light leakage all accross the bottom and top fo the screen?
Sorry Sir, but I've never heard of any light leakage.
So, I guess you are saying that I have a defective screen?
No Sir, I'm not saying that at all.

OK, thanks for not helping me, I'll waste my time elsewhere.


FYI: NO it will not drive the Dell 24" screen. It maxed out at 1600 resolution and this display looks like garbage at anything other than native resolution of 1920x1600.

 

thats unfortunate about Sony's customer service. I was just on the phone with Dell for an hour and a half just to get one stupid thing resolved.

btw, if you've seen an FZ, how would the SZ650's screen compare to that?

 

Haven't seen the FZ.

I'd really hoped Sony's service had improved since the days of the Z505, but I can see that they still suck, I guess it was expected.

Found the Anytime Upgrade disk online (not avail in stores) and ordered it ($5)

Much to my surprise Solidworks actually installed on Vista

However, soon as I get this model opened and check a few things just for giggles I'm formatting the drive and getting to work on installing XP.

 

So how long until they upgrade the SZ to the TZ frame and keyboard?

 

Formatted Disk, Installing XP...

 

SZ7 with Penryn

 

FYI: XP installed faster than Vista handled first boot.

Now to work on drivers. This is not going to be easy.

 

It maxed out at 1600 on both stamina and speed modes? Did you try using powerstip or a similar application?

 

Did you get the permissions turned-off yet?
I'm "trialing" an FZ with Vista and that was the first thing I went after too.
In the CP go to User Access controls to disable.
Here's a great article on how to de-gunk a new laptop of all such crap-ware.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=547

 

max res is 16x12

No, I didn't mess with Vista much further. Just blew it away and began on XP.

This is not looking good. The thread that had links to XP drivers and Utils...very few of them did anything on the SZ6
We may be out in the cold on this...

 

7:00 PM here, and it still hasn't been delivered.

 

Do you or Max plan on posting a review?

 

Monster I am one of (Im sure) VERY many lurkers on this thread and really appreciate all the feedback youve given so far. Anxiously been waiting for this to come out and wanted some first hand feedback before jumping in. Any and all comments are very much appreciated and are being watched closely.

 

OMG, I'm starting to regret of buying it.

I really intend to go with a fresh XP install. I didn't like Vista AT ALL. Besides, this whole bloatware is unbearable.

Hope you're lucky, MonsterMaxx!

 

Lots of driver errors
nVidia is a no go, even with tweaked drivers from laptopvideo2go

None of the utilities work

 

Well, I got Intel's X3100 driver to install.
With this driver it IS possible to drive the 24"LCD @ 1920x1200 60hz. However, the entire screen is jerking around like mad. Unusable.

Hybrid video change requires a reboot (no big surprise there)

 

Making Vaio restore disks is useless. They will NOT work on a cleaned drive.

Quite a shame that a $2000 machine doesn't come with a system install disk. Cheep bastards.

 

So I've tried to call Sony to see if I'm missing something. 25 minutes on hold waiting for a human...

I got idiots in India. Her English is not understandable. She has no clue what I'm talking about. She keeps saying "let me see if I understand..." and then goes off on some other tangent that makes no sense and is not at all what I've described to her.

And then the biotch hung up.

So, typical Sony experience. Nice hardware, Software is all crapped up. Support are clueless morons who don't care. No support for any other OS than what they choose. And the one they choose is so crapped up it can barely run.

So get this, I call back, say that I need to speak with an English speaking supervisor. She refuses to connect me. I say what's your name and ID# she says Lits and she refuses to provide the id#. She refuses to connect me to a supervisor, she refuses to help, she refuses to identify herself.

Now what? Doorstop?

 

So what's the problem? You can't get XP to work on it b/c of lack of drivers (I'm pretty sure they will tell you they don't support XP for your model)?

I really don't understand what's so terrible about Windows Vista. If you have compatibility issues why don't you just purchase a license of VMware and run XP side by side with Vista? Or you could've just purchased an SZ3 and avoided all of this if using XP is that important to you.

 

9:00 PM - Received my Sony SZ from UPS

Booting up now.

Edit: No dead pixels, no light leakage for now.]

Uninstalling all VAIO **** now, pics will be up in a little bit.

 

I dont' think XP will ever run on it. Just too many propritary drivers and utilities that are specific to each machine and won't run on others (I've tried the SZ4/5 drivers and utils and none work.)

Vista is a problem because I have several applications that I must run which will not run in Vista. I'm an engineer, Solidworks is one of them and without SW a laptop isn't real useful to me.

Problem now is that Vista is not reinstallable from the recovery disks that I made with Sony's program. Seems that a cleaned drive (or new drive) cannot be loaded from these disks. Doesn't seem like very good policy to me that I should have to order these form another company and wait a week before I can turn this doorstop into something that I can't use for engineering.

Also there is very bad light leakage along the bottom and top of the LCD.

So, no XP. No Clean Vista, at best an all crapped up one. And a bad LCD.
Some of the worst support I've encountered.

My 2 cents is that this machine is not great.

 

Well, you said you had ordered a Vista CD through CompUSA, so that should take care of your problem once the Sony e-support page is updated with drivers.

Again, you should look into VMware: http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/overview.html
You can assign 1GB of your ram, 32MB of your GPU and 1 core of your processor to run the VM; if that isn't enough for your needs you could always upgrade to 4GB for around $300.

Detailed pics and impressions would be great.

 

look forward to it! pretty interested in the screen and viewing angles

 

Thanks for the stats!

Just wondering, are those stats using speed mode or staminar mode?

 

speed mode

 

Thanks for that. Looks like the SZ6 series only have 64 VRAM. Disappointing considering the U3, and the XPS M1330 have 128 VRAM.

 

What is the estimated battery life on stamina mode with a full charge?

 

What we need to express to ony is that the software on the laptop is as important to us as the physical design of the laptop.

They do a great job stylistcally on the outside but lose points but crapping up the inside. But what do we expect from the company that gave us music CD's that trashed our computers.

Maybe the hardware style guys should be running the laptop division.

 

Dude, I'm a long long way from getting it to run well enough that I can do a battery test. Right now it's completely crippled. It'll be a week before I get the Vista install disk so I can see if I can get Vista back on it.

 

Isn't there something in XP that estimates how much battery power is left and how much time before it shuts itself down?

 

Initial Impressions:

+ Great screen, no light leakage, no dead pixels

+ Very Quiet

+ Better then average sound quality for a laptop

+ Fixed spacebar problem

+ Light and thin, solid build quality

- Keyboard is pretty loud

- Gets hot in the back, but it's bearable

- Loads of bloatware (nothing new)

Any questions, just ask.

 

Trickzee, if you could kindly run 3dmark05 and 3dmark06 benchmarks using the stock drivers (or actually any drivers you have installed currently) that'd be great.

And what did you do regarding the bloatware? Just try to selectively uninstall the stuff?

thanks

 

trickzee: hi-res photos and estimate of battery life would be much appreciated.