Vaio Z, the worse laptop I have ever owned!

I am beyond appalled at the bad quality of Sony products these days, specially as they are by far the most expensive laptops on the market to day.

My Vaio Z VGN-Z27GN is 5 months old. I think Ive taken it out no more than 5 or 6 times and this thing is taken care of mintly without any stresses being applied. In this period of time:
- One crack on the plastic rounded bezel where the Stamina<--->Speed switch is showed up.
- Both plastic bezels on both sides where the the power plug goes in and the power button is, got loose.
- On both batteries I have (stock and extended) the plastics got cracked in more than one spot.
- After 5 months of usage, I get 1 &1/2 hours on the stock battery and about one hour more on the extended.
- Batteries drain (we all know about this issue)
- My internal wireless network card got fried and stopped working
- 3 white spots (brighter areas the size of pees) showed-up on the screen revealing lack of illumination uniformity from the LED panel.
- Originally I had bought a corded VAIO mouse that shorted after about two weeks worth of usage (I started getting a "current overload error on USB device" before I realized it was the cord that was shorting itself close to where it entered the mouse assembly)
- I replaced the mouse with a Vaio Bluetooth that simply never worked properly.
- AND FINALLY, last night while typing, the left-clicker on the mouse pad broke inside and the button sank in and does not click.

I don't even care about trying to repair this computer anymore. I just want to take my SSD that I upgraded the laptop with out and smash the whole laptop against the wall. If I was not so busy Id start a complaint process with Sony far beyond going to have all of this properly documented and repaired, but, I will be wasting my time.

This is positively the very last Sony product I will ever own. The fact is, from my HD camera to my LCD TV and even older products, there has never been ONE Sony apparatus in the last few years that ever worked as they should... enough of my interested for Sony's design which is always in the end what attracts me because past that, this brand is a joke.

 

Jesus, all I have to say is what did you do to your computer?!

I've had my Z for more then 5 months and I carry it around with me on a daily basis from place to place. I don't treat it like glass, I treat it like a well built machine. All I have is one scratch on the lid from when I was drunk. My experience is that the Z is built pretty damn well.

 

Sorry to hear your bad experiences with Sony. Fortunately for me as a Sony fanboy NONE of my products experienced issues. Although this is my first Sony laptop that I have only had for barely a month hopefully it will keep up as well as my other Sony products.

 

Z is the best laptop I have ever owned, as NO other laptop can provide such performance within 1.5kg.

Sorry to hear about your sufferings... Good luck finding another brand~~~

 

I could not try any harder to love this laptop more than I have and I have really no alternative for a small compact machine with high performance and an above average LCD quality. There is really no other small computer this size as lightweight and well designed as this.

But it starts there and ends there. It looks fabulous. The end.

I am in Shanghai where on a previous thread I posted my recent discovery after testing a few new Zs at the Vaio Store here, that many do major CPU throttling when under 100% load lowering the clock speed of the processor to 1/2 (that is "how" Sony keeps these laptops cool when configured with faster clocked processors):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=398645

This, the fact that a few units have obvious screen illumination lack of uniformity, 2 I've seen dead pixels and the fact NOT ONE Z on display had perfect alignment of the round silver bezel that attached the screen to the main bottom part of the laptop, let me quickly reach the conclusion, that aside that maybe I was specially unfortunate with my unit, Sony's quality control is positively NONE and they are cheaply mass producing these machines they sell at a premium price.

Sony is loosing billions of Yeans yearly all across their product line, from the cell phone in partnership with Ericsson, to their consumer AV unit and even some of their industrial divisions. Whether they loose money because their products suck or their products suck because they need to make them cheaply to reduce costs, the truth is, long gone are the days of the Sony Walkmans, the Trinitron TVs and the BetaMax VCRs. Those were the days when Sony products meant more than merely their good looks.

 

Are you sure the Z is the worst laptop you've ever owned, or is it that you just have bad luck?

