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Review - Sony Vaio VGN-TXN15P TX Series Ultraportable

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I decided the VGN-TXN15P looked compatible enough to invest the $2100-odd dollars after tax and try my luck on OS X. My last Vaio was the VGN-T350P (still the best laptop I've ever owned but I ebay'd it last summer because it wasn't very OS X friendly at the time). After a late night and very early morning with this machine installing and configuring, I couldn't be happier with the investment.

 

This is the current (as of Jan 07) model TX with the Core Solo U1400 low voltage processor. Here's a rundown of everything I learned getting this one running, I made some stupid mistakes that cost me a lot of time but everything is working out well. Hopefully this will help anyone else who tackles this machine.

 

 

First the important hardware IDs I found in my model:

 

GMA 950 id 0x808627A2

ICH7 ATA id 0x808627DF

1394 id 0x104c803A

Touchpad reported to windows as "Alps for Vaio" ACPI/SNY9001/4&38462492&0

Fingerprint reader id 0x04832016

Audio bus id 0x808627D8

Audio HDA is ALC262 id 0x103c0262

 

Before I installed OS X some quick benchmarks with Super PI mod, 2 million digits in 2:04.922 and 1 million in 50.297. The TX is definitely no speed demon but keep in mind those test were run alongside the crapload of junk software that comes with a vaio.

 

 

I replaced the Intel 3945 with an HP Broadcom 4311 card, in this machine the wireless is a mini pciE underneath the keyboard, very easy replacement (one screw involved under the T/Y key, kbd held with four clips across the top). Dell TrueMobile should work just as well, no bios restrictions or anything on the Vaio. There's another mini pci express slot on the bottom of the machine for the CDMA modem, I shelved that card since I'll never use CDMA. (anyone wants to trade me something interesting for this card, "Novatel Merlin EVDO Modem," PM).

 

 

Using newest JaS from January 3 with the 8.8.1 Semthex kernel I selected the Intel processor and GMA 900 options. (when I install GMA 950 no QE/CI, change to the GMA 900 package the card is still reported in profiler as a 950 but now QE + CI are enabled)

 

 

On first boot video is stuck at 1024x768 and offset to the left side of the display. Bluetooth detected. No sound.

 

 

After boot here's my changes:

 

Broadcom wireless you need the en0-->en1 trick

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=8522

Just do the last part, edit networkinterfaces.plist, reboot, and run network setup to activate the airport.

 

 

And get the display to full resolution.

http://www.madrau.com/html/SRX/DL.shtml

Make a custom res setting, 1366x768x32@60Hz. Reboot to activate.

 

 

Also get tapping working and 2-finger scroll (this is a must-have, my old M1210 didn't support it so huge win here):

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...ost&p=54090

Get RC1 of phb's driver and follow his instructions in the same post.

 

 

 

And the battery meter.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=14912

 

 

Sound: This is still a work in progress as I have headphone out working with Azalia but I can't get the HDA kext quite yet. Once there's a working AppleHDA for the ALC262 the internal speakers and line-in should work as well. Here's how I got the headphone port working with AppleAzaliaAudio.kext only:

See if you have AppleAzaliaAudio.kext in /System/Library/Extensions. I didn't so I got it from this thread:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=8864

and drop that in /System/Library/Extensions per instructions in the thread (no need to set permissions yet).

 

Next go to:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=37042

And follow those excellent instructions to install the ALC262.

 

And finally backup then delete your AppleHDA.kext from /System/Library/Extensions

Reboot and you now have sound from the headphone port.

 

 

---

 

I'm happy to have an ultraportable machine again. This one is great at 2.8 lbs it's even lighter than my old T350P, and so far it seems to be pretty compatible with OS X.

 

All of the important bits work--bluetooth, wireless, display, etc. Only the internal speakers are on my list of things to fix and it looks like development on ALC driver is pretty far along as of this writing. Sony's hotkeys (brightness/volume/dvd controls) are useless but the mute button and mute light does work as does the WLAN switch.

 

The fingerprint reader seems to be correctly detected in the system profiler as a biometric device on the USB, who knows if it could be made functional not a priority for me.

 

GUI runs plenty fast, rosetta, adobe apps, all run smooth but you can definitely tell the 1.8" 4200rpm hard drive bottlenecks performance. Price you pay for mobility. XBench puts the machine at 59.22, if you exclude the disk test it does much better at 75.26.

 

I'm convinced this is the best thing going right now for an ultraportable OS-X machine. Battery life is respectable at 4.5 hours (one thing Sony really got right was the battery life on this machine, I could get 6.5-7 hours of real use in windows with wireless/full screen brightness).

 

If you have questions or want pics of any parts of the install let me know I'll post, so far this is a great, lightweight mac.

 

 

EDIT: updated lots of stuff I learned since first post.

Edited by denied
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modrak
modrak
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doesn't look :that" portable. A macbook pro for the same price could give you much more times the performance.

