New Sony Vaio Z speculation/news thread

release the damm thing or i will go for 15z

 

Go for the 15z if you are impatient. The Z won't be released any time soon...

 

did you just say that....in a thread about the Sony Vaio Z? the only 13" laptop with a FullHD display, not counting its other features.

 

yeah he did, and its an opinion that is shared even by heavy weights like anand, and I do share the same opinion, specially looking at the ultrabook idea from intel

 

I think there should be an announcement soon. Our insider said june/july.

 

I like the idea of the 15z but the end result - in terms of styling, leaves me a bit cold. I'd go with a MBP over the 15z. It seems that several vendors are coming out with interesting models this fall too. It can't hurt to wait another month or two.

 

I am just waiting to see if the new Z looks like something I even want. I have a feeling it is not. I am kind of on the fence about expensive mods and upgrades for the current Z while we wait for the news.

 

I viisted the Sony Centre in Sydney tonight (near Haymarket) and their manager said the new Z series would start shipping at the end of June.

When I challenged him about this, he said he was not speculating about the date, just stating a fact.

I hope he is right.

 

^ New Z means SA series. The terms are correct.

 

Agreed. The thinner, the better.

 

^ComputerCowboy wins.

 

anorexia ftw!

 

a little jiggle is better imo. skeletor is scary.

 

so all of a sudden, the fact that Sony made the most "technologically advanced" 13" laptop there is atm is made irrelevant?

i don't argue apple would be the one to put a retina-grade display first (and kiss IGP gaming away forever?), but ignoring what sony has already done is just...stupid. its directly equivalent to taking away someone's 100m sprint gold-medal just because their record got beat the next year.

 

actually sony high end line up is for quite sometime been the 13'',so I dont know why you are getting worked up.

Now think about the dominance of apple in the mp3 player market, they got at it at the start, and are now the reference for it.

Now take a step back and think about the mac colorful things, terrible terrible pcs, however it was the first bet that steve made when it came back

now take another step back and think about the imac, and how it was redesigned and how it got the looks of it today.

now take another step back and check the mbp line up, they were one of the first to introduce in the entire line up a good screen

Now check the companies image, and see how it fares against sony, in terms of pc, sony is kind of regarded as good, but it isnt something to write home about, apple on the other hand quality products on whatever you ask, since tablets, smartphones, mp3 players, and pcs.

for sony I go for the walkman, blu ray is a terrible format, and disc media is dying a slow painful death. I remember when I got one when I was a kid, I was ecstatic, when my grandparents brought one for me from japan

Im not an apple fanboy, Im hardly a fan of anything, except kurosawa, Im a fan, and proud of it. What we must separate is our bias and see the perception of the market towards the companies.


BTW Im not trying to take away the prize from sony to fit what it fits in their 13'', but the 13'' focus is more due to the asian market and their need for high tech gadgets that are small and powerful. Innovation is a consequence to stay on top of that, not a priority

 

You have good taste.

 

I feel we need to ask kindly our insider, beaups, to share some more news about the model, otherwise we are about to derail from the topic as the discussion itself is fading away.

SO, any good NEWS concerning more detailed specs, interesting details, announcements?

 

How would a retina-grade display on a computer kill IGP gaming?

You do realize computers can run at multiple resolutions, so if you take a 13" 1280x800 screen and replace it with 13" 2560x1600, you can still play games equally well at 1280x800? That's the beauty of retina- quadrupling of pixels. It adds, it doesn't make anything worse.

 

but who would want to play a game at 1280x800 when you've got the space of a 2560x1600???

and because we're talking about LCD panels... it'd look WORSE if you did that than play natively on a 1280x800

 

Yea I love me some anorexic chicks!! Wait...

 

1 more month left.................

and if it doesn't come out by then, i'll be extremely disappointed, been waiting for a year now.. should have just went with the current z a year ago, didn't expect the wait to be so damn long

 

I think we shouldn't be asking him anymore for more info regarding the upcoming VAIO Z series.

(*Touch wood*) I bet that he is probably going to be fired by his company if he continues to give us more of those unreleased "secretive" insider product info.

 

^Won't be so sure about that, regarding he is no SONY employee.

 

^ Agree.
Otherwise, nothing to discuss before the official release.

SUMMA SUMMARUM:

Z2 or Z21:

1. lightweight model -1,13 kg. Carbon fiber cover of matrix and magnium chassis

2. keyboard design is in line with SB-SA series (vent on the rear, no barrel hinge)

3. battery power is a little higher than average (up till 7-8 hours on the standard integrated battery, up till 14 with the additional slice battery+integrated one)

4. HD3000 on board as a graphic system, external GPU AMD 67xxM via wired LightPeak technology is in the dock, together with Blue-Ray or DVD option in one and the same box-like addition. The notebook and its dock are bundled for sales.

