Sony Vaio SZ 460

I am now the proud owner of a brand spankin' new Sony Vaio SZ 460. I'm typing to you all on my beautiful, full-sized Sony keyboard right now. I am very happy with the machine. Thrilled, actually. After having been a Dell user for 6 years, this update is quite a relief. No more ten lbs of weight, incredibly short battery life, or intensive heat.

I do have a few issues. My model is supposedly equipped with 160 gigabytes of space, 2.0 ghz processor, and 2 gigs of ram. Yet, when I go to my computer, my storage capacity reads: 117 of 142 GB. How is this possible? I just turned on the machine, and I'm already 40 GBs down? I think it might be all of this software they gave me. I deleted a few programs like Napster and all of the AOL trials, etc. What should I do to free up more space? And, why does the CPU think I only have 142 GB capacity?

Also, is anyone here familiar with the Sony Reader? I bought my laptop as a student deal, which gave me $400 off the notebook, a free Sony Reader, a free neoprene case, a free Sony mouse, and a free 3 year warranty. All in all, I paid $2,200 for the bundle, including tax. I felt it was an alright deal, considering the beauty of the machine, it's weight, and how robust it is. The deal is available through Monday or July 9 at select Sony Style retail stores.

Anyways, the reader's software isn't working. I inserted the disc and installed it (which ate up 1 GB of memory) and went to the folder. For some reason, the folder only contained a PDF file Operation Guide, and not the actual software. It's meant to contain software which allows me to manage and download E-Books. So, that is a problem. Also, I installed the CD twice, bringing me from 120 GBs to 118. I am at 117 GB now due to the installation and updating of Norton Protection.

Those are my few issues. Thanks so much.

 

Well, remember that first, a 160GB hard drive in reality is going to have somewhat less space.

On top of that, the VAIOs have a hidden system recovery partition that takes up some space (which it uses to restore itself to its original state, etc. if something goes wrong).

So that leaves about 142 gigs for your main partition. And a bunch of that is filled up with stuff that is preinstalled, etc.

 

I've read about a lot of SZ owners "clean installing" their machine. What does this do for the CPU and how does one do it? It would get rid of all of this horrible bloatware, wouldn't it? I'd love to get to 142 GB out of 142 GB if I could. Is it a challenging process? Is it even worth it?

 

Well, remember, even if you do a clean install, you're not going to have 142GB free; even a clean install of Vista Business is going to take up space, etc.

I think there are a few threads here about doing clean installs, etc.

 

Are they recommended? What do they really do?

 

I have no idea what you're asking.

I haven't ever done a clean install myself; you'll need to look elsewhere in these Sony forums to find the people discussing them (or someone here might have some advice).

 

I was asking if clean installs are recommended. I'm not very savvy with the techie stuff, so I was hoping someone here might know. No worries.

 

Well, if you do want to recover some space, and have your machine perform a bit better, a clean install would be recommended.

 

All those extras were free?! No way... it was INCLUDED in the $2200. Don't believe me? Tell them you are returning the stuff that cost money and you are keeping the free stuff. It was free, after all.

And with the money you saved, you can buy some more cool stuff. Oh wait, if you spend it, then you didn't save it! I love the psychology of buying stuff. Kidding aside, enjoy your new computer and the goodies. I know I've enjoyed the SZ491 i bought recently and am also a dell convert. i understand your joy! :GEEK:

 

You know, you're right. I probably could return the Reader. I'll never use it. Wow, I didn't even think about that. I can get a hundred bucks or so for it. It's so obvious. Thanks buddy!

 

personally i don't recommend the semi install progress, couple of important apps don't install, like bluetooth , windvd, sonicstage, even vaio power management, and i don't even know did it install the battery utility, also the vaio update won't be there too, i rather had everything install by sony, and delete all the bloatware one by one, then do a registry cleanning and a disk defragment.

 

CDW is showing the SZ460N/C for 2199, and Sony sells the reader alone for $299. http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...gId=-1&categoryId=3707&parentCategoryId=16184
So it sounds like you got a pretty good deal. If you're not that tech savvy, then I highly recommend that you avoid trying a clean install on a Sony notebook. All their utilities can be very tricky to get working.

 

I agree with that!
But when I did a registry cleaning using Ccleaner it destroyed the ability to do windows updates. Any recommendations?

 

I agree with wuruoyu.
Many features are very much dependent on the specific software install and configuration pre-loaded by Sony, moreso than other vendors. This is the Achilles heel of VAIO notebooks IMO. Be that as it may, you will want to rely on the Sony provided recovery for your VAIO and then remove what you don't want afterwards.
Registry cleaners are not foolproof. I use to swear by them but I had one screw up TPM on an XP tablet so bad I had to do a reload because the TPM drivers kept popping up error messages. I won't use them anymore. If you do use them, keep the backup reg files so you can reimport in case of problems.
All this is not to say a clean install is not possible, even of a different OS, but the risk is yours.

 

Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal or VistaManager, more recommend Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal as it's more safer(but becareful to uncheck the startup manager option as it will usually delete most of the startup apps that you don't want them to be deleted), the vistamanager had more options you can tweak them with than any of the vista tweaking tool on the market currently, but take your step carefully. recommend using norton ghost to perform a system backup before do any registery tweaking.

 

You should be able to get more than $100 for it. New they sell for $350 (although I noticed Sony is currently doing an instant $50 rebate on them).

-Zadillo

 

For SZ3XX, its actually better to do semi-restore.

I've try semi-restore on my friends SZ430 and things went really bad. I agree, you are better off with full restore and slowly delete all the crap.

 

Hey, thanks for all of the answers. Great help! Here is one more question to field.

I've got this little memory card adapter. A VGP-MCA20. What is this thing and what do I do with it? It's still in it's plastic baggy.

 

I'm a 460N owner myself and let me share the woes I've gone through...
Unless you are really good with your PC skills, I wouldn't try to do the clean install with no backup partition thingy. Also, do NOT remove the following programs as certain systems WILL fail on you: Roxio Creator or SmartWi anything. Lastly, I tried running my wifi card using new intel Vista drivers and it caused my wireless to crash regularly. I don't know if that driver has been fixed, but I'd stay away.

Through trial and error I have my machine running well but I had to buy an external HDD and do about 3 complete restores to fix the issues I encountered above.

Hey and 160GB is an assload of space for the normal user. Windows itself takes up around 9GB and the restore partition must take about 15GB. Don't sweat a gig here or there unless you're psycho with music and videos. And if you are, get an external drive as they're dirt cheap these days.

 

It's an ExpressCard SD card reader. You can put it in the ExpressCard slot of your Vaio to read SD cards with.

-Zadillo

 

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*3ease he3*!

 

Do you have numlock turned on? It sounds like it (this makes the alternate keys on the keyboard act as a numpad).

 

Wow, so that was it. Thanks so much. I had been chatting with my friends and everyone thought I was just pulling their legs. It really did make those letters look like that. Thanks a lot.

And hey, what is an SD car?

 

It's a memory card format, commonly used on digital cameras. The SZ's come with an ExpressCard SD reader so you can use it in the ExpressCard slot.

 

Just FYI regarding the Hard drive space issue.

They say the laptop has 160GB of storage data, which is technically does...but their definition of a GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Windows OS sees a GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes (binary system, 2^30), so that's why Win will show ~142GB or whatever it's displaying.