 

Hell yeah it's THAT portable. I put it on top of my iBook and it takes up only like 3/4 of the screen.

And the weight - uncomparable...

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Dnizzle
Dnizzle
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In the process of install OS X86 on mine right now. So far the installation is flying, compared to my eMachines Sempron 3200+ which took close to an hour. This looks like it will be done in about 10 or 20 minutes. I'll let you know how it goes and how everything works. I guess my media buttons won't work, nor will the screen brightness, but they stopped working when I upgraded to Vista anyways so I don't think I'll miss them. I am hoping to get the biometrics working though, and it would be nice to be able to get the Intel Wifi card working, but i'm ordering a Dell 1390 anyways until then.

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pphi
pphi
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Thanks to denied for providing this guide. It really gave me the confidence to try this myself. I just got a txn15 over the weekend and got most of the stuff up and running. I ended up just going to the apple store to get the airport extreme card to get wireless running and it is now recognized natively. Enabling the ethernet port was a pain. Instead of being the "built-in" ethernet, its recognized as a PCI ethernet card.

 

I really wish the sound was better supported as all I can get is sound out of the earphones.

 

3 more caveats. Brightness control, the lack of it kinda sucks seeing how I'm sure I could extend the life of the battery if I had some control over the computer's brightness.

 

Power management is next to non-existent. Wish someone smarter than me was able to enable all the laptop power saving functions to work properly.

 

Trackpad, I'm glad there is some 2-finger scrolling functionality but it is way to sensitive and also not really configurable. e.g. I wish I could turn "tapping" off the trackpad.

 

All in all though, I'm happy with the result. I was truly waiting for Apple to release a "macbook nano" but they're more concentrated on the iPhone at the moment and I got sick of lugging my work macbook pro back and forth since it was giving me a lot of shoulder & back pain. This should tide me over for awhile though.

 

Any more updates, keep 'em coming!

 

I noticed the Sony UX shares similar issues with the TX series, so the thread over at micropc has helped a lot too!

http://www.micropctalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2140

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denied
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If you use your favorite plist editor to open

 

~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

 

you can edit com.apple.mouse.scaling and make the trackpad / 2-finger scroll a lot more usable.

 

I don't remember the number I ended up with, mine was never perfect but I got it to where I could reliably use my thumb or one finger pressed flat to scroll and just use the trackpad normally the rest of the time. Also had to turn down the triggers on FFScroll it would get stuck in scroll mode.

 

I just traded my Vaio for an HP tablet PC which is my next OS-X victim, I'm definitely going to miss the lightweight Vaio but I couldn't resist the opportunity to hack os-x onto a tablet.

 

 

As for other questions: I never did get full sound. The 262 was a real pain to get working with Taruga's drivers, so close but I'm not patient enough or smart enough to sort that out.

 

I installed insomnia.kext to allow me to close the lid and go a short distance, that was good enough for me so I never tried to fix it to actually sleep, I still don't trust sleep mode too many bad memories from old Windows installs.

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pphi
pphi
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awesome, I'll have to try it out. Is there a way to turn off tapping via the touchpad? The option on the System Prefs doesn't do anything. And I keep accidently hitting the touchpad and my typing goes bonkers because of it

 

FFScroll just hangs when I select it on system prefs, I wish the guy that wrote that would update it already.

 

Yeah, I don't know if I have the expertise to get the audio drivers working. I wish there was a way to route the sound to the speakers instead of the headphones at least.

 

Sleep on my macbook pro and powerbook has always been great so I wish I could get it working on the Vaio.

 

Sad to see you're off on another machine already, wish there was a larger community to support certain Vaios (like the UX).

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kkotak
kkotak
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Hi there,

 

If anyone got sleep/wake to work on the TXN, can you please post a guide/links here? I am dying to get it to work. Apart from some curson tearing and jumpig issues, I have my TXN19P working with pretty much everything. I can post the .kexts if you need any specific ones.

 

Thanks,

 

_KK

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Pochii
Pochii
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Hi there,

 

If anyone got sleep/wake to work on the TXN, can you please post a guide/links here? I am dying to get it to work. Apart from some curson tearing and jumpig issues, I have my TXN19P working with pretty much everything. I can post the .kexts if you need any specific ones.

 

Thanks,

 

_KK

 

I have a TX57GN and I'd like to know the same. KK, do you have LCD brightness control working with your TXN?

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AHTuttle
AHTuttle
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I'm about to start an install on my TX850. Any updates? Sleep is a big deal, I'm disappointed to hear no one got it working. Any updates on the Intel 3945? I'd rather not swap out the card.

 

And anyone who's gotten a drive or even SSD bigger than 80GB in one of these little machines would be my hero. Seems that LIF socket is a real barrier. Perhaps one of those LIF to ZIF converters? It just doesn't look like there's any room for any such converter. Maybe I'll have to update to a TZ if I can find a good deal on one, the TT is replacing that so there's hope for cheap TZs now.

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