Sony Vaio SR 129E/B - First Impressions/Review

Can anybody install XP and tell me battery life in Vista vs XP on the SR?

 

You said they had SR's in bestbuy? Do you know what model?

 

shinyfalcon, did you buy your vaio sr at Newegg?

 

I think he said that he saw the FW at BB.
BB does not have any SR's in stores, at least not where I live or on its website, I don't believe?

Andrew

 

Ok i wasn't sure because he said he saw the FW at best buy and then found the SR.

 

Great work, ShinyFalcon and AmbitiousEd. The reviews seem very positive. I have a question. Is it possible to upgrade the RAM to 3gb from NewEgg or otherwise, manually, without affecting the warranty?

 

Might as well go for 4GB...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227251

 

I think most laptops let you add in the RAM without affecting the warranty. Also, the review and the specs on Newegg mention that the laptop already comes with a 2GB stick, so there's not much point in purchasing 4GB of RAM. If you want 3 GB, just add in 1GB more. If you want 4 GB, just add in 2GB more.

 

Well, I tried, but it was a nightmare I won't repeat (at least until Sony makes it easier). The first time I tried to install XP, it blue-screened. After a while I figured out that I needed to slipstream the SATA drivers and SP3 into it, and I finally got it installed, but let me tell you, XP drivers for this laptop are NOWHERE. I actually got some essentials (wireless, ethernet, sound), but after searching forever for video drivers for the Mobility 3400 series (drivers are on neither ATI's nor Sony's site), all I could find was the regular 3400 series and some sort of tool that "converted" it to Mobility. It blue-screened after install and several hours after obliterating Sony's install, I'm back to Vista Home Premium .

P.S. I also tried OSX (it failed), and Vista Ultimate 64 (again, NO drivers).

 

ccutlip, don't worry man, there is working XP drivers for the ATI card.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/160894

or try

http://btoforums.com/showthread.php?p=9067

Good luck.

 

so i'm guessing those drivers on the sony site won't work if you install vista ultimate over home premium. what about drivers on the sony site for sony applications? does anyone know where we can get those drivers that will be compatible for the vista ultimate?

 

nice! it looks like sony took the best of the macbook and s-series, and made the perfect notebook!

 

anybody tried these while installing xp:
ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/PUB/OS/XPDOWNGRADE/SR1/

 

What exactly did they take from the Macbook?

 

Check your PMs m8.

 

Ummm..... it comes in black?

 

The ability to run windows!

 

i'm a little surprise this baby didn't come with this sticker attached.

 

As I posted elsewhere, that has been one of the big "gotchas" for me with SONY notebooks: whatever version of OS it ships with is the only one that SONY will support or furnish drivers for. If Windows 7 comes out, SONY will not likely have drivers for it for any of their notebooks.

As for Ultimate, I had this same problem earlier this year when I got an NR for my wife on closeout. SONY did not have Ultimate drivers, just Home Premium for it. I tried their Home Premium drivers and wireless, sound and some other stuff just would not work with it. I spent the better part of a day looking around the web, trying drivers, and finally got it to work. The nice thing about Ultimate (or Business) is that once you get a working configuration, you can image it to DVD's.

The real problem with Ultimate is the special buttons on the SR that put it into your pre-set configurations for work, home, play, etc. There is likely no way in hell that you will ever get them to work with Ultimate.

Right now, that is the one major reason that I will probably wait to see the Z: it ships with Ultimate, so there are Ultimate drivers on SONY's website, no problem.

 

Different versions of 32bit Vista need different drivers? I've never heard that before.

PS. Sony does provide XP drivers for many Vista systems.

 

What is the battery life with the intagrated GPU?
How much of a diffrence in battery life will there be between the 2 GPUs?

any 3 hours for the ATI? The web site was bragging 9 with the high capacity battery.

 

Yes, I got my wife an NR earlier this year with Home Premium. SONY had wireless (Atheros) drivers posted for Home Premium but not Ultimate. I tried them, and they did not work on Ultimate. Had to keep trying various Atheros drivers until I stumbled onto some that worked. Both were 32bit VISTA versions.

I am one of the few that are not interested in XP.

Andrew

 

Sony UK claims 210 minutes for HD3470 and 300 minutes X4500 IGP.

Users have confirmed the first number, IGP is not being sold yet afaik.

 

I would like to update with a recent battery benchmark...

Code:

Current time - % - Remaining
9:30 100
9:40 95 2:34
9:50 89 2:27
10:00 83 2:20
10:10 78 2:14
10:20 74 2:09
10:30 67 2:01 <--1h elapsed
10:40 63 1:58
10:50 60 1:52
11:00 59 1:49
11:10 50 1:34
11:20 44 1:25
11:20 41 1:20
11:30 39 1:16 <--2h
11:40 39 1:15
11:50 35 1:08
12:00 30 57
12:10 30 59
12:20 28 57
12:30 20 39   <--3h
12:40 14 29
12:50 10 22
1:00 6 15     <-3h 30m

This is using Vaio Battery Optimized, minimum brightness, wifi on. I was mostly doing web surfing and flash video watching, and near the end I was watching some episodes. I reached 3h 30m at 6% before I plugged the AC in.

 

3 and a half hours is decent... anyone have an idea of how much extra youd get if you went integrated instead of dedicated?

 

The questions is, is Sony UK accurate with these numbers. As you can see they were very accurate with the HD3470 number.

 

5 hours battery life is incredible if thats true. Id definitely opt for the integrated option because I wont be playing games, but the problem is the newegg one is dedicated. Hopefully there will be a cheaper model with integrated graphics.