5. Display is FullHD or 1600*900, semi-matte, that is, Premium Vaio Display, 13.1"

6. Sandy Bridge up to Core i5 platform, SSD only, ranging from 128 GB.

7. I/O ports: HDMI, VGA, 2xUSB2.0 (not sure), ethernet port RJ-45, audio jack, SD-Memory Stick ProDuo slot, Lightpeak/USB3.0. No information about ExpressCard. Nothing is known however about I/O ports on the dock (weight: about 600-700 g) except that it has HDMI output and perhaps 1xUSB connection

8. Power connection is dual: via dock or directly to the notebook

9. Wireless: Bluetooth and WiFi on one half-size Intel 6230 card. WWAN is Gobi 2000.

10. Dates of release or offical announcement is (late) summer, sales are in the (early) autumn, Q4 is for sure.

11. No photos, no exact specifications right now.

12. No information untill the official release.

We can safely close the thread now.

 

Actually 1280x800 on 2560x1600 would look as good as native as all you do is upscaling by making each pixel double vertically and horizontally. So instead of one big pixel you get 4 smaller arranged as square that occupy the same area. No need for fancy upscaling algorithms, no blurring, no artifacts at all.
Try it by running some older games in 640x400 on your 1280x800 screen.

 

You still need to manage 4 x more pixels... More stress on the GPU if it remains the same...

 

afaik there's an i7 option as well, just no Quadcore.

There is a photo which should be from the new Z pretty sure (stretched horizontally).

 

No floppy disk drive?

 

^apparently they don't use those anymore nowadays. They are using some shiny sparkling round disks instead.

 

Kind of funny to see all the rave about retina display in a thread about the next Z, when we had seen so many discussion about how some people love while others just can't stand the FHD in current Z, which while still packing a much lower pixel per inch than iPhone's retina display in its FHD form but is second only to VAIO P in laptops.

 

blasphemy! I storage all my programs in floppys!



*imagines if that was true, hey I got shogun 2, its a 20gb game, so I have 13889 disks for it!

 

If you have an IGP, and you're not satisfied with gaming at 1280x800 on a 13" screen, then it's your fault.

No. Since the Retina-display has exactly double the resolution, each old pixel can be exactly represented by 4 new ones. So there would be no image quality degradation.

A 13" 2560x1600 LCD running at 1280x800 would be indistinguishable from a 13" 1280x800 panel.

 

There's a difference between a higher resolution display with an OS that can't properly scale vs. Retina-like display and an OS that can display things twice as big without any issues (e.g. iOS 4 and potentially OS X Lion or later).

The former simply makes things smaller and you fit more information in (but it becomes too small to comfortably see).

The latter keeps everything the same size as before, just the fonts and pictures are more detailed and sharp.

 

Kewl. I'm thinking of upgrading to random access storage one day. In the mean time, I'll keep using cassettes and punch tape.

 

I still use loom cards

 

i use stone carvings

 

Nice!

\thread

 

Too bad it looks like Sony doesn't use effective security.

From: BBC

 

Did it come from Beaups? I remember him mentioning early July date a while ago.

 

Right, I forgot that iOS scale things up so well that I have to download HD version of an app on my iPad...

 

Do you have to download HD version of Safari, Maps, Calendar, Mail, ...? Or are you talking about the 3rd party apps where the developer decides on the title of the app, what mode it uses and the price?

 

depends on the quality of the scaler they use(forget the proper term - the technology responsible for upscaling/downscaling the image to fit the resolutions). i have DEFINITELY seen instances where an image did not properly quadruple/[the opposite of quadruple] in resolution for whatever reason.

 

Where did this early autumn thing some from!??! I need this before school starts!!!

 

yeah, where did this Q4 early autumn speculation come from?

 

Well it seems Gigabyte beat Sony with the whole external GPU thing, of course DIY Vidock has been around for long but a manufacturer has never really gone ahead with the whole external GPU idea(i wondered why, AW m11x should have been something like this). Anyway here is the Gigabyte laptop - Gigabyte M2432 laptop with GeForce GT 440 graphics card dock hands-on -- Engadget
Has an GT440(I a assuming the desktop card), which should perform the same as the GT555m(the NVIDIA equivalent of the 6770m the Z is supposed to have)

 

^well, still a differnt approach. The new Z will NOT have a dock.

 

Yes but i was just talking about the external GPU approach. Sony seemed to be the first manufacturer to take this approach, though Gigabyte has come up with a product it first.

 

Acer Ferrarri one used an external GPU as did a 13" Fuji model. The concept has been in an experimental stage for years. Nobody has yet made a notebook so far superior to the dual GPU notebooks (z vs sa) to make docking worthwhile. Aren't they using a last gen arrandale in the Gigabyte?

Bronsky

 

And for a flagship laptop that's supposed to be released next month, there's not a single peep from Sony about it...