Anyway, sorry to hear about all your problems. No computer brand is perfect, and there will always be people who have a bad time. It's unfortunate you can't be part of the group of Happy Z/VAIO owners, but since it sounds like your situation is beyond salvage, I wish you the best of luck in finding a better time with another brand/model!

 

If you enable the advanced menus in BIOS (EFI) you could adjust the temperature threshold for CPU throttling. The default setting for P9600 is 85 degrees centigrade. I'm not sure about the default setting for T9800. If you change it to 90 degrees centigrade (or even higher) I'm sure it will run more smoothly.

(TBH I personally think it is stupid to choose T series CPU for Z. T is a very old series which dates back to three years ago, with TDP over 34W. The architecture is simply out-dated. Intel is just trying to make more profit on these, from those stupid enough to only look into highest frequency which only stands for the fastest for no longer than half a year.)

Another problem is that you should not buy laptops in China unless you have no choice. I know many guys selling laptops in China, and I know what they do with these so-called "brand new" laptops before they sell. Further more, you really believe that all laptops of the same brand sold in different countries are produced from the same manufacture line? Even if some parts come from the same product line, they are classified into several classes. The best goes to the US, and the worst is sold in China.

The last comment is that, sometimes you do need a bit of luck to get a laptop working perfectly without any glitch. That's why we need warranty on laptops.

 

already give my feedback about Z. the rollcage/hinge side is pretty fragile, and its kinda flimsy. the crack and loose hinge are due to getting hard knock i guess. if you either accidently drop at backside of the notebook it would certainly crack since this area is all plastic, not a thick plastic too.
so yea.

no problem on my Z so far, just extra care needed when handling the hinge and backside notebook.

 

No, no, no! Sony laptops sold in China at the Sony Vaio Store, sealed in new Sony boxes CANNOT be of such degree of lesser quality than the ones sold in the USA. By the way the one I have was bought in Hong Kong NOT in China!

As for CPU throttling control, I have no "advanced" menus on the BIOS. AT least not on the ones sold here. The BIOS actually aloows for psotively nothing except boot order and password/security stuff. Useless.

What I am talking about here is a matter of lack quality control OVERALL (all Sony products that I put my hands on taking in consideration how much more expensive they always are than the other guys'.

I like thr Sony Z because I do AV work and need a fast laptop. I have a Mac for daily use but its a 17" monster while the Z provides me with the best performance in a small package.

I have still been still debating on getting a new one and thinking that maybe I was just unlucky with this one but for 23.000RMB ( thats $3,351.98 USD) for the top-of-the-line Z model (and this is without BluRay and knwoing the CPU goes doen from 3.06GHz to 1/2 withing 30 seconds of load, among other issues I have identified with the new ones for sale on display at the store), I think buying another one would be a silly and costly mistake...

For crying out loud my new Apple MacBook Pro 17" with a 3.06GHz CPU was $2850 USD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Should we talk about value and build quality? And hey, I dont like Apple products! I am a PC guy! I HAVE to use Macs because of work! But when I compare the Mac to the Sony, the way its build, the screen size (and quality) and then, the price... man, just look at Sony's 17" AW, the way its build and how much it costs and lets all start laughing... if Sony built a laptop like a MacBook Pro 17" it would be priced at 10 grand! Thats what they did with the QUALIA brand line a few years ago for ridiculousely overpriced products of extreme poor quality. Remember that one? How long did that one last before they killed the brand all together?... There is a trend here and one that is getting worse.

This said, no doubts there should be many Z's out there that work well and have no issues and that is a good thing for Sony. I really have no idea how companies stay in business like this, but, good for them however it is that they manage.

 

You really think that seal is ALWAYS the so-called original seal from SONY? You really think that Chinese people are stupid enough to be unable to move seals and then move back without trace? You really think that the box can only be opened from the seal side? I don't like to damage the image of Chinese people but that's the truth I'm sorry.

You could perhaps follow this guide http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/ and run the EFI program to set the offset 0x25a to 0x1 to enable the advanced menus. See also: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345282 if you don't have the chance to do it but want an idea about what the advanced menus look like.

