New Sony Vaio Z speculation/news thread

Sad but true, I've paid for my mother's S series 140 EUR

Is there any way one can buy a separate/stand-alone external GPU (like XGP or similar) and attach it to new Z?

 

Yeh I understand sony wanted to make dual thunderbolt/USB 3.0 port but if they used the standard thunderbolt connecter they could take advantage of the upcoming thunderbolt accessories plus they would contribute to propagating the standard. If every manufacture makes their own connector then thunderbolt will never go anywhere.

 

It will be interesting to see if with the external GPU it can operated in a Windows/linux dual-boot configuration.

 

too true. x220 for 1/3 the price it is

 

if someone launch a connector based on the sony version yes its possible, however currently as it is the only option is to use the mpcie, which would envolve to use the notebook dismantled....

and given that only sony would probably use that, I find it hard to believe

I think its possible, but I foresee some shortcomings, specially due to drivers

 

For those concerned with price, base config in the US (i5/4/128/900p) will run just under US $2K with the dock. That's list price, so you can figure you'll be able to find for ~1800 or so if you know where to look. If in fact configs become available without the dock, it's not inconceivable to think we'll see a $1500-1600 price for that.

 

You certainly are not!

 

In short, no improvement. Just buy the darn thing, forum members here are your tech supporters and they will go beyond the 1-yr tech support Sony provides.

Exactly.

I believe it serves 3 purposes:
1. Acts to protect the hinge.
2. As you stated for airflow
3. To raise and incline the keyboard. In the VPC-Z, there's a slight incline due to the horizontal grooves across the battery. Here, the Z2 uses the rubber guards to raise and angle the keyboard - I guess for comfort when typing. The base won't be completely flat.

I think that would be cool. I like the idea of a green hue. Not that the Z1 is glaring, but it would provide for better ambient lighting.

My guess is you'll get what you wish for in the Z3. Perhaps, Sony is eventually going away with equipping the Z Series with ODD since the future is downloads and streaming.

I'd like to see this. Thanks.

 

I use the keyboard protector so that the keys don't show wear and get shiny over time. When the cover wears down I can just buy another one rather than spending $200 to replace the keyboard.




Now onto the dimensions once again.Volume wise, the old Z is quite a bit bigger. (according to these specs)

old Z: 210 x 23.8 x 314mm
new Z: 210 x 16.65 x 330mm

old 1,569,372 cubic mm
new 1,153,845 cubic mm

Or in another words, the new Z is 26.5% smaller in volume than the old one. (Can someone double check all my math please)



Here's the dimensions for the external Z dock.
148x16.65x220mm, weight: 0.685kg

Volume is 542,124 cubic mm. Add this on top of the new Z's volume of 1,153,845 and you get a total volume (excluding the cable that connects the two which is thick, and it has a thick connector) of 1,695,969 cubic mm.

Or in other words the VPC Z2 + dock is 8% larger in volume than the VPC Z1 and also roughly 1 pound heavier.

 

If that is really true I might consider getting one from the US. The Base price here in Germany is 1750€ without the dock! With the dock it's +400€ (DVD) or +450€/525€ (Bluray Reader/Writer). That worldwide pricing strategy of Sony is just crazy. At least Apple is so kind in just converting 1000$ to 1000€ which is more but still not such a huge difference in comparison to Sony's ~1800$ to 2200€!

 

I was thinking, seeing that I'm getting such an expensive computer, should I buy insurance from some place in case it gets stolen/dropped/spilled on? Anyone know any good places?

 

Stormblade, servicing could be an issue. E.g., Sony in Canada will not service Sony laptops bought in the US. (Probably precisely to prevent people going over the border for better selection and better prices.)

 

I thought nowadays new Sony VAIO notebooks are being sold with a standard 1 year "worldwide" warranty, even in the US market (but one has to register his/her VAIO products for this "worldwide" coverage to take effect). No?

 

Well at least the Vaios we can buy here come with a 2 year international warranty (you have to register your Vaio). I will see what I can find on the US Sony page about international warranty.

 

yeah i don't get this.. we should have a freedom in buying in any part of the world since it is the same brand anyways...

they should stop doing this...

 

VAIO International Repair Service

https://ebiz.sel.sony.com/secure/irsp/gotoHomePage.do

 

that is called we can service you but you are going to pay for it

 

If you have home insurance you can usually specify the value of your laptop in the cover, but unfortunately the additional premium is usually quite expensive and doesn't cover much (eg they won't usually cover your laptop being stolen elsewhere than your home, such as work or college, which is no good)

Your best security investment when it comes to a laptop is a kensington lock. When at work: Kensington lock. Travelling with your laptop in the boot of the car: Kensington lock. It will stop the most common thief: the opportunist.

