Sony Z Turn off green power light?

Is there a way to disable the annoyingly bright green power light? I often go to bed with my laptop playing classical music (helps me sleep) and the green light lights up the whole darn room.

 

There is no software way unless you can dig deeply into ACPI and stuff. IMO not worth the effort. Just stick a piece of tape over it, unsolder the led or buy a cheap music player.

 

I just jam something against it like my wallet.

 

I used electrical tape. If you cut it carefully it looks like it was supposed to be there.

I don't like that I had to do it to solve this problem, though.

 

We can get 1 extra hour of battery life if we can turn off this LED!! j/k
Did you guys notice they have a fancy "theater lighting" circuit for this light? It gradually goes bright when switching on and gradually dims when switching off (not a hard off/on light, but it's like something regulated)

 

^Yes, check out the breathing pattern the orange makes when it sleeps

 

^Yah that orange breathing pattern is sweet too!!
Also the backlights for the LCD/screen and illuminated keyboard change gradually - Sony's silly attention to detail is pretty cool.

 

I can already hear apple's fanboys whispering that sony adopted that from the macbooks.

 

Same thing for keyboard backlight. It goes gradually on and off.

Now if only there was a way to adjust the keyboard backlight brightness (I find it's too bright when using the laptop in pitch darkness... way brighter than the screen itself).

 

PSA to all Z owners : travfar's wallet is available if you need to block your green power LED. xD

 

Too bad they didn't pay attention to the detail of providing a way to turn the LEDs off.

This is typical Sony, by the way. Pretty much every other manufacturer of DVD/BD/receiver equipment allow for dimming or turning off the displays when watching movies. Not Sony. (Sony receivers are the worst, as they blaze an overly bright blue light when detecting surround sound. It's so distracting that I had to gaffer tape it.)
And the green power light of the Z isn't much better.

 

This is typical laptop. What laptops let you turn off the power LED when it's on?

 

Nevermind how dangerous that could be. Imagine thinking your laptop is off and putting it in you bag all day? Already heard horror stories like that.

 

^maybe they can set the "lid action" feature in the advanced power management section to have the laptop hibernate or shut down

 

I have one laptop here that doesn't have a power LED on the outside at all.
And another where the BIOS has a setting for diagnostic lights on/off.

And no other laptops I have or have had has a power light anywhere as bright as the Sony.

The LEDs Sony use for WiFi, HD access and battery level work just fine, by the way. So why not blink one of them to signal that the computer is asleep?
And why not dim the power LED based on the ambient light? I mean, if you can dim the display and keyboard, and the power LED already has a dimmer, it wouldn't take that much?

 

I like the power light the way it is.

 

Do you watch movies in the dark on your Z?

 

Not much. I watch movies on my plasma. I do use it in the dark quite a bit. The bright portion of the light faces the right and is out of sight. Really all i see is the little green slit.

The fact that it's constant is probably why I don't notice it so much. Many laptops (acer, hp, etc) have huge blue and white flashing lights for HDD activity and wifi and those drive me crazy.

But if it bothered me I'd just cover it up w/black tape.

 

Is it something physical that controls the light or is it somewhere in the software? Is there a way to make the light "think" the laptop is off? That probably sounds stupid, but I thought I would bring it up.

 

Usually it's controlled via BIOS/ACPI. That means there actually should be a way to disable it.

 

The HP logo was worse, but it was on the back of the machine so out of sight when you were the user.

 

Sorry to resurrect this thread but had a curious question regarding the power light / button (and didn't want to start a new thread at that).

Essentially, I noticed that when on AC power, the power LED is BRIGHTER than when running just off battery (plugged in and disconnected the AC connection with the laptop on, and you can see the difference; it's slight but still quite noticable in my opinion..).

- First off, is this normal? This is a VGN-Z mind you, though if this is normal behaviour then I'd expect to see this on VGN-SR, VGN-TT etc etc... All VAIOs for that matter.
- Second, if this is normal behaviour (eg, power saving), then wouldn't it technically be possible to disable the light altogether? As mentioned before, something with the ACPI settings I would assume.

EDIT - I take that back. ALL LEDs on my Z dim when running on battery power vs AC power. So that's the WIRELESS LED, HDD etc etc. Again, the difference is slight but noticable. First time I noticed this... Caps, num and scroll lock lights however remain at a consistent brightness level (ie, these don't seem to dim regardless of AC or battery power).

 

^^ That's just the voltage drop in the system from AC (19.5V) to battery (10.8 V). Nothing problematic - the same here. It's not the case that there is something going on like power-save, LEDs consume almost no power at all.

 

Stop worrying so much about a freakin LED

 

It is rather bright. I usually put something beside it to block out the light, like a matchbox or mobile phone, when I'm downloading something and need to leave the laptop ON through the night.

 

When I download anything through the night, I send out the download job to my 30$, 5W modded Seagate Dockstar. NO bright light, low power consumption and silence.