I would recommend Macbook Pro 13"

 

That product is actually starting to sound awfully fake to me. Do you have any way you could get the serial number checked? Could you post some pictures?

I have never heard of a laptop from any manufacturer such a wide range of problems.

 

I have installed an Intel X25-E 64G into my Z. Despite the fact that the capacity is low, it is low-performance (I measured 250MB/s linear read, 170MB/s linear write, and just 10000 IOPS for small files) compared against the Z4 with Raid 0 SSD. After enabling the advanced menus I have decided to order the cable and framework for 1.8" SSDs and I plan to buy 2 x Intel X18-M 320G to make a 640G Raid 0. This will make my Z a real monster. I don't think there exists other ways to beat this within 1.5kg

 

I would agree with you at "any" store. But, at the official SonyStyle Store in China (the only one by the way) Id find that hard to believe.

HOWEVER, if its true and everyone knows about this as such widespread practices, THEN FOR SURE SONY ALSO KNOWS AND IF SO, WHY DONT THEY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

 

someone please take the z out of this guys hands, give him a macbook and pacifier in his mouth.

 

I agree with you and wanted to do the same. Im not sure I really know how to do the offset on the BIOS. You will laugh but (like many other million sites on the internet in China) http://feature-enable.blogspot.com is blocked! ANy other place I can learn how to do it?

Do you think the Intels 1/8" SSD will give you the best performance? Ive been wondering what would be positively the best drives to RAID on a VAIO Z. Have you looked at PhotoFast Products? They have the fastest EVERYTHING when it comes to SSDs, flash and memory products:
http://www.photofast.tw/eng/18SSD.html

Actually their new 2.5" G-Monster SSD is actually 2 SSDs RAIDED insde and the first reviews Ive read seem to prove it as the fastest thing money can buy (and not so expenive actually):
http://www.photofast.tw/eng/25SSD.html

Relax. If this thread is useless for you just go read another

 

+++

 

Many things in China are unbelievable, e.g. milk powder is adulterated with poisonous ingredients. Most such trick is not well-known, otherwise it is no longer a trick.

For example, there used to be many ThinkPad laptops indeed not virgins before sold: e.g. the originally installed CPU was T7400, but replaced with T2300 ES, which was a lot cheaper. A malware process was installed in Windows XP to make it seen as T7400.

Another example is that: it is known that if one wants to install 8G RAM on Z, only the Micron modules are compatible. However it is very hard to buy these. Some shops replace the 4G module in the 6G models with 4G module from other brands. Who cares whether the customer will upgrade it to 8G?

Anyway, sometimes it is better not to know the truth...

 

Other friends in China could read that guide without problems. Maybe it's blocked temporarily. If you read Chinese maybe you could follow my thread:

http://benyouhui.it168.com/thread-975301-1-2.html

 

TBH I still haven't seen any other brand that can do better IOPS and concurrency than Intel. Got any performance benchmark results on 4k random access?

All I can see is a failure in seek time: .2ms~.3ms. The current Intel SSD has seek time 0.1ms, and the 34nm products will have only 0.065ms seek time.

 

Perhaps it has something to do with you dismantling the laptop and not putting it back in correctly? http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=342736

 

Here are some pics of laptop showing one of the cracks I have on the bezel (actually not a crack, just a piece of the plastic that simply came off), the broken left-clicker on the trackpad and also the 3 white spots on the screen that seem like brighter areas (as of the LEDS on those spots are brighter than the rest of the screen). Ive also included 2 pics of the stickers I have underneith the laptop (made in Japan) by the way... so it says... Sorry for the bad quality of the pics taken with my cell phone to be fast...

 

No Put back together nicely and different Z, Sherlock Holmes. This is a second one and none of the problems are in areas that involved any disassembly.

