Is it worth buy the old Sony Z?

I am looking to buy a new high-end laptop and the Sony Z Series is the best one I have seen in the 13' range. My problem at the moment is whether or not the buy the current Sony Z or the upcoming refresh. Price is somewhat of a concern as the new Sony Z is extremely expensive with the specifications I want. The benefit of buying the new Sony Z would be that I could finance it. The idea of getting an old graphics card (with I hear some issues, I may be wrong) also bugs me. I am really wondering, how much of a bargain do you think the old Z is over the new one with the specs below? Also, since the P9700 is a top-end Core 2 Duo, how does it compare to the Core i7-620m?

http://www.provantage.com/sony-vgnz899gcb~7SONN1PA.htm
Sony Vaio Z899 ($2400 After Taxes)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz P9700 w/ 6MB L2 Cache
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 Memory
320GB 7200rpm Hard Drive (Upgradeable?)
Blu-Ray Drive w/ DVD-RW
Windows 7 Professional x64
Old Nvidia 9300M
3 Year Standard Warranty (Same as ADP??: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1282545)
Pro's: Save $1100, Blu-Ray Drive, High-End Core 2 Duo
Con's: Old GFX Card

vs.

Sony Vaio Z1190X ($3500 After Taxes)
Intel Core i7-620m 2.66GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.33GHz)
4GB 1066MHz DDR Memory
384GB SSD in RAID 0 (Non-Upgradeable and no TRIM??)
DVD-RW Drive
Windows 7 Professional x64
New Nvidia 330M
3 Year Accidental Damage Warranty
Pro's: Newest Technology, Financing, new GFX card
Con's: Expensive, no TRIM on SSD?

 

I would wait for the new models, as the old ones are seeming to run pretty warm. Plus the NVIDIA GT330m will mop the floor with the 9300m. Basically netbooks with ION have a faster graphics solution than the older Z, though the CPU is their bottleneck. Plus with the newer Z, you'll get that nice dual core i7 that will run rings around that P9700 in CPU intensive tasks.

 

Would definitely wait for the newer Z, it's more than just a refresh.

It's unknown whether or not if there will be TRIM on their RAID SSD setup. I wonder if they'll offer an HDD option where you can get the cheapest one then replace it with your own SSD

Better yet I hope they offer a single SSD w/ TRIM option

 

The i7-720M is faster than the P9700 but not by much, the P9700 is a great cpu.

to give you an idea: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

You can browse the mobile cpu only.

Getting the P9700 would be like getting the i5-540M except the P9700 got more cache.

 

As regards graphics performance, what do you intend to do with it? Some graphics cards are better than others aft different things. I don't play MW2 on my laptop, but I spend 8-10 hours a day on AutoCAD and Lightwave, and the 6GB/P9700/9300M is an absolutely amazing solution for that task. Better than my 8GB/Quad Core Xeon/Nvidia Quatro HP Workstation. If you're fussed about making the correct decision, find out more about how the systems operate, and how you need them to operate, and pick a system that does what you need it to do the fasted, not something that does things faster that you're not going to be doing anyways.

 

How is the 6GB/P9700/9300M better than the 8GB/Quad Core Xeon/Nvidia Quatro HP Workstation??

 

It's just faster at running AutoCAD 2008, be that because of the way AutoCAD interacts with the processor, or the way the workstation's motherboard moves data between the processor, memory and graphics card. The workstation has a slower front side bus, a 2.66GHz Quad Core Xeon, SATA 7K2 HDDs, is running Vista 64 Ultimate, and the graphics card is running dual screens. The laptop of course has a faster FSB, is running Windows 7 64 bit Pro. Both were about the same price, only the workstation was bought a year before the laptop. And of course AutoCAD 2008 is the 64 bit version. I suspect it's a case that since the development of 64 bit OSs, hardware has become increasingly optomised for such things, and of course AutoCAD itself works faster when it isn't multi-threading, so the processor clock speed and FSB are very important. With gaming, the number of processing cores, ram, etc are more critical than sheer system speed.

I am by no means an expert. I can only report on my day to day usage of various systems.

 

Since you're using AutoCAD, the new Vaio Z (i5/i7) series will be faster than the current (old) Vaio Z series doing the same tasks.

IMHO, I think it will be hard to "correctly" answer the OP's question mainly because we don't know what kind of tasks the OP is using his notebook for. There's also the issue of forking out an extra $1,100 for a "significant" speed improvement since he/she mentioned that price is a big concern.

 

Something must be setup wrong with your HP workstation. Even if it was bought 2 years before the Z (assuming it's new), it should still blow it out of the water. The FSB of the Xeon processors has been 1066mhz going all the way back to 2006 with the 5060 series "Dempsey" core. Going foward they've only gotten faster. And the P9700 has a 1066mhz FSB. You must have a bottleneck somewhere. Does your Z have an SSD?

 

For CAD/CAM, I would pick a machine that has a Quadro or FirePro labeled graphics card instead of GeForce or Radeon. The difference is that the workstation labeled cards can run the modeling-optimized workstation drivers, which makes a day and night difference.

Unfortunately, I don't think that Sony pays the premium to get the workstation labeled version of cards in any of their laptops.

 

The HP Workstation is an xw8400 series running a 2.66 quad core Xeon, and upgraded with 8gb or ram. Problem is the FSB on the xw8400 motherboard is 800MHz I believe.

No SSD in the Lappy. 400GB 7K2. I do run an app on the workstation that monitors the load on the processor cores. When AutoCAD is running it only utilises a single core. So much for AutoCAD being written for multi-core processors.

 

The more expensive the laptop, the pickier I seem to be.

I found the Z to have the following issues:
Diagonal lines that is a design flaw (in my opinion) that are related to the way the LED inverter is designed.
Key pressure marks b/c of the flimsy screen
Battery drain (not sure if this has been fixed)

Things I hope to see improved:

Fan noise
multi-touch touchpad


If you can score a good deal, then I think the Z is ok. But for $3500? Not in my world.

 

The OP is referring to the new 2010 Z series (with his preferred config) that costs $3,500, not the current (old) Z series.

 

I've never seen this diagonal lines flaw people keep mentioning. Makes me think they're talking about what happend under Windows 7 when you take the mouse to the bottom right of the screen, but I'm sure if that were the case, someone would have said. My screen does not exhibit this 'diagonal lines' thing. Is it known to be present in the Sony Z Series sold in the last quarter of 2009?