 

There will be. I already saw Sony models (BZ) with X4500 so it shouldn't be long before the SR with X4500 will be in stock.

X4500 should also be cheaper than HD3470.


Question: Does SR suffer from the batter drain problem? Meaning does the battery loose like 5% charge per day when the laptop is switched off?

 

Here is the only problem that stops me from buying the SR. It is a beauty, however I compared the screen revolution and color, brightness to the older TZ and SZ series, I could see a difference in the new SR, it couldn't beat the sharpness, colors, and brightness in the TZ and SZ. So I stop my mind from purchasing that laptop. See it yourself to believe it, go to Sony store and check it out. I'm serious, I kinda disappointed a bit, I don't know about the Z series, I hope it will be better. Beside that issue, SR is the perfect one, it's really light and really good looking laptop.

Also I compared the new SR laptop to one of the Fujitsu, I don't mind to say Fujitsu is ahead of the new sony (You can't complain the colors and the sharpness in the Fujitsu notebooks, but most of them are ugly built, Toshiba is a bit behind sony in weight, and screen colors.)
If I'm wrong please correct me. I"m looking forward to buy a new laptop too.

 

Funny, my first impression of the keyboard was that it was very quiet.. Certainly quieter than my desktop keyboard. The mouse buttons are very loud though.

 

Still not out yet! How come there's such a big delay for these things to hit retail

Anyone know what the preconfig model # is for the one with integrated graphics, if there is one?

 

I fully agree that the TZ is better, the TZ is perhaps the best screen I had seen on any notebook, ever. I can not agree with you on the SZ. I think the SR is as good or better than the SZ.

I also don't agree on Fujitsu, I have never seen one that I considered as being a quality build. Kind of a cheap overall feeling to them.

I did see the Z last weekend, a prototype model in Houston at the Galleria.
The Z screen is unlike anything SONY has ever had. Non-glare. The coating on it almost totally cuts out the glare. It was the 1600 x 900 screen I saw. Quite impressive. The mouse buttons and trackpad are better on the SR than the Z. The SR has a larger Synaptic touchpad with larger, quieter buttons and the Z has a smaller ALPS touchpad with smaller stiffer buttons, probably due to space constraints.

If you like the TZ, the Z is it's big brother. Very TZ-looking, just larger.

 

hanna, you might be better served to post this in the "what notebook should i buy?" forum. but unless you need something that is ultra portable, i'd take a look at the sony fw series.

 

hi ,
i ve one SR19XN ( with IGP 4500HD) and i got ~4h to 4:30 of working time... mix use - VAIO optimize settings. ( and i also disable the battery care function to get the most of it...)

BTW, there is one thing that drives me mad, why is the Remaining time always wrong ?!?!

At 100%~ 99% i ve only a estimation of 2:40m...at 50% i ve 1h left and i am able to get 2h ...And i ve tried all the power schemes to see if it was from that.
Is it the ACPI + bad bios from SONY ?
I ve seem a post from another user ( with an ATI 3470) and he also had the same bad estimation error...
Also the sony BIOS is crap , not even a battery calibration option ?????

I am thinking in returning it back and get the ati 3470 version..the igp performance vs battery gains is not as i would expect :-(....
any comments on the battery time with ATI3470 using NHC to improve the power consumption?

PS: i already tested (dual boot) with the XP SP3 and no real gains on battery ( more 10 minutos or so ) and neither on the IGP performance on 3dmark ..( more 3% to 4% only). The only thing that seems to give me real battery gains is in using the external app VistaPowerSaver...it works ok.

 

You should be getting well over 5 hours with the IGP. Actually close to 6 on lower brightness.

Here's what you can do to improve your performance: Enable 'Energy saving' profile in Vista, disable Flash, undervolt the CPU with RMClock, disable Aero interface. And a clean install with minimum processes running will also help.

The Ati 3470 version of SR gets about 3.5 hours.

On the predicted battery time: this is a known issue, there's a thread about it called something like SR battery problems.

 

thanks for your reply and for the link !! i thought i was alone on this
on the subject of the "predicted battery time vs Real" i ve sent some emails to Sony support Europe, because for me this is not acceptable from a company like Sony ...and i think all the other owners should also complain !
I will try to disable aero & chk again the "real running time"
thanks.

 

I got a little less than 3 hours 30 minutes with ATI Card on VAIO Ultimate battery, no wifi or bluetooth. disabled aero and disabled dvd drive. disappointed me considering i don't game much and the ati card ran a little hot after some time on the left palm rest...plus i paid 100 bucks "upgrade"for it. as mentioned, i hardly game, so its a paper weight upgrade for me.

so...i decided to return it and reorder with an intel GPU, save 100 bucks, put that 100 bucks to an extended battery and now i'm hopefully going to get a cooler running laptop with well over 6 hours with extended battery... probably more like 7-8 hours considering my following hypothesis:


A) Standard 6 cell battery w/ intel GPU report ~5 hours or little more of battery life.

B) 5 (hours) divided by 6 (cells) gives about 83% of one hour or 50 minutes of life per cell.

C) 9 (Cells) X 50 (minutes)= 450 minutes~ 7 hours 30 minutes of battery life with extended 9 cell battery.

Now, I am hoping I can run everything full power w/o powersaving (full brightness, wifi, running my heavy CPU applications, ect..) and still get well over at least 2 hours of battery life. If that is possible, this is golden.

 

You are a god,
check your PMs.

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