It's finally done! I ordered my TZ195!

YAY! It should be in next Thursday. I had to pay extra to have it express shipped. I ordered it from Chris Colpics. Thus far, he has been terrific. Very patient.

jenny

 

Woohoo! Welcome to the club, I'm sure you'll dig it mucho.

 

so far, atleast 3 people from here has recently purchased from him.
me the 190, racer the 195, and some1 else ordered the 198.

i hope theres some confusion when he ships it and the 198 gets mail to me!!
weeee!!!!

 

Thanks ubercool!

LOL nonamelol! You are funny.

 

He told me it won't be until Friday that my Tz190 starts to ship. So i guess itll be a week from then for it to get from Canada to NJ?

 

Mine wont ship until Friday either, but it takes 10 days after to receive it. I paid an extra $100 to receive it by that Thurs. I'm leaving on a trip and wanted to take it with me. Also, I cant wait 3 weeks for it! I feel like a kid waiting for xmas.

 

Dam 3 weeks for regular shipping? thats crazy.

 

Well 3 weeks from the day you order it...I cant wait that long. By then, I imagine a new model would be out and I wouldnt yet have the old model!

 

Actually, Chris has little choice. All but one of the warehouses he deals with ship only via Express Post which takes "10-12 business days". I've been trying to purchase a TZ198 but really need it shipped via courier (Fedex or UPS) but only 1 warehouse he deals with will ship it that way. He thought he'd arranged to have a TZ198 shipped to me from this warehouse last week, but when he returned to his hurricane-damaged home in Nova Scotia on Monday, he discovered they'd not shipped it (some kind of payment transfer problem between him and the distributor) so today he refunded my purchase price and now I'm back to having nothing on order....

 

Oh geez bruce! That is awful! What about the tz91 from dynamism? He cant get the tz198 to you? I guess the 195 must be more available. I must say that Chris was very professional to work with.

 

I found Chris very professional as well -- this isn't a reflection on him. His supplier let him down and with him traveling on business and the storm that flooded his house and wiped out power so all he had was his cell phone, he had a hard time trying to figure out what was going on. He told me yesterday (Tue) that if he couldn't be sure the TZ198 would arrive by today (Wed) he'd refund my money -- when he found out they never shipped it he immediately refunded my money. Can't ask for better integrity or professionalism than that from an ebayer! Unfortunately, because I really need him to ship it by courier, not Canada Express Post, he may not be able to get a TZ198 from the one supplier warehouse who will do that. Kind of a bummer that he's so limited in his shipping choices but that's outside his control.

 

Just paid for my tz195 via Paypal and guess who the seller is. Chris told me it will be shipped out on Tue. Don't understand why Monday is a holiday in Canada also. racerxx, don't tell me that u re the one that outbidded me God bless our little notebooks.

 

chris is too slow on shipping, he delays my friend's tz195 for 3 times, my friend is going to cancel the order and get refund. myself, he delays me more than a month back then when i bought the sz from him. this guy, can't truth the shipping time from him.
before he make sale, he always reply quickly, but after he got the money, it takes more than one day for him to reply your messages.

 

So what will you do now Bruce? I accidentally paid for the tz195 through paypal out of my bank act., but meant to pay off the visa. He immediately refunded the money. It took another day to go through via visa.

wuroyu, I hope that was just a fluke. I cant wait a month and would be very aggravated.

No ymcvan! I bought it directly from Chris. I had a lot of questions to ask before buying it and ended up just getting it directly from him. My computer is to be shipped out on Fri. this week. Nice to meet someone else getting a tz195. I was beginning to wonder if there are many of us out there. It is at the bottom of the list for popular tz nb's on sony's site.

 

wow, u guys live in Canada, and you still got delayed? hope this won't happen to me. I have 40+ days before my trip.

 

We're all waiting. It will be interesting to hear what happens to each one of us. Chris' feedback suggests he always delivers, just not on time. So, if you have zero patience, don't do it.

