Tuesday 11 October 2011

Message: SONY VAIO Battery Care, "I OWN YOU!!!"


Still remember the saying,
"When you need one, it never comes; when you least expect, two come along at once"
from the entry Message: Nesat Brings First Typhooliday In 2 Years? ?

Well, I'm changing this to,
"When you try tonnes, it never runs, when you least expect, battery fully charged at once!"

Yes, after I have finished writing my last entry Technology & Opinions: Hate. Believe. SONY and went to bed, I tried again to reinstall the DLL Library and run that Battery Care Function again, and the grayed boxes finally allow me to change the battery charge to 100%!!!!

Image from sony.com.au

Victory to Locky after years of hard work!!!!

SONY, I OWN YOU!!!!

(PS: I had been owned by SONY for years, at least 3.)



Vocabulary:
own -- (vb)[T] -- To be made a fool of; To make a fool of; To confound or prove wrong; embarrasing someone: Being embarrased.


Resource:
Message: Nesat Brings First Typhooliday In 2 Years? @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.com/2011/09/message-nesat-brings-first-typhooliday.html

Technology & Opinions: Hate. Believe. SONY @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.com/2011/10/technology-opinions-hate-believe-sony.html

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=owned

Technology & Opinions: Hate. Believe. SONY


Image from sony-asia
Introducing... my worst nightmare!!! The SONY VAIO VGN-TZ36GN (white / black)!!!

My sister wanted a laptop some years ago and back then SONY was thought to be one of the best brands, and because she wanted one that is lighter and cheaper than the Macbook Air, she finally chose SONY VAIO.  Since then, it has become my worst dream!!!

I have almost forgotten how much time I have spent on downgrading it from tortoise-speed Vista to XP, installing and uninstalling and then reinstalling the drivers and softwares. Took many trial and errors just to realise that it was totally time-wasting because the drivers had to be installed in a particular sequence! Once the steps were wrong, I would have to uninstall every driver and then reinstall again!!! How stupid!!!

Year after year I I tried and failed, failed and forgot, forgot and remembered, remembered and retried, retried and failed again.

Then came Windows 7, which allowed internet search of the drivers by itself, and that saved me a lot of time, but then, idiotically, the battery will only charge to 80% and then it will stop! After searching through the net, I finally found out that there is something called the Battery Care Function which is designed to limit the amount of power being charged to the battery. Ingenious? Rubbish!! Why?

SONY really likes to discontinue their products, almost after 1 year, right after the warranty period has expired, SONY will stop the production and any forms of updates to its product. So the VAIO my sister bought, has the software only compatible with XP and Vista at best. If anything goes wrong, you call them and they will tell you,

"You are advised to purchase an upgrade of the product itself."

Why do I need a long battery life if they laptop itself is no longer usable?

No wonder they "MAKE" and then you just need to "BELIEVE" them.

So, if I want to change that Battery Care Function to let me charge my battery to 95% instead of 80%, I will need to go through the following steps.



5) This step is important, you need to install the following software in the correct order and reboot between each install otherwise it wont work properly. You have been warned. (That said if you do jump the gun for whatever reason you can un-install everything apart from the shared libraries)
1. VAIO Event Service (From Utilities Folder)
2. Reboot
3. SONY DLL Utils (From Utilities Folder)
4. Reboot
5. SONY Shared Library (From Utilities Folder)
6. Reboot
7. Sony Power Management (From Utilities Folder)
8. Reboot (last one!)


Finding the relevant files and package took me at least an hour ("Sorry, 404"), downloading the package took me another hour (stupid server!), then each reboot takes about 4 mins (it was already a blessing because it is Windows 7), and in the end, still nothing! Then at 1am, I got lucky and I found a separate Battery Care Function executable for downloading, and I installed it, but in the end, what do I get?

A grayed dialog box telling me nothing but that the options for changing the percentage of battery charge is unavailable for changes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is no good result buying anything from SONY, first the camcorder, then my PSP, then the laptop!

GOD!!! I swear I will NEVER EVER buy anything from SONY AGAIN!!!!!!!!

Like the page if you hate SONY too!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-HATE-SONY/107998565916414


Vocabulary:
jump the gun -- Fig. to start before the starting signal. (Originally used in sports contests that are started by firing a gun.) 


Resources:
Sony Vaio function keys and Windows 7 @ funys.net
http://www.funys.net/2009/08/28/sony-vaio-function-keys-and-windows-7/

How to Enable/Disable Battery care function on Sony Vaio to improve Battery life. @ Digital PBK
http://digitalpbk.com/hardware/sony-vaio-enable-battery-care-function-improve-battery-life

I HATE SONY @ Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-HATE-SONY/107998565916414

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/jump+the+gun
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/jump-the-gun?q=jump+the+gun#jump-the-gun__1