Hmmmm... yes, I have never tried the Intel's SSD. I have used M-Tron and Solidata drives but there are indeed performance issues, most notably on the Solidara using a J-Miron controller of buffer limitations. For example, large files being sequentially copied start very fast, then come to a total stop, then after 20 seconds or so, resume fast again then, another stop. The Solidata is rated at 230Mb/s and it does perform at that level but only under very specific scenarios and files sizes. Also, boot time got increased when I upgraded it from the M-Tron (that is rated at much slower R/Ws)

Wow, I had no idead things were so blatantly bad! Thats crazy!

 

You know, I have the P9500 CPU (2.53ghz) and at FULL load, it runs at 35 degrees Celsius. I have RMclock undervolting it, and when I'm in "speed" mode, I have RMclock making sure it stays clocked at 2.53ghz while I game.

This may have something to do with me opening the laptop and applying arctic silver 5 everywhere and and spraying compressed air into my laptop every month.

It never throttles, and I have the very 1st Vaio Z since August/September...of last year.

I do have to say that the GPU (nvidia) tends to run hot, because when I play COD4, on full load, its at 93 degrees Celsius....and the rest of the system is in the low 40s

 

Wow. Is this really true? That Sony themselves are selling fake stuff?!?!? This is really new NEWS to me!

 

From the few laptops I tested at the Sony Store, the 2.53GHz didnt throttle. The 2.80GHz did and then 3.06GHz even more.

 

will RMclock work well in windows 7?

 

It is not SONY who sells fake stuff. It is the problem that you cannot guarantee all parts are from SONY if you buy laptop in China. You can't guarantee quality of parts either.

 

Wow. 35 deg C at full load! I'm amazed at how you guys are able to do that. My 2.66GHz at idle is a high 51-55 deg C range.

 

I am very interested how you test the throttling

With my P9600 2.66GHz, I just ran Everest Stability Test to stress CPU, FPU, cache and RAM. After 10 hours of running the temperature of CPU converged to 78 degrees centigrade. I saw no throttling at all. (In the advanced BIOS/EFI menu, the temperature threshold for CPU throttling was default value: 85 degrees centigrade.)

I strongly advise you enable the advanced menus and test 2.8GHz models

 

Actually, the build quality of your chassis can vary depending on where it was manufactured/assembled. Except for the major electrical components which can only be produced at specific fabs (eg: only Intel can make the CPU, only nVidia can make the GPU, etc), the chassis can be manufactured in a variety of locations -- usually locally/regionally, for cost reasons.

So if a batch of plastic components uses cheaper synthetics or has impurities, you could easily end up with defects even under normal use. This is why some members have had big problems with paint chipping and broken parts even when they take excellent care of their laptops, while other members have had absolutely no problems with the same model.

Case in point: I once had an R505 that I bought from a random retailer, and I had no idea where the unit was manufactured; within a couple years everything was falling apart (even one of the metal hinges broke!). After reading that a lot of people had a good experience with CTO units coming out of San Diego, I spent the extra money for a direct-from-Sony S270; and it was the best laptop I had handled (up until my recent upgrade of course). So YMMV.



Also, preconceptions of China aside, Hong Kong isn't exactly the shining jewel of legit hardware. If you got yours from a SonyStyle store or authorized reseller, then you should have no issues getting your problems fixed since I imagine you're well within your warranty. But if you got yours at an unofficial Sony store/reseller, then unfortunately you're probably at the mercy of your dealer, since Sony has no way of controlling any funny business that might be going on behind closed doors. And in my experience dealers in HK don't really care about you after you've already given them your money. Buyer beware.

Basically you have two options: either see what you can do about getting your unit fixed/replaced (and the sooner the better); or just cut your losses and move on.

 

I got mine from an "official" Sony retailer at the Wanchai Computer Center in Hong Kong. But, if according to some its known to possible be counterfeiting going on even at official SonyStyle Stores, where can I ever be sure I should do a purchase? I hardly buy anything in China because its all s....t for the most part and as far as Hong Kong goes, I agree with you that for the most part, its all sub-par and gigantic rip-off schemes... for the most part the preconceptions are actually true unfortunately

I make sure the power options on Vista are set to Maximum Performance, start the stress test in Everest Stability Test and also start CPU-Z to view real-time CPU clock readings. When the test starts and the CPU is under 100% load, its very clear to see when throttling starts.