 

Are we sure this is a proprietary connector?
It is different from the Apple Thunderbolt implementation yes.

The Vaio Z light peak optical interface can be seen here:


Now look at the connector in the attached picture, found in several articles, for example here:
Intel Also Launching 'Light Peak' Thursday - Mac Rumors
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/06/30/light-peaks-dazzling-potential/

It seems to match up. Maybe this is a proposed light peak optical connector standard?
Maybe/hopefully someone will make a light peak optical to electrical thunderbolt converter as well? (presuming the signaling protocol is the same/compatible..)

 

This makes perfect sense, so I don't see why people keep screaming about the price. Just do some basic math:

UK base configuration (as above) will run about £1450. Adjust for 20% UK VAT, multiply by 1.6 exchange rate, and voila! We have US$1900.

Given that US prices are virtually always less (except in the case of Apple, as noted earlier), we can safely assume that the US base versions will price out NO MORE than $1900, and most likely will have a typical street price of $1800 or below. While this is not cheap, considering the qualities of the Z (lighter, standard size SD, HDMI and VGA, higher res matte screen) it is not an outrageous premium over 13" ultraportable competitors such as Samsung S9 or MBA.

Of course, the Z price does start to get crazy after adding the dock (which most business-oriented users such as myself won't want or need) and especially a larger SSD, but the base model seems relatively fairly priced

 

Without the dock and maxed spec how does the Sony Z compare to other laptops?

 

Yes, the original connector intel used when developing the system was the same as the USB connector. But "Thunderbolt" as Intel and Apple have named the standard uses the mini-display port connector. So Sony can't call theirs Thunderbolt. That's why in their press release I believe they call it "codenamed lightpeak" or something.

So as I understand it there is no proposed lightpeak connector. Intel owns the standard, calls it thunderbolt and the only connector is the mini-display port one. There will never be any 3rd party peripherals for sonys lightpeak implementation, I think sony intended it to be used solely as a dock connector.

 

i sure hope the LG P330 comes out asap so i can have something to compare this to

isn't dell releasing a 13 inch laptop too? anyone have any news on that?

 

Not necessarily. There are differences between models for different markets. The obvious is keyboard and power supply differences, but there are also internal differences like the WWAN solution, Japanese models might have FeliCa (look it up!), certain areas requiring parts that comply with national/regional laws (WiFi being limited to channel 11 and below in the US is one example; more expensive RoHS components in some parts of Europe is another).

In short, it would make the job of the technician much harder, as they would have to get the service manual and components for the particular model/region of the customer's PC, and understand the differences. That means Sony can't use near-minimum-wage drones, but would have to use technicians that actually have technical knowledge. This would add to costs and reduce sales.

 

Interesting. The cable the Sony dock is using has an absolutely identical connector on it.

 

How is the Graphics card cooled in the dock? Is there a fan in there?

@Brawn - Engadget says September but the chart says Q4, 2011. New LG P330 laptop has it all: brains, brawn, and beauty -- Engadget It looks really nice. It might be worth the wait.

Bronsky

 

Yup, thank you Sony! That really bothers me most about Sony's way. Why can't they just stop implementing proprietary stuff like this USB3/Thunderbolt port or Memorystick? What advantage does that provide? I rather would have put the USB3 port where the VGA port is and instead of implementing an optical Thunderbolt system that is not even capable of those 20Gb/s intended by Intel, just throw an electrical Thunderbolt port in. Cheaper and not less effective to hook up the powered GPU/ODD unit via the double jack. And of course we can hook up our homemade stuff.

Because I like stripped computers so much, take a look on the component layout. Click on the image to open it in slightly higher resolution. Originally taken from Stormblade83's post
.



Notes:

• I kinda like the layout but you clearly see here that they really had to trade off between width and thickness of the laptop.
• From this flat point of view it is hard to see wether they have two batteries (one on each side) or one in a barbell shape with the cardreader daughterboard cut out.
• Proprietary memory modules is a con for me but for sony, thinness (-> Marketing!) counts more than user upgradeability (and also earns them more money since we have to buy their parts).
• The heatsink/fan unit is huge and I better don't want to know what Sony will charge you for that part if one of the fans breaks down after warranty.
• Seems to be that in this particular model a 2x2 WiFi card, probably Intel's 6230 is being used, still hoping that not only JP/AO models have 3x3 options. I did not find any 3rd Antenna gap as they used to be in VPC-Z1's.
• Man, that SSD's ZIF socket looks somewhat familiar. Can't wait to see the first high-res disassembly pics. It looks that those SSDs are not stacked anymore, its a single module - (quad-raid really done?). If those SSDs had the same pinout as the Z11 ZIF Samsungs, we'd be able to swap the Z2 base config's SSD for a Z11's 2x128GB module. A 512GB Z11 could be downgraded to 256GB while equipping two base Z2's with a module double the capacity each. We are not talking about sense here.

