TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

I wanted to back up my Z3 using Hiren's Boot CD .  I have done this before, and it worked well. (I recommend Image For Windows, available on Hiren's, but you should buy a licence.  IFW seems to be one of the only programs out there that can actually do a bare metal restore.) Oddly enough, when I booted the Z from the USB stick, I did not see Image for Windows.  In fact, I did not see any programs at all.  Mini Windows XP ran fine, but all the programs were missing! Scrounging around the File Manager turned up nada.  It looked like the USB stick was not there, even though the machine had booted from it just fine. The conflict in my case was an SD card that I had added to the system.  It seems Mini XP got confused after boot and replaced the USB stick drive with the SD card.  XP was not capable of reading the SD card owing to the large capacity, and essentially got stuck, unable to locate or load any of the Hiren's apps. Removing the SD card (a...

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...

OK, so the "Z3" is really the SVZ13, according to Sony.  Most everyone else is calling it the Z3, or maybe the Vaio Z 2012 Edition.  The model I'm referring to is the first Vaio Z with the Ivy Bridge chipset, came out in early 2012. Anyway, the Clear-Coat skin for the VPC-Z2 model will fit the SVZ13 / Z3 model fine.  I've done it on mine.  It includes pieces for the sheet battery too.  Good fit and looks good too. Caveats:  As with all skins, it is hard to get 100% of the air bubbles out.  It can also be hard to handle the large pieces, and figuring out which pieces go where can be a bit of a PITA. The key seems to be to keep your hands only a little bit wet (to prevent sticking/fingerprints) but get the film and the laptop good and wet.  This provides more margin for air to get forced out and lets the film "float" better on the laptop to allow centering/alignment before drying. You will want more of the application fluid than is provided...

Like the title says.  This is on a Vaio Z series (3rd generation, 2012). Before anyone things I'm an idiot and simply don't know how to do it: it works with Internet Explorer fine.  AND the fingerprint login to Windows 7 x64 works fine as well.  But not with Firefox. What doesn't happen is that TrueSuite does not prompt to remember a password when you log in to a web page.  In IE, you get a message asking "do you want TrueSuite to remember this password" or something like that.  With Firefox, nada. I tried disabling Firefox's buit-in password manager, which I had temporarily enabled.  Didn't help. Nothing mentioned on either Sony's site or Authentec's site, so I must be the only one.  I'm betting I'll have to do a video to prove it to Sony. [Edit]:  The fingerprint login sure is handy.  I had almost forgotten how much I missed it when I had to give up my old Lifebook.

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...