 

Now is the fourth week. My friend payed the money for chris first week one tuesday, then chris said the shipping time won't be counted until the second week monday. After 10 business days had past, my friend had sent him a message asked whether he could get the tracking number, which chris had promised him that the computer will arrived canada 8-10 business days, that was the third week on friday, then chris reply him said it will be arrive on this week (fourth week) monday then use over night shipping, then chris reply again, said it will be arrive again on wenesday this week, then today my friend ask him again,chris said it hasn't arrived canada yet, and he will ask them to ship directly from u.s to my friend's place, and that will be next week money the fifth week. so what is going on with the shipment, did he actually ship it on the second week monday? no, i don't think so, he just keep delaying, basically just being dishonest.

It's not that my friend or I have no patience. It's that this is not the way business works. My friend is leaving canada on next monday, that's why he has to cancel the order.

 

since i transfer money to his account on Mondy the 5th of Nov. He said it will be ship out on Friday the 9th. I hope he ship it out this week because i can't wait any longer than next week.

 

Check out this lappy:

LG C1 Core Duo nVidia Go7300 ultraportable 10.6'' Tablet PC!!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=129843

Such a tiny machine with dedicated graphics! We have a serious competitor to the TZ, more than the plastic Toshiba R500. Jack, what do you think?

 

its nice but lappy that is or smaller than 11.1 inch is not really point towards the gaming consumers. the tz in my opinion is better looking. but the Lg is a nice llaptop but it doesn't compare to the Tz.

 

We got our two TZ195's from Chris yesterday and it took about a month to get them. He was very professional about it and kept in constant contact. We saved around 1k by going with Chris, when compared to say the price of Amazon.com and even more if we would of bought them from Sony(TAX). So shipping was slow, but i'd do business with Chris again without issue, assuming I was not in a hurry. We paid Chris via wire transfer, so he could of ran for the hills with our money if he wanted to, but he didn't.

Here's a pic of our TZ195's, one is running Vista Ultimate and the other is running Leopard. BTW, anyone have a link to the vista drivers for the media and eject button etc?

 

Dude, you have ONE post here and it's pimping colpics, so forgive me for being moderately skeptical

 

I'm not pimping him, i'm simply saying how it went, just like everyone else who has dealt with him in this thread, i said nothing different. I clearly stated he took around a month to deliver(clearly not a compliment)... I have plenty of posts at Anandtech and other forums under the same name if that makes you feel better and i also own gotwoot.net(where the picture is hosted) which you can check the WHOIS for my info and you can check his history so see i won the laptops from him about a month ago under the ebay name Ciber411. I have better things to do than "pimp" anybody, but i'm sure others would like to know whether Chris is trustworthy or not.

 

Fair enough, Thanks for your note but I hope you understood where I was coming from. Frankly, I have considered colpic myself but am concerned about the leadtime, i.e. if you order now and get it maybe in mid-Dec and in two weeks the 45nm Penryn is released.

I am honestly considering getting the Asus EEE to hold me over until the next chipset/CPU upgrade for the TZ.

1 TZ198=8 Asus EEEs!

 

I considered the asus eee also to hold me over, but I dont think I could use it for powerpoint, am I right? I need to be ablt to utilize powerpoint for work on the go.

FWIW, I paid an extra $100 to have it shipped to me by Thurs. I ordered the laptop yesterday. For me it was well worth the extra $$$, because the overall price was still lower. We will see if I actually get it by then. I am a little concerned after reading this posts about time lags. I will say that Chris told me that it would take 5 business days for paypal to clear the $$$ out of my act. (so I used visa through paypal) and 10 bus. days for shipping. So, that would put it at 3 weeks.

 

the Asus Eee PC can handle powerpoint, microsoft office, autocad and photoshop. It has been conform with windows xp and 1g ram installed. on the Eee PC 4G version, and boot time is super fast.

 

When do you think that the next upgrade will be? And any thoughts of the chipset/CPU?

 

My guess is that the next refresh will be in Jan or Feb, will include the 1.33ghz U7700 processor and upgrade to the 965 chipset and X3100 graphics, Santa Rosa from Napa, as the Asus U1E, another 11.1" notebook has done. The second TX refresh, TX92 also changed the processor and chipset.

