Buy Z3 now? Or wait till W8?

Currently I have the original Z1 laptop, and am looking at getting a Z3 with dock and a bunch of other stuff (Around $2,600). I'm wondering if its fine to purchase it now, or if I should wait until October once W8 is released? I haven't used W8 much other then the developer preview earlier in the year, and a bit of the consumer preview, but I wasn't impressed at all....

Also, will Sony change anything in the new W8 model? or same hardware just different OS?

 

buy it now!! no wait...just wait till windows 8 is there,...or maybe 9! no wait...go ahead and buy!

seriously, why do you ask others if you should buy a laptop right now. If you can't wait, buy one now. If you can wait, then it wont harm either way. Isn't that simple enough?

yes sony will change everything. it'll be a transparent, 0-weight laptop with ability to change your life, get your millions in lottery, etc. I know because I am sony's CEO so it must be true!

 

that... was interesting. And yeah, I can wait two months just don't know if enough will change to care, that's all.

 

What he should have said was that no one on these forums would have any better guess at an answer to your questions than you do. They may or may not change it so it all depends on how quickly you want a laptop and how much you like windows 8. A lot of people hate win8 so if this is you, it would be better to buy now.

 

penubag is right - it is a personal choice. Basically, it depends on your answers to two questions:

1. Will you switch over to Windows 8 when it is finally (officially ) released?
if so,
2. How frequently do you do a clean install of your Windows OS?

The important (and potentially irritating) thing is that your recovery partition will contain whatever you get when you buy the laptop. With the fresh start (clean install) option almost all the bloatware is gone, so a clean install from the recovery partition is now rather attractive - I wish I had it. Getting a fresh start Windows 8 model will get you a recovery partition that you can use for several years to come.

 

If you buy it now, there will probably some upgrade to Win8 for a small fee.
I am also guessing there will be a CPU bump as well when Win8 comes out.

 

If you are not in a hurry, I would wait to buy it. Like the people said above, they might or might not have upgraded hardware. But if you do buy now, you can get a discounted price ($15) to upgrade to windows 8 when it comes out from Microsoft.

 

Will that upgrade also upgrade your recovery partition?

 

I don't think so. I currently have a SR series that had a similar promotion. It came with Windows Vista but once Windows 7 came out, Sony offered a free upgrade. I reformatted my laptop once through the recovery partition and it was back to Vista. So I just ended up doing a fresh install of Windows 7 instead.

 

(1) I think I'll give it a shot once it comes out now, one of the MSDN subscribers at my work was showing me a lot about it---apparently I just didn't know how to use the developer preview very well haha.

(2) I reformat and re-install windows 2x per year at most, both desktop/laptop.

I'm also thinking of waiting now because I remember when I bought my current Z, which is a Vista laptop right before the Win7 model came out it had a 9300M GPU in it, but the Win7 version had a 330M in it. I did a bit of research and the 6650M or 7670M graphics in both previous years models is actually identical--same 40nm architecture. Seeing as I'd also like the laptop to allow me to game a bit when I'm on long business trips, I'm better to wait.

 

Personally I would wait to buy. I bought an SZ a few years back about 2/3 months before Vista came out, and although I was told my model would be immediately updated to Vista I ended up waiting months for proper driver support and for other bits and pieces to work, whereas brand new SZs were launched with 100% working preinstalled copies of Vista. It ended up being a pain in the brass. Although Win 7 -> 8 should be far better, I would still wait in case there is a minor upgrade to something important to Win8 such as the touchpad or webcam or similar. Patience!

 

Here is my take on Win 8. It's prob is going to be good mostly for touchscreen flatform. I can see it will be a bit annoying to use in normal non touch laptop like the current Z. It will take at least a year or 2 for Sony to replace the current screen on the Z to newer touch one. Even then, waiting for them to actually put a good touch screen on the Z will take more time. Everything all together, buy now and make your move 2-3 years down the road once the technology matures.

 

I suggest trying the beta version of W8...it's quite a change and one that you may not like. As someone posted, the upgrade is only $15 if you do decide to go to W8.

I'm actually looking for a new laptop as well and I'm not waiting for W8 build simply because I didn't like W8.