hi,

well, my sharp mm20 died on christmas, perhaps due to overheating, heaving
used it on the matrace….

anyway, I am somewhat disappointed with the vaio, mainly because the
keyboard is somewhat to load and unstable, worse than the mm20, and
the screen is not as colorful as the mm20s either.

The cursur moves upwards from time to time, but I can get it under control
by pressint with my middle finger from underneath against the area where
the track stick is while pressing the area where the middle mouse button is
with another finger.

I was concerned about safety because the P model was not allowed in the eu.
I think its because of the nickel. To my knowledge this only applies to
the outer casing, not the material of the keyboad aread, so I suppose one should avoid touching the outer casing of the laptop for too long.. like sitting at the beach with no clothes and having it on your bare lap… uhm…

The notebook came with a 16 gb samsung ssd slim version inside. Thats nice. Its incredibly fast.

The screen was twisted, not shutting at the right side, like other x505 also do. Stupid as I was I though I could bend the screen back. I almost broke it until I noticed one needs to press the area of the right joint where the power botton is to get it to shut properly.  I can reassure you that the display seems to be quite flexible according to what I did to it. I hope it will not die soon because of this. Its still fine after 10 hours after the incident….

So the questions…

First of all, I am glad there is this forum for gadget lovers like myself. thanks to all of those who posted all those gread how tos etc.

I have all the drivers etc., but no operating system other than a Dutch version that I cannot use.

I ordered a new xp home English UK, SystemBuilder, today, microsoft needs this for their EU court problems.

question 1: will this work via usb cd rom, with the right boot settings?
question 2: I will always have the option to upgrade to 32gb by opening the
notebook with a sony screwdriver, cloning the 16 gb to the 32 with acronis true image and a usb 1,8” adaptor, and hoping not to bread anything? I dont want to do a fresh install, i.e. should I upgrade, I would need to clone, in order to save configuration and program installation time.

Thats all for the time being… thanks for your comments…

m.

1.  Any bootable USB CD-Rom drive should work fine.
2.  Cloning should work, but if you don’t need the apps and docs already on the drive, a fresh install is always nice.

...I’m sure glad I don’t live in the UK.

X505 series can’t boot with USB drive. It doesn’t support External USB Boot.
It’s also unsual that it only has one hinge on the right side (Power Button)

hi, and thanks for the answers.

solution to mouse pointer problem: the cursor is recalibrating. if you move the cursur during this, it will go on forever. if you just let it move, it will stop after a second or two.

I will take the comment as truth that usb boot does not work. I suppose
I will have to use a firewire drive, then.

thank you.

X505 only supports Firewire boot.

And you need a sony branded firewire drive.

I do have a mint ultra slim sony i.link dvd burner that I might sell if you’re interested.

It supports any external firewire bootable, not only Sony.

Sorry, I already own a Drive that supports both USB and FireWire. I merely threw away the firewire cable since I did not have FireWire in the late Sharp unit.

hello, I am having a nervous breakdown.

I bought a firewire calbe. When the pre-installed dutch xp version, that I do not want, is
running, the (genuine, english) windows xp cd works and shows the main screen.

When I boot, the cd is not recognized.
I have set the optical drive above the harddrive,
there is no exclamation mark in front of it which would denote that it is skipped,
I have enabled i.Link and
I have a cd rom that claims to be bootable, see
http://gr.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=6&l2=76&l3=0&l4=0&model=2&modelmenu=2

Any ideas? Will it only boot from orininal sony cd drives? does it want me do sit in my car and drive to sony headquaters germany and make use of the rasor blade end at the keyboard site, for building a laptop that won t boot from usb… grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrGRRRRRRRRRRRR.

thanks for any help in advance.

Matthias

matthias - 24 January 2008 06:03 PM

hello, I am having a nervous breakdown.

I bought a firewire calbe. When the pre-installed dutch xp version, that I do not want, is
running, the (genuine, english) windows xp cd works and shows the main screen.

When I boot, the cd is not recognized.
I have set the optical drive above the harddrive,
there is no exclamation mark in front of it which would denote that it is skipped,
I have enabled i.Link and
I have a cd rom that claims to be bootable, see
http://gr.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=6&l2=76&l3=0&l4=0&model=2&modelmenu=2

Any ideas? Will it only boot from orininal sony cd drives? does it want me do sit in my car and drive to sony headquaters germany and make use of the rasor blade end at the keyboard site, for building a laptop that won t boot from usb… grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrGRRRRRRRRRRRR.

thanks for any help in advance.

Matthias

You and I are in the same boat.  I have an X505ZP that has a corrupted registry.  I also have an external SONY DVD/CD RW drive that has a firewire/i.link interface as well as USB.  I can’t get my X505 to recognize that darn drive to even attempt to boot off of it.  I have the following setup:

- enabled i.Link
- disabled hard drive boot
- booting off the original installation media

The system makes no attempt at all to access the external DVD drive at all.

Any suggestions???

Thanks

Sound like the X505 requires to boot from its companion iLink drive.

I told you so buddies, I had nearly 12 vaio and all of them which were driveless required a sony branded i.link. Nothing firewire enabled would be recognized.

Fortunately, new babies like UX allow booting from anything, anybrand !

I cannot understand why your vaio will not even boot from a
sony braded drive. To my knowledge, many x505 were not shipped
with a companion cd drive, so I can hardly believe this is
normal. Did you check that your windows cd is bootable? What
is the exact product number of your drive?
Since user mykill had luck with a sony pcmcia drive and since
pcmcia drives are easier to find on ebay, I bought a used
sony pcmcia drive in an auction and plan to resell it after
windows installation. It will arrive these days and I will
inform you about this arrogant notebooks behavior in the face
of it. did I mention I hate the x505 screen? I mean, a notebook
that was twice as expensive as the sharp mm20 and as a significantly
worse screen, dear oh dear. ciao.

matthias

If you’re local you can borrow my Sony DVD/CD ilink drive.

The Sony DVD/CD RW drive I have is the Model # DRX-530UL - with an i.Link and USB 2.0 Interface (not that USB does anything for me).  I’ve hooked up the drive by way of a firewire cable to the i.link port.  You think this would work…but nooooo.  The system doesn’t recognize it at all.

Perhaps the x505 only works with the external drive that was originally offered???  Can anybody confirm or deny?

Dan Wang - 01 February 2008 08:44 AM

If you’re local you can borrow my Sony DVD/CD ilink drive.

YGM