 

What we're waiting for is the Dell XPS 13z. Should be out Any Day Now(tm).

In the mean time, if you're willing to go up in size, there's the Dell XPS 15z, which is also thin, lightweight, with a 1920x1080 display, and a pretty good integrated graphics card. And if you're not, there are the Alienware M11x and M14x laptops, but those things are heavy.

 

Hey what is the 3rd gen flash ssd offered? Should i get it? pretty cheap and shouldn't hurt right?

 

Can you point to the link where this is mentioned?

EDIT: nevermind, I found it. Hmm, yeh it would be nice if somebody could shed more light on that.

 

I think they either refer to the newer 25nm SSD gernerations with faster controllers or SATA 3 SSDs.

 

Considering it's such a small price increase, they should've made it standard.

 

Is there some sort of disadvantage to the gen 3 that we aren't seeing?

it also looks like the SSDs are no longer in RAID 0 either

 

I think I'm going to have to wait for the P330. The dock on the new Z just doesn't do it for me. If it had a more powerful card in it, yes. I don't see the reason for an underpowered external card. Why not just have it internal and switchable like the old Z? The only value in the dock is to have something that would be too powerful to have internal.

Better to wait for the P330, for cheaper, with a built-in, more powerful graphics card.

 

I ran the numbers and agree with your calculations.

The keyboard protector seems nice if it doesn't block supplemental airflow. Since Beaups says the keyboard is designed to allow flow, I wonder if Sony will have a recommendation regarding using protectors. Or, perhaps they will have a protector specific to this new Z which will avoid that issue.

 

How does the specs of the P330 compare to the new Z? Does the new Z with max'd spexs (without the dock) have anything on the P300?

 

Your link is to the Inspiron 13Z. Is there news on the XPS?

Bronsky

 

Even with the Dock, the LG will be a lot faster if it doesn't overheat. AMD Radeon HD 6650M - Notebookcheck.net Tech On integrated GPU alone: no contest.

Interesting Z. I can't tell if I like it or not yet.

Bronsky

 

Its also a full pound heavier and a much worse screen. And it does come out for a while.

 

about the screen I dont know, however the res is definetly smaller

 

But the rubber feet at the back of the hinge (are those rubber or metal?) could still peel off, and as opposed to the rubber feet at the bottom of the laptop, this will be visible (and ugly).

It'd be interesting to know what exactly these Gen3 SSDs are.
I'd be happy if RAID0 and sandwiched drives were gone.

PS: The blue looks hideous.

 

Yea i guess they got rid of the RAID to support TRIM. And i agree the blue looks awful.

 

Will the P330 or Inspiron 13Z offer FHD? Probably not. 512 GB SSD? Probably not. I don't see a high-end graphics card as much of an advantage in a 13" notebook. On the other hand, I don't play games. For business use, I don't see a true competitor to the Z.

 

thank you ..

 

Can we use the dock being on machine's battery? I wonder if GPU will work on Z's battery only, without attachment to AC.

Could anyone clarify this?

 

no you cant

 

no advantage to FHD other than pixel density (crispness) and watching movies

1366 can fit as much stuff on the screen, you just have to decrease the dpi scaling

the LG P330 has an IPS panel, and because i assume that it's glossy, if it ends up only having a 1366 resolution, sharpness of images should be fine as opposed to the SB with its 1366 resolution and semi-matte screen where i can see the actual pixels

i didn't think i'd say this, but the ability to game on a 13" does matter a lot to me. and because mobile graphics cards just aren't able to handle games at 1080p well enough yet, i place lower resolutions, such as 1600 and 1366, as a pro

for example, if sony came out with a 2560p screen, i definitely wouldnt get it because, although images would be crystal clear, i wouldn't have any hopes of gaming on it

 

you can always lower the resolution in game can't you?

 

you could lower the resolution, but then it would look like crap, LCD displays always look best at their native resolutions. also, lowering resolution requires the gpu to scale everything, which lowers performance

btw, on the z, because it is semi-matte, in order for the pixel density to be high enough to not see the actual pixels, the resolution must be at least 1600x900

 

what are you using to decrease DPI below 100%?

can you show me some videos/pictures? i'm pretty sure it'll break some programs and become a blurry unreadable mess