This is the way I test it and I deem it a simple, fast and accurate way of testing.

Just tried it. Followed the procedures, booted from the USB Stick and did the changes but nothing changed afterwards. BIOS is the same with no Advanced Features enabled...

 

Do HK Authorities know about this? Did they take any action?

 

I guess you actually changed the value of offset 0x1af rather than 0x25a. Try this:

setup_var 0x25a 0x1

 

Sorry, I feel you are just the one unlucky guy out of thousands of SONY users.

For someone who wanna get a "no fake part" "hassle free" computer in China, check out Newegg China. They do business honestly, and some friends of mine got sony laptops from them with no problems, just like Newegg USA, my favorite store here.

 

Well, I dont know about what the authorities know or not. Personally, I didnt even know about any of this till this thread! Always learning

Yes. The only problem in China is the issue of taxes and stuff getting retained at customs sometimes.

Have you every heard of this people and are they reliable?:
http://www.geekstuff4u.com
http://conics.net

I contacted Conics.net via their site and they sell fully customized (from Sony they claim) Vaio Zs for failrly competitive prices, unlike other places like Dynamism.com that sells the "Japanese" Vaio Zs for up to double what they cost in the US. From Conics.net one can even choose the resolution of the screen, an unlocked WWLAN module and optional Mimo 3x3 Wireless Technology, none of which are directly available as options from SonyStyle USA. But it takes them up to 3 weeks to ship the laptops and I wonder if they will come from Sony with the parts you ordered or its something they do themselves aftermarket, which is my fear...

Ok, thank you very much. Just to confirm that I am doing the right thing step-by-step:

Type and press Enter:
setup_var
A license and warning text shows up.

Next, type and press Enter:
setup_var 0x1af
Verify that the variable is set to 0x0. Abort if it not.

Next, type and press Enter (to set this single byte to 0x01):
setup_var 0x25a 0x1

Reboot by pressing [ctrl][alt][del].

So, its the last step I should type setup_var 0x25a 0x1 and not setup_var 0x1af 0x1, correct?

Thanks again

 

Big LEMON.It would drive insane.

 

Well, aside from the bad USB Mouse, it worked well for the first 4 months. Everything started happening recently one thing after the other.

Now its the weekend now. By Monday I will go to Sony with a long list of what needs work and my warranty papers (and assuming I was sold a legit laptop by an "authorized" retailer) I will see if they will take care of all these issues.

I am just dying to see how qualified (and delicate) Chinese Sony Service Personal are. I will take several pictures of the machine before leaving it at service, print them and give it to them at the same time. I do not have one scratch/wear damage on my Z despite its issues. I expect the machine to be in the same mint cosmetic condition when I pick it up... yeah... right!...

()

 

I have two little crack on my screen. I think its because I put it in my backpack and maybe press against it?

Now I put a cloth on it.

Its too late.

Anyone else has this problem?

 

On the matter of configuring the Z with a RAID setup, since this is hardware RAID (from the BIOS) which driver is required? Im using XP Pro and Intel's SATA driver for ICH9. If upgraded from a single drive to a RAID configuration, I'm expecting a classic blue screen upon booting without specific RAID drivers. Is this correct? There doesnt seem to be a specific RAID driver from Sony Support, just the standard SATA driver

 

you only need to type setup_var 0x25a 0x1, press ENTER and reboot, that's it

 

OK, just did it and it worked perfectly, thank you very much. I have the Advanced Options now most of which I have no idea what they do, very technical. I also see the RAID option now. Enticing. If I can get it up and running without having to re-install the OS, Id like to try it with 2 SSDs. Again, I think I will need SATA RAID drivers or the system will not boot. Thanks again

 

Don't switch to Raid mode unless you know what you are doing!!! You may permanently lose all your current data! Enabling advanced menus is just to show you single HDD models is capable of running a raid 0... and perhaps you could adjust the temperature threshold for CPU throttling and test again

When you connect 2 x disks using raid cable i think the system will automatically switch to raid mode. as those 2 disks are new, you don't actually lose data on "new" disks. Definitely you'll have to reinstall Windows then. (If you mean to ghost the image onto the new raid 0 configuration then I think you'll need to install Raid drivers before you copy the image) I have no idea about XP but I'll just install Server 08 R2 x64 if I can upgrade RAM to 8G and disks to 640G raid 0.

