~Sony SZ Owners Lounge~

[DetlevCM]

Here is the link to the AHCI hack.
How to Enable Intel VT and AHCI on a Napa/Santa Rosa platform Phoenix BIOS Vaio laptop


I know you hate to have to help people when they SHOULD be searching...

By not posting a link to it, all you have done is leave another link in search engines that tells everyone to search. In the end, you have one thread with the actual information, and 50,000 people saying use the search.

Search becomes useless when all the results say to use the search.

Be my guest to look up another thread on a tablet - there is a reason I call them a toy. And to be honest, if you searched notebookreview, it would be the first that comes up...

On a side note, google is becoming worse and worse for me... it is sometimes best on my BlackBerry - without the idiotic filter bubble - because all goes through RIM as a proxy. ( Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles" | Video on TED.com )

[Geeee]

Wow! Amazing people still have SZ's that are alive and well. Use to have an SZ-750 and i really miss it.

[leslieann]

Are you kidding?
Many are only around 3-4 years old.

My Z505 is around 10, and my 8 year old V505 (p4 2.8) still handles Win7 and XP just fine after a memory upgrade. While both look good, the V is in practically mint condition. Compare that to the Dell, Gateway and HPs I see all the time which are literally falling apart by year 3. This is why I buy high end Sonys (and some Lenovo), they last if you treat them right.

My SZ still holds up well against current mid-level I5 systems.
And what do I replace it with? A current mid-level I5? That's going to be newer, same speed but not as nice to use. That leaves only a few high end models, pretty much all of which are extremely expensive.


Actually, what will end up making me retire the SZ is the next generation Android Tablets. The Asus Memo, or rumored Google tablet will probably be what I start using for work once released. Leaving the SZ for trips or times I need more power.

[Rachel]

I have had an issue with my SZ7/C that was probably caused by myself but i decided to repair my SZ and not retire it or just use it as a desktop.

There are some things i dislike about the SZ and that's how less than simple it is to upgrade the OS.

Anyway, I sprayed dispaly cleaner on the screen directly and lifted the display up and down. I didn't overspray it ( or at least i didn't think that i did) but i won't be doing that again. Anyway, straight after doing this a moon shaped crescent appeared in the corner of the screen, it was brightly lit and like surrounded by a shadow that looked like a thumb print. When i put the laptop on the next day the crescent had shrunk. May be the spray affected it or it was just a fluke and was going to happen anyway.
The next day i opened it to see it was broken or if i could detect anything and may be i didn't put the lcd connector back the right way as it seemed to result in more problems. I have sent the laptop to vaiorefurbs and he has diagnosed that it now needs a new display and lcd inverter. I probably put the connector back the wrong way or may be the spray blew it out.

I have though bought another SZ7/C for less than £170 (such a steal really as have seen them go for several hundred more)and i will use that display and probably part out the rest and i will most likely make close to what i bought it for.

My SZ although four years old at this point hasn't had much use at all. I have never used the graphics card and also for the first 18 months it was lightly used just to do largely college work and surfing the web. After this it has been mainly been sitting on my desk used as a second laptop very occasionally as i use my other Sony as my main laptop. There should be a lot of life left in it yet so that's why i also decided to repair. A second laptop is useful to me and i looked at buying something else but i am fond still of the SZ and it is going to cost me next to nothing to repair it.

I wouldn't mind getting hold of a premium carbon lid and doing a bit of an upgrade with that but i can live with the standard carbon fibre one.
I know you've done the transplant thing to leslieann to keep your SZ going. I decided not to do the job myself as whilst i'm ok with upgrading the HD i don't really relish the thought of really dismantling the SZ beyond that. It is not one of the easiet laptops to dismantle.

[irishsumo]

Wow! Amazing people still have SZ's that are alive and well. Use to have an SZ-750 and i really miss it.

Picked up an SZ4MN/B back in 2007, and worked it hard over the next couple of years, running some fairly resource intensive software and thrashing it daily. Served me very well, but used to overheat a lot and the fan was making a terrible noise so retired it for a while. Recently I replaced the fan with a better one that was much quieter, and installed an SSD as well as newer OS in place of Vista and the machine runs much cooler and quicker than before, and is completely silent as well. Unfortunately the CPU cannot compare to the more modern Core-i's but it's still a top notch machine, and today I've added 4GB of RAM and am considering/investigating installing a newer WLAN card inside.

[leslieann]

Anyway, I sprayed dispaly cleaner on the screen directly and lifted the display up and down.

{cut}

I wouldn't mind getting hold of a premium carbon lid and doing a bit of an upgrade with that but i can live with the standard carbon fibre one.
I know you've done the transplant thing to leslieann to keep your SZ going. I decided not to do the job myself as whilst i'm ok with upgrading the HD i don't really relish the thought of really dismantling the SZ beyond that. It is not one of the easiet laptops to dismantle.

When cleaning displays, never spray direct, spray onto a cloth and make sure it's off. I usually use Windex window cleaner sprayed into a tissue, then lightly wipe the screen. Never scrub, just lightly wipe and you don't want the tissue dripping either, just damp. When finished and dry, I use a dry tissue to fan away any dust left. This has worked for me for years.


No, the SZ is not the easiest to dismantle by any means. It's not the worst either.

As for swapping to premium...
I have a premium lid sitting here, it doesn't fit (luckily I only paid $10 for it). All of the mounts inside are different. I know of at least 3 different lids at this point and there could be more. There is the early non LED lid, the early LED premium lids, and the later LED lids.

Oh, it's a pain to swap. All of the wiring in there is soooo delicate and they wrap all around it.

[Rachel]

Thanks for letting me know about the lid leslieann, i appreciate it.

[k_gam]

Hey Guys,

Anyone noticed that SZ users have a problem with 1080 HD youtube videos??

Is this a problem of the driver or whats the solution?

Given I have a SZ680 with Nvidia 8400m gs

This is freaking me out as I dont want to buy a new laptop at the moment.

[irishsumo]

Hey Guys,

Anyone noticed that SZ users have a problem with 1080 HD youtube videos??

Is this a problem of the driver or whats the solution?

Given I have a SZ680 with Nvidia 8400m gs

This is freaking me out as I dont want to buy a new laptop at the moment.

What's happening with the video? I've never noticed any issues playing HD on my laptop via the browser or directly in a video player. What browser are you using? Have you tried a different one? Have you updated to the newest version (which really shouldn't make much of a difference unless it is the years old)? Have you tried playing a video directly? This will identify if it is a browser or computer problem.

[irishsumo]

Oh, and I presume you are in Speed mode? Though I think the Intel HD should be enough to handle HD...