TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

My new 2012 Vaio Z was putting out a ridiculously low output on the headphone jack.  Not enough to notice until I took a plane trip, when I realized I couldn't actually hear most of my movies - even at 100% volume. (This is with some Sony noise-cancelling headphones, which have always worked well for the past 50 hours of flying time.) Anyway, the instructions most helpfully provided by Antriksh Yadav about how to boost the volume on the Vaio E series helped quite a bit.   On my Z, the Dolby enhancements were switched off for some idiotic reason.  Turning Dolby on boosted the headphones output by at least 50%.  Selecting "Movie" mode gave the midrange a bit of boost, good for dialogue. The studio quality made no difference, the disable all sound effects was already unchecked, and there are no equalization settings on my Z as there are on the E.  But the Dolby tip alone was enough to raise my headphone audio from useless to usable. If this isn't en...

Random impressions of the Vaio Z - the latest 2012 model, not the previous 2 generations.  I never used those, although I understand the Z2 is effectively the same as the Z3 in size, shape etc. The price has effectively dropped by almost $1,000 because the Power Media Dock is now optional.  Good for those of us who are not terribly interested in a secondary video card/external monitor capability. Neither the lappy nor the sheet battery weight anything, but somehow you put them together and they feel a bit heavy.  Not bad, mind you, but you will notice. Nobody talks about the sheet battery.  This thing is great.  It adds a few mm to the height/thickness of the lappy.  To mount, clip it on and rotate two thumbscrews.  It takes about 15 seconds to get on or off, and is really easy, so it's not necessarily a permanent install once it's on. The battery fits into a small connector on the bottom of the lappy.  The connector has a cover on it, whi...