Official Sony VPC-Z2 (VAIO Z 2011) Series Owners' Thread

[boulbil]

One thing I'll say - the reviewers weren't exaggerating about the quality of the speakers. They are AWFUL. Nowhere near loud enough and there's some distortion when you do set the volume at 100%. Deffo gonna have to look at getting some headphones now.

thats such a shame. decent speakers would probably cost them between $1 and $10 more.

[goldentreesang]

thats such a shame. decent speakers would probably cost them between $1 and $10 more.

Doubtful, they probably didn't have enough room.

[xand]

I bought the Carbon Black Z. Although it says that as opposed to either just Black or Carbon Black Premium, it has the brushed metal finish which I always thought was the premium lid version. Can someone confirm this? Thanks in advance.

Here's my Z2 joining the family.

Nice

It should be the "premium carbon" equivalent - the black is a "/X" (in VPC-Z217**/X) which is what the non-glossy premium carbon is typically named.

[J o y i .]

Thanks very much - greatly appreciated!

This is my Z2's configuration.



Windows Experience Index score.

[maven1975]

Anyone one there with a Z2 that would like to share some gaming experiences? I would greatly appreciate it.

COD BO, Starcraft II, MW2... Any of these would be great.

[AnonymousCoward]

and if anyone attempted to reinstall windows and get all the proper drivers running yet

I've installed vanilla Windows 7.

From the Recovery USB stick, then tried to reinstall all drivers. For some reason a few things didn't install properly (WLAN card, Sony Firmware Extension Driver, Realtek HDMI Audio). I ended up downloading and installing those manually from the US Sony site.
The WLAN card doesn't seem to have a separate driver on the Recovery DVDs, so I'm not sure what I forgot to check. The other drivers failed to install, but it may just be that the machine needed rebooting after installing some previous driver before the later ones will install (I just selected everything and tried to install in one go without reboots)

One thing that is missing is configuring the Fast Boot option in the Vaio Control Centre (I don't know what I need to install to get that to appear). Everything else appears to be working fine.

[jdbrookes]

I've installed vanilla Windows 7.

From the Recovery USB stick, then tried to reinstall all drivers. For some reason a few things didn't install properly (WLAN card, Sony Firmware Extension Driver, Realtek HDMI Audio). I ended up downloading and installing those manually from the US Sony site.
The WLAN card doesn't seem to have a separate driver on the Recovery DVDs, so I'm not sure what I forgot to check. The other drivers failed to install, but it may just be that the machine needed rebooting after installing some previous driver before the later ones will install (I just selected everything and tried to install in one go without reboots)

One thing that is missing is configuring the Fast Boot option in the Vaio Control Centre (I don't know what I need to install to get that to appear). Everything else appears to be working fine.

From previous experience, the Sony utilities need to be installed in a fairly specific order (sometimes with reboots between, other times not) in order to get everything working 100%. That may be why you're not seeing the Fast Boot option (and probably some other things as well).

The Vaio Support EU site does not yet have the EU manual or utilities uploaded yet, but I seem to remember before that there was an official help document describing the order one would have to install the Sony utilities if performing a fresh install; this information may become officially available from Sony at some stage. If not, NBR forum members will surely figure it out ;-) I ordered Windows 7 Home Premium on my CTO to save a bit of cash because I have a licence for the Pro edition here, but I won't be installing that until I know for sure that a fresh install will work 100%

Does the WEB button still work when your machine is powered off, after your fresh Win7 install?

[Ung_Kung]

deal alert!!!!

anyone in UK might wanna try amazon. there is a pricing error on 512GB model.

good luck

[Crystal1988]

^ yeah, taking into account VAT taxation, that deal it's 400$ cheaper then USA it self. (including power media dock!) It would be a big deal for UK

[ota-con]

The Z217GG is out of stock in HK.
Just a few more days...