Free 3 year warranty for Z and TZ31 series (in UK)

Sony are offering free extended warranties for UK customers who register their new Z or TZ31 within 30 days of purchase.

Looks genuine to me. (Found at pcwb.com.)

This helps to slightly ease the pain of buying at UK prices.

 

Thanks for the tip, it's very useful indeed.

Let's hope that by the 30th of September, they'll have come up with a Blu-Ray model (yeah, right!).

 

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed that they haven't offered either SSD or BD on even the top model. On the other hand, once the Euro region rip-off factor is added, that config would most likely be £3,000/$6,000... which seems a tad steep.

Personally, I'm not bothered about BD. If it becomes a must-have for me during the life of my Z, which I doubt, I can always buy an external drive which by then might be a bit more reasonably priced. I might have considered the SSD option though... even though it's expensive, the benefits all seem worth having.

 

For the US buyers - Sony is doing 3yr warranties on their pre-configured TZ340 and TZ390's they offer through resellers like CDW, Zones and Newegg.

It's still a depot warranty, but hey 3 years! For free! Without having to do anything other than buy the laptop!

 

Completely understandable if you don't need it, but an external BR will never be with you all the time, therefore when you need it!

I'm not sure I understand how you get the price of a hypothetical high end BR model in the UK. If I add £250 to the top model (11vn), I'm still around £2000. I get the VAT back, so for me the UK price is equivalent to the US price (I'll actually pay more for a US model as I'm not sure I can get the VAT back charged by the customs as easily as the "normal" one). If I import, it will be from Japan, to get BR and T9600...

 

Well I figured using the inflated prices as per usual for Sony in the UK vs US or JP, it'd be approx £400 for a BD writer and about £800 for the SSD... thus around £3000 in total, if that config were even possible.

 

Oh ok, you meant with BOTH! That's greedy!

Unlikely to find both in the same machine in the UK as it's not even an option at this stage in JPor US CTOs. I wouldn't do it unless I get at least a 256Gb SSD, so that's not for a while (at a reasonable cost!).

By the way, your estimate of £400 for a BD is probably more realistic than my £250, but if you look at the price difference on the present range, it's almost like for like, you just add UK VAT to US prices and more or less get UK prices, that's why I'm kind of optimistic...

 

As usual, I wish I was buying in the future... it's always a bit painful buying a new chunk of technology and watching as something smaller/better/faster comes out within weeks for the same price or less. But I really need a new laptop, so I don't want to wait for a Z refresh. I want one now!

Eventually you just need to take the plunge...

 

Totally agree with you, I just don't need one today (I can survive with my TZ, just can't edit my HD vidoes on it...). It was really hard to swallow the disappointment of the first UK models not having what I need (mainly BR), but I guess it's quite good to wait for a few month as there are going to be a few other interesting models to come... Let us know which one you go for!

 

I'm leaning towards the Z11VN/B just because the 320GB/5400rpm drives are supposedly quite a bit faster than the 200/250GB versions and also the faster CPU with bigger cache would be useful. The other option is WN/B... which seems to be advertised more widely so might be better value. I will avoid MN/B because I definitely want the integrated HSDPA.

My dilemma is that I want to take it on holiday at the beginning of Sept. so I don't want to pre-order only for the shipment date to get pushed back from "mid-August" by a couple of weeks. I've asked Sony Centre to call me when they get stock but I don't know if sonystyle.co.uk will have them earlier than that. Any views?

 

My view is that what delays the Z is the delivery of the chipset with integrated graphics. As soon as Intel delivers it, the Z zill be delivered by Sony. There is no way to know if this will be pushed back or not, but Sonystyle has waited until the SZ stock was gone before listing the Z, so I'm sure they count on it as much as we do. I'd say it will be delivered mid-august, otherwise Sony would still be offering some SZ. They must be pretty confident they can deliver within about two weeks. Now of course I can be wrong. In a way it's wise not to order until they are available, but on another hand you could order with a deadline for you order to be delivered until you are allowed to get an immediate refund. IF they agree to it in writing, then you can place your pre-order to make sure you secure one, and if delivery is delayed you get your money back and order something else.