I want to buy a Sony Z, but...

I recently purchased an Envy 14 and returned it because of the poor quality. After searching for alternatives, I've narrowed it down to either a Sony Z or Lenovo T410s.

I really like the style, portability, and the components of the Z, but the SSD configuration worries me. I've read through a few threads here and have seen people complaining about their machines stuttering due to the SSDs. What irritates me even more is the the fact that there's no easy way to replace the hard drive. The T410s on the other hand isn't as good looking and isn't as portable, but at least I can replace the hard drive.

I plan to keep this notebook for least 4-5 years, so I'd be really bummed if the hard drives bog down the system only after 1 or 2 years. I really want to like the Z, but this issue is preventing me from pulling the trigger.

Is the SSD issues really something that I need to be concerned about?

 

To be honest, Lenovo is built to last longer than Sony Vaio. What you get with Vaio is bleeding edge and sexy design, made to be replaced after a few years and not last forever.

 

I have not seen people complaining about the performance of the Z12 SSDs, quite the contrary. From where are you getting those concerns?
There were some initial concerns about them not supporting the TRIM feature, but I think that performance degradation has not been found to occur.

 

However, I must warn you that if you were not satisfied by the build quality of the Envy, the Sony may not feel to you any different. The chassis of the Envy feels more solid than the Sony which has more of a plastic feeling to it.

 

I was referring mainly to the stuttering issues mentioned in this thread. Check out the last few pages.

It feels like the Envy was rushed through production without any kind of quality check. Here is my post about the Envy that I received. From what I've read, it seems that exchanging the Envy for another one is a gamble, you're not really sure what other flaws there will be.

 

I think most complaints about the Envy 14 is the variable build flaws and quirks such as uneven pads, flex on some boards while not on others, misaligned screens, etc etc. You don't have those same flaws with the Sony. The complaint about the Sony is that it feels plastic or fragile. Which is true but it was also designed that way to keep the weight down. I haven't heard of too many wide spread build funks on the Sony. If you baby the Sony I think it will last quite a while.

 

nivlam, did you read the whole thread that you posted there? The posts you see about the stutters are very few and far between. What that thread tells you is that there is a background garbage collection utility employed by the Samsung SSDs themselves, independent of the operating system. This GC appears to keep the SSDs running without significant degredation, even after being filled. The trick is to make sure you leave some of your drive empty, as the GC appears to need some empty space to perform its work properly. I think the recommendation was 15 or 20GB free?

I would therefore worry less about degredation and more about drive size. I highly recommend buying a larger drive, which on the Z is very expensive.

 

^ This is exactly the reason I decided to step up to the 256GB SSD version. Without TRIM and with a custom GC on the SSD, it makes sense to have available space left over.

The early RunCore's that people used for their Dell Minis have the same issues. As you near the capacity of the drive, the lack of TRIM support causes the controller on the SSD to rearrange blocks of memory so that the write requests can be satisfied, which causes a delay.

I agree that it does suck not having the ability to replace the SSD with a cheaper, potentially better solution. I must admit that the idea of RAID-0 worries me a bit but I don't plan on storing any critical files on the drive anyhow. The performance of the stock SSD seems quite impressive.

 

Is it possible to 'un'-raid the ssd? So you can simply use 2 64gb ssds as single drives. Trim might be possible with this configuration ?

 

Read the first page of the thread that nivlam posted above. Yes, you can un-RAID the drives and use them independently. But TRIM will still not work I believe because of the Sony BIOS.

 

Exactly. I had an Envy 13 a while back that I returned. I remember it felt like a pretty solid piece of hardware. But, it had glue and fibers stuck underneath the screen blocking the camera lens.
The Sony does not have that same metal feeling, feels lighter and more fragile, so one tends to handle it with more care.

 

This confuses me, thought here in the forums somewhere there was stated that TRIM is supported through a JBOD configuration... Just interested, although most of the users here would not turn away from their RAID0 speed.

 

A minor note: the other (indirect) advantage of RAID0 is that the physical disks appear as one drive to the user. I'm currently wondering if I should keep two X-25Ms in RAID0 or in JBOD (I have the HDD-option Z11), if they're in JBOD, I can use Intel's Toolkit to re-optimize them periodically (in addition to TRIM), but the downside is that I have two disks, and I need to think about where to place the data and programs. With RAID0 I don't have that issue.

 

I wouldn't mind the two drives, you can use one for windows and smaller applications like winamp or firefox and the other one for fattys like an adobe suite.

Could you be so kind to post a link to the thread regarding that JBOD config? I don't even know what it is, but i think i would go for that, giving away speed and comfort, just two know i won't have issues with that TRIM thing.

I think simple SSDs are still fast enough for me.

 

I know that JBOD can be configured via the BIOS screen, here's a post with that screen shot: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...pcz1-unboxing-photos-movie-2.html#post6007230

I don't know if it's possible to do so via the RST app (i.e. while running within Windows), I've tested building a RAID volume from JBOD, but didn't think of doing things the other way then. I've got just one SSD now so I can't test that, but if you can, you can poke around and see if that option shows up.