Help out a clueless sony buyer!

Not totally clueless, mind you, but I definitely admit I could use some of your professional advice ! Thanks in advance for your time.

Ive mostly been looking into a Sony Vaio Z series; the new ones. Ive got the money, thats not a problem with me, so without further ado' ill give you the details..

Screen resolution: Sure, 1920x1080 is attractive at first, but when you think about it, on a 13.1 inch screen, am I better off getting 1600x900? It just sounds a bit insane to me. I am gaming on it, but thats it as far as that goes. Movies will be displayed from laptop to tv.

RAM: You have to understand, ive been deeply deprived here with my current computer (Only have 1GB of ram on current laptop and its running vista) so naturally I want to go crazy and get the 8GB RAM. Its so tempting! All the terrible memories of applications crashing and firefox only being able to run for 10 min at a time come flooding into my head! However, rational me says 8GB is quite excessive and that 6GB would more than suffice. Is rational me correct or is the 8GB jump worth it? Oh, and I set records for how many applications I have out at once. I guess I should note that.

Processor: i5 or i7? I admit out of all tech lingo, processors and "GHz" talk is my least knowledgeable subject. Im the idiot that makes the mistake of thinking ''more RAM'' > ''more GHz'' when it comes to game/application speed. Anywho, ill make it simple, is the jump worth it? Ultimately opinion, sure, but id like to know what you think.

Space: Im torn. On one side I think "Get the 128GB! What else are cheap external hard drives for?" but on the other side I think I need more. Is there any terrible downside to the external hard drive route? Or should I suck it up and spend the cash?


Finally, if I had my way Id be on a comfortable middle ground of 14" screen. The Z is a magnificent computer spec wise and it outperformed any of the other vaios that I searched, so it was worth the downsize. If any of you guys know a 14" screen that is on par performance wise though, please link them to me! No hate to the 13", I just fear itll be too small as im not used to small laptops.

 

What do you do with the computer? You may only need 6GB or even 4GB.

4GB is still quite a bit of ram. Windows 7 is better with ram than Vista was.

You may need more ram if you run several CS4 apps at once, edit render and compress video and 3d files on a regular basis.

Similarly, I think you would know if you need an i7 quad core. I think the higher clocked i5 is going to be the processor for most people.

I have a 128GB SSD. After installing windows, updates, CS4 Production Premium, Firefox, Chrome... I have 96GB left after a couple of tweaks.

 

If you want 14" screensize the new CW is a nice bit cheaper than the Z and in a similiar performance range albeit no Quad SSD. It all depends on your uses for the laptop and how much you are looking to spend. The display in the Z is supposed to be amazing I doubt the display in the CW is as nice so i'd gladly give up the .9" for a better screen the .9" is not going to be that noticeable.

If you've got the money to blow though I'd say definitely go Z, I wouldn't get the Full HD screen that res is going to make text painfully small for everyday use. I'd go with the 1600x900 screen. Honestly if it's just for everyday use the base config is hard to beat 128gb is plenty for the average user but if you see yourself installing lots of games, downloading lots of things, storing movies music pictures etc on it then you might want to go bigger on the HD. As far as processor the difference will probably be pretty minimal for most everything, I wouldn't spend the extra 150 for the i7 in my situation but if money was no object I would definitely go i7.

You leave alot of variables open without knowing what your going to use the computer for so it's kind of hard to give a definitive answer but that's best I can do LOL

 

Thanks for the reply. I dont plan on having a desktop what so ever, so ill be doing anything and everything on this. That mostly just entails college work and gaming though. Tbh, spec wise I believe the Z could be a desktop replacement.

Im messy for lack of better words though. As in Ill bring firefox up and before you know it ill have 8 tabs at once open not to mention that photoshop I forgot I had running in the background.. oh and Itunes is playing too etc. You get the point.

Ah, like I said, total idiot when it comes to processors. Ill look more closely into them, but I take it the i5 will suffice in my case.

That seems manageable to me. 96GB left, I mean. Then again Im a chick; we have no sense of size nor space or anything of that nature ! If your drive is close to being full, does it slow down your computer at all or lower performance?

Im a big (legal) downloader of music, movies, programs..everything really, so I know ill need alot of space, but like I mentioned, $80 external hard drives just seem smarter than $400-$600 SDD upgrades.