 

Thanks for the info. Well, as far as XP goes I just need to know what RAID drivers I need. It is very easy to clone my current XP single drive using Acronis TrueImage Workstation w/Universal Restore. It will allow to image my current single drive and then boot the cloned RAIDed setup with HAL so I can install whatever needed RAID drivers within XP. I've cloned my XP install from 3 different laptops all with dissimilar hardware and it worked flawlessly every time. The only thing I need to know is which drivers I need.

However, I have been thinking myself on upgrading to either Server 2003 SP2 R2 or Server 08 R2 x64. I am not sure if they will give me specifically any performance improvements for what I do (AV Editing). Some reports say yes, others say XP 32bit is fine. I just need a lean system with the minimum amount of stuff running I don't need and no bloatware of any kind (reason for which Vista/7 for me are positively out of the question).

Of course Server 2003 SP2 R2 is 32bit so it will only support 4GB or RAM while Server 08 R2 x64 does not have that limitation.

I'm not sure about your Z model but all the new ones can be configured with 8GB of RAM. All on the display at the SonyStyle Store here in Shanghai have Vista 64bit and 8GB... probably fake RAM or the worse quality on the market after what Ive learned on this thread about the Chinese business practices ah

 

Windows Server 2003 Standard 32-bit supports up to 4GB RAM.

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 32-bit supports up to 64GB RAM.

64-bit operating systems are a lot faster than 32-bit on video editings.

All generations of Z (Z1~Z4) must install 2 x Micron 4GB = 8GB to boot with 8GB. I would be extremely happy if fake RAM could make Z boot with 8GB, as Micron is then no longer the only dedicated solution for 8GB Z.

 

Why specifically Micron? I upgraded my Vaio Z with (2x2GB) Kingston HyperX DDR3 Low Latency DDR3 5-5-5-15 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS) that is a bit faster than the stock Elpida DDR3 that originally came in the laptop. I wonder what the type of performance the Micron chips give when compared with my Kingston HyperX modules.

 

4GB is too easy to install. Nowadays even a laptop cheaper than my X25-E 64G has 4GB. I have a thread explaining why only Micron for 8GB and how hard it is to get it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=384968

 

After what I learned from you regarding the way the Chinese operate to make an extra buck, I'm not sure if here at SonyStyle they not using some sort of a workable off-brand scheme of 2GB + 6GB sticks instead of two Micron 4GB modules to sell the 8GB Zs. Id have to actually test the laptops on display (and one "new" in the box) using Everest or another utility to identify what they are using. Asymmetric dual channel will result in dramatically reduced performance

 

You don't have to worry about 8GB models it is still to hard to produce a single memory module of 6GB!

What I mean is that some Z4 models are pre-installed with 2GB+4GB=6GB. That 4GB module is Micron, which is now extremely hard to purchase. It is possible in China that non-official store replaces the Micron 4GB with Kingston 4GB or whatever, and sell the Micron 4GB for high price. The Z4 will still boot with 6GB because it's not 8GB. However the Z4 will never be able to upgrade to 8GB unless the unlucky buyer buys another two Micron 4GB and throws away the 4GB kingston. (of course, it is possible that other brands will become compatible in the future)

 

Grab a USB memory stick, put a copy of CPU-Z (64-bit version) on it to test in-store. Lightweight, no install needed. It will give you info about the mem you're looking for, as well as the rest of the core system components.

 

Indeed that might not be sufficient, as it is possible to install some malware process in Windows and cheat CPU-Z, Everest, Intel Chipset Identification Program or whatever else. I think the most secure and convincing method is to boot an OS from a USB memory stick and diagnose