I can't buy a notebook until December anyways, and thats what I'm waiting for. We are not going to see Penryn in it for a while. Ultraportables with their ULV cpus are never updated on time like their bigger cousins. For example, the Core processors came out Jan 06 and the TX wasn't updated to Core Solo as the TX92 until May/June 06. Santa Rosa has been out since May and the TZ doesn't have it.

 

Yeah, I agree about Penryn. Will be released at second quarter of 2008, and untill they put it on ultraportables will pass some time...

Do you think is worth waiting such a refresh? With 1.33 ghz, the X3100 and Santa Rosa is much better machine than the actual? Do you expect the prices to go a lot up? I'm quite convinced to go with pricejapan for the TZ91 with 64gb SSD+DVD.

 

Really no, you won't see much of a performance boost. Although, the TX's battery life noticeably increased going from Pentium M to Core Solo but most say the battery life may even decrease with Santa Rosa in the TZ. But then again, I've seen a couple of Santa Rosa ULV notebooks get excellent battery life.

Since I am a poor college student and would spend all my slowly hard earned cash on this and have to keep it for a long while, I'd hate to buy one and then have the refresh come out a month later, so I'd just like to buy the TZ92 when it comes out and thats that.

 

Yeah, I think the SR refresh is coming for sure in Jan, although the impact of the X3100 graphics on the currently splendid TZ battery life is far from certain.

Rahul may be right about the U7700 refresh but I think the Penryn refresh is not that far out of the question. 45nm, after all, is ultimately beneficial to the TZ form-factor (smaller die=better sub-notebook).

You would be surprised at what Intel engineers have been up to in their R&D labs.

 

Santa Rosa was supposed to increase battery life no? Anyway, January is near so we will see...Me too I will have the money untill then, so I want or not I have to wait.

Hope that the prices will not go more up, if they put a faster CPU and Santa Rosa...

 

Ciber, that's the very thing I want to do, run Leopard on my next TZ. I saw the URL posted by Engadget. Are those the directions you followed?

I'm planning to partition my next TZ and run both XP and Leopard on one machine, should be very cool.

 

I have no idea where he came up with that math, Paypal payments clear instantaneously, not in five days. Statements like that worry me.

 

I agree that Chris is professional and I found his integrity quite high. Unfortunately, he lives in Nova Scotia and he deals with suppliers in western Canada who will only ship using Canadian Express Post with typical shipping times of 12+ business days. Very slow! But Chris tells me this is not unusual in Canada where there are pockets that seem to take 3+ days just to get a shipment out of their area. I waited 6 weeks for my TZ198 but when I expected to see it Chris found out the warehouse never shipped it -- I was expecting FEDEX but the one warehouse he deals with that will use FEDEX ended up not having a TZ198. Bummer! So I've given up for the moment.

 

Well I've been running osx86 since the start so i didn't use any "instructions", but, yeah the Engadget instructions should work for you, if they are the ones i saw them link a while back to osx86scene.

Gotta warn you, a bunch of things don't work under OSX(Tiger or Leopard) on the TZ:

1. Sleep doesn't work.

2. The intel wifi card doesn't work(have to take your tz apart and replace the card if you want wifi).

3. Sprint wwan card doesn't work.

4. none of the hotkeys work except for the volume ones... so no brightness adjustments.

5. Have to use DisplayConfigX or SwitchResX to get native resolution.

6. Battery life is shorter under OSX than windows xp(basically no power management working to save you power).

I can't think of anything else that's broken at the moment, but i'll update if i remember anything. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

After you paid via paypal, Chris will transfer the money to his bank account. Then the item will be shipped out. Because "It's too expensive to ship before that happens." (his words)

 

uh it took me 5 days to transfer 2500 from my bank to my paypal account. Then it is instantaneous transfer from my paypal account to his paypal account. and THEN its 4-5 days for him to transfer the money from his account to his bank account.

 

then what is the way to have internet access in osx without replacing wi-fi card? ethernet cable?

 

Pretty much... Or you can share net access with your tz from your cell phone or desktop through bluetooth... lol

I'll be taking my tz195 apart as soon as my replacement card arrives.