 

If your not going to have a desktop i'd go with a bigger HD and keep everything else the same. With SSD's you don't want to fill them to capacity because it does effect performance and everyone says "i'll just use an external HD" but how often will you have the external HD with you? If you want to play Music and Movies etc your going to have to carry the external HD with you in addition to the laptop which kind of defeats the purpose of getting something as portable as the Z. In your case I would go with at least the 194gb or better yet the 256gb to be safe. You can't really add extra HD space to the Z later on because it uses special SSD's so your only choice will be external HD later on and you are likely to end up regretting it if you run out of space.

 

I think that you should get the new Z with the 1600 x 900 resolution since you're gonna work with documents, etc., configure with the Blu ray drive, 8GB RAM is nice but that depends if you're gonna do intensive HD video editing and Photoshop, then 4GB is fine for most other uses, the 256GB SSD to store your programs, college work, music, video files, etc, get a 32GB SDHC card for your favorite music and as an on the go back up for that music just in case of an SSD issue ( currently being discussed in the new Z thread ), and keep the rest of your music library and back up files and other important stuff on an external hard drive. Also, I'd opt for the extended battery as well. And get a Brenthaven Slim 1 Shoulder case designed to protect your new Z.

 

Really solid answers, and trust me, im taking notes. I dont take advice for granted, it will be put to good use.

So far my rough draft is this..

1600x900
i5 cpu
6GB RAM
256GB SSD

or this..

1600x900
i7 cpu
4GB RAM
256GB SSD

Both of these come out to $2500.

Which will allow my firefox to run 8 tabs at once with itunes and god knows what else open in the background ? Which will give me more bang for my buck and overall be more useful?

P.S I skipped the blue ray to keep it under 3k. Besides that, I have a ps3 (Or did I make the mistake in assuming blue ray is only for movies?). I also figured you could probably download blue ray movies and run them. Or is the blue ray drive not just for reading/burning the tangible cd?

 

I'd get the i5 cpu with the 4GB RAM and still get the Blu ray player unless you want to rip your Blu ray movies to the SSD, but then depending on how many rips and downloads you want to store, is the 256GB SSD going to be enough ? Only you know how much of a collection you have or will have in the future. In the new Z forum they are saying to not fill more than 70% of the SSD capacity for performance reasons...I'm still learning about it as well. And another reason to buy the Blu ray is if you really do find yourself buying movies for your PS3, they're most likely going to be Blu rays instead of standard dvd's so it only makes sense.

Note: I'm wishing my Z had the Blu ray drive instead of the standard dvd drive.

 

I would recommend the 256GB SSD as well.
now, 4GB of ram means 2x2GB but the 4GB modules are the most expensive of all (almost 3x + the cost of a standard 2GB module) so I would go for the full 8GB or at least 6GB so in the future you can waste the least possible by just throwing away one 2GB module to replace it with a second 4GB one.

About the CPUs, they are equal for most tasks...BUT, the 620M has a little bit more cache which should help when gaming and packs a little more punch when you are running on battery as it has the same wattage requirements and runs faster.
So the battery will last just as long for the 540M and the 620M but I'd say you get about 10-15% more processing power thanks to 25% more cache and about 10% greater processing speed.
Bottom line for CPU is if you need the extra power and want to spend the money.

One extra bit that might come in handy;
thanks to the express card, you can have 48GB to store media files or what have you.
http://www.dvnation.com/ExpressCard-SSD.html
The Z has a 34mm ExpressCard slot.

I have already preordered the 4500$ signature.

I just did a test, granted I do not have firefox but with chrome I removed one of the two 4GB dimms and tested chrome with 4GB and I opened 32 tabs, among which 12 youtube videos, reuters streaming news, gmail, this forum and some other things, had itunes playing in the background and loaded a 16mpix jpeg in photoshop and did a 400% scale.
Then I ran windows update to make sure.
No problems there.

 

Bah! Curse my college student handicap. Wish more of this stuff was upgrade-able so I could buy then upgrade when I had the cash

Im in school for programming, so thats where the strictly no desktop, laptop only, side of me comes from. Very funny about where I like to do my coding. Perhaps ill lease it monthly, thatll be much more manageable since they have a no interest for 12 months option.

You guys have been incredibly helpful and patient. Cheers!

 

Patient...?
Look at the 2000+ post thread dedicated to the second coming of the Z and you will rethink how patient we can be

You are most welcome.

 

Considering how faster the new cpu are.. I think a i5-540 would be fast enough.. same with 4gb of ram unless you do video stuff like after effect and all... which needs a good desktop anyway... why would anyone do video editing on a 13"?

if you have the money, ssd is the way to go, I'd get a 256 because 128 is easily filled... the other option could be to get a 64 or 128 for your operating system and get a 2nd drive (replace the dvd drive by this) some 500gb 7200rpm for data...