 

What difference will make the Penryn chip in the TZ?

 

We won't see Penryn in ULV ultraportable form for a while, they are always behind their bigger cousins in getting the chipset and processor upgrades, we're still stuck at 533mhz front side bus for example!

I'm quite sure the TZ won't get it, rather the next iteration of the T series, whatever they call it, but we'll get Santa Rosa sometime early next year

 

Hm, I can live with most of these "shortcomings" except for the Wi-Fi card one. I know that Apple will release a subnotebook at Macworld, I have confirmation from an Apple insider, if it's as cool we have been hearing for two years now, I'll just have to travel with that and run Parallels.

 

I read in this forum this:

Santa Rosa:
"The processors draw more power, so it's hard to imagine Intel can have done much to improve battery life, and based on first reports it does seem that the new platform is hotter and worse performing in terms of battery life".

Well, if is like that....what is the point

 

Some reviews of ultraportables report even better battery life with SR. But, makes sense that because uses more power it gets hotter and the battery life suffers also.
Hey armadilo, if you have the money now take it and enjoy. I doubt that is going to be any perforamnce boost in the TZ with SR as rahul said.

 

I had bought My Vaio TZ 195 from Chris Colpic as well. It wasn't the best of transactions, due to the constant delays and "mishaps" along the way. Firstly, Chris comes across as being very professional and always replies your emails which is great because not many ebay sellers are as quick to reply. Secondly, his auctions are misleading because it states that the items are located in Canada. I live in Vancouver and the main reason (othter than the low price) was that I would avoid taxes since its a interstate shipment. This is very misleading for buyers.

My painful story begins with a purchase of a TZ191 from Chris on the 8th of August. 10 days later I queried the progress of the shipment and he said it was on its way. 2.5 weeks later he said that it was stuck in customs. 5 days later he said that it had cleared customs but was stuck at Fedex with a COD tag on it. 1 week later he tells me it HADN'T EVEN LEFT his canadian distributor's warehouse. I got really annoyed with this because he had been telling me that it was in transit. Next he said that he would pick up the laptop personally from the US and send it express overnight and because of that my friend bought a TZ170 which he said he would send in the same box. By this time 2 months and 1 week had passed, and the only thing that kept me in the deal and not requesting a refund was that he promised to upgrade me to he TZ195. He apparently picked it up and there was yet anothe "mixup" with the shipping and he blamed Fedex for not attaching the paperwork to the box and apparently it was put in the "undeliverable" cage. Considering the huge delay it was only my constant chasing up that brought the situation to his attention. So he told me when he went back to Fedex the box for the TZ 170 my friend bought had been damaged and they held it fo evaluation for the claim. He also said that he was going to replace my friends laptop because the box had been damaged. In the end it finally arrived, 3 MONTHS LATE...

I find it very to believe that so many mishaps could've happened, especially with a company like Fedex. I use them all the time and only dealing with Chris has any problems arised with them. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but for 4 incidents that were "fedex" related to delay the delivery 3 MONTHS late its very hard to believe.

I'm quite happy that I finally have it, but you can't believe how much disappointment was involved wait and chasing it up especially when you're told its in the mail. If Chris wasn't as professional with getting back to me quickly I would've bailed on the sale much much earlier, but in the end it worked out for me. At least he upgraded the laptop for me.

I think the common consensus for people considering buying from Chris is that you have to be patient and prepared to wait for at least a month. He's a good guy, but I guess anyone would be annoyed if they bought a "top of the range" model and have it get superceded even before they got it due to multiple shipping errors.

I'm sure my case is an extreme one, but I just needed to vent. Like I and most people have said... he's very professional.

 

+1 on Chris being very professional.
Just shot him an email and in half hour i got a reply. My baby 190 has been shipped just today. itll be 10-12 days b4 i get it. atleast thats what he said. so far, i got nothing but trust so im gona hope for next,next week. though he didn't give me a tracking number.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to be waiting a lot longer than I expected. But I can cancel the order at any time and I already have a TZ, so there's no money burning in my pocket!