New Z model with Intel Core i5 CPU

Webshop prices for the low end are already down to 1725 Euro in the Netherlands.
http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/251379/sony-vaio-vpc-z11x9e-b.html

There is no pricing info yet on the high end model.

 

Full 1920x1080. Bravo for doing it on a 13.1" screen. Boo for actually doing it on a 13.1" screen.

This is why computers need a proper DPI scaling system that actually works with all software. Everything could look phenominal on that screen if legibility were maintained by displaying text at the same physical point size as if it were a 1600x900 screen.

 

Reference, please?
Keep in mind that the drives Sony use use MLC chips, not SLC.

 

TRIM does nothing for life expectancy -- rather the opposite!
TRIM prevents a drive from slowing down due to the SSD analogue to defragmentation, by forcing write flushes to the disk during idle times of data that has been purged. It will actually reduce the lifespan of drives, due to an increased number of writes, but will prevent the speed from degrading over time.

 

Looks like the SSDs are 1.8 inch as the mobo appears to be larger
http://presscentre.sony.eu/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=28&MediaDetailsID=182675
and
http://presscentre.sony.eu/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=28&MediaDetailsID=182684

Which means there is no way for an HDD option for those that want one so if you want HDD then go for the S series

As for the 1080p display, it is much welcome in my case as I use my current Z to edit footage from my RED One camera and I have no problem reading at my Z's 160x900 or even my Viliv S5S's 4.5" 1024x768

And 96% Adobe RGB is a welcome addition too.

Guys keep in mind there's people like myself as well so when you say such and such spec sucks in general, it just sucks for your specific requirements as 99% of the new Z is just what I need (firewire will be missed but not much as I can have an expresscard with FW800 on it)

 

So there seems to be a conflict ?

 

Nobody knows for sure if in the new Z, which comes exclusively as SSD, employs SLC or MLC. I am assuming you are speculating, based on what Sony used in the past, right ?

 

Im looking at the Vaio F with i7 processor, 6gb ram, 256gb ssd, bluray read&write for $1800. How much would a similar configuration be for the Z series?

 

If it were SLC, I doubt the price of the entry edition would be just over 1700 euro.

 

The Z series starts at $1900 and includes the base 1600x900 screen, 128GB SSD, DVD burner, 4GB RAM, i5-540 CPU.

You increase it to a Bluray burner, then add $400 to the price, add another $400-500 for the SSD capacity increase to 256GB, another $150 for the RAM increase to 6GB, another $300 to the i7 upgrade and you are looking at the equivalent Z coming in at around $3000.

 

How so? There are 1.8 inch HDD drives, they are just less common. Whether you can properly attach the drive is another matter. The capacity of these drives is quite limited though, so there really would be no or little gain there I think. Which about kills the only reason I could think up for replacing the SSD for a HDD, after you already forked out the cash for the SSD... So, there is a way, but if you mean to say there is no sensible way, you're probably quite right

 

Will the Sony SSDs be RAID 5? If not, did I understand one of the earlier posts to say that a failure would mean a loss of all data on all of the SSDs? What then is the purpose of such a RAID configuration? I thought its purpose was to use redundancy to ensure (as much as possible) against the loss of data. Why not just have a single SSD for its speed and leave it to the user to set up whatever backup he chooses?

 

Ive just put a 1920x1080 desktop image as the background and it looked pretty good.

Now I only need the 2500 euros...

 

whats a ricer?

 

Speed ! Just make sure that regular data backups are taken.

 

Do you care to expand on the idea of a "gesture" based touch pad?
How is it different from the one on my old Z?

 

I get the high-speed read/write times for SSDs. What I don't get is the reason for the RAID configuration--which reduces by 75% the effective storage space--if it doesn't do what I thought backups were supposed to do: make my data more safe by copying it to multiple locations. I must be missing something, but what?

 

Does an SSD last at least 5 years, with almost non-stop use in that time? That's generally the time span I can my laptops for.

 

As the base model is 1899 euros and 1899 us, can we expect a similar configuration to the 2499 euro model for 2499 us?
If it could be cto'd with i7620, 256gb ssd, 1920*1080, 4gb ram for ~ $2400 us this would be my dream laptop. Seriously I am completely smitten. Its twice what I want to pay, but with almost zero compromise on specs and design I could see myself using it more than my more powerful desktop.
It's the perfect ultra portable workstation for 3D animation, rendering, video editing, compositing and vfx. Never mind being a TN panel, that screen is still going to be a dream for these tasks.

 

Using the touch-pad, one can actually zoom-in and zoom-out the screen. On my F-series, I left it at 100% most of the time, but if I needed to view something close-up, I would just zoom-in on the touch-pad and then scroll to the right and/or left as needed.

Zoom-in/zoom-out are the only "gestures" I tried till now on the F-series' touch-pad, but I am pretty certain that there are others.

 

I believe with constant usage, it will last for around 10 years easily. Of course people rarely keep laptops for over 3-4 years, since by then it will be obsolete for most intents and purposes.

 

I think you are confusing the RAID formats that ensure data redundancy, with the type of RAID that is employed here (which is RAID 0). Technically, RAID 0 is not RAID in a traditional sense.

RAID 0 has absolutely no data redundancy at all and in a nutshell, allows splitting up the data and writing to multiple discs in parallel, thus speeding up the write/fetch operations. Of course since there is no redundancy, and since a single data stream is "cut up" and split up into multiple discs, if you lose one disc, then the data in the rest of the discs are also automatically done for, since the original data stream has been split up into multiple discs. The rest of the discs may not be physically damaged but the data within it is useless.

The primary purpose here, from RAID 0, is speed. Not data redundancy.

 

Well, that's my time span for keeping a laptop. My first one lasted for 5 years, well in the 5th year, it was chugging along. It still works and if I open it up to clean it and replace the thermal paste, no doubt it would last even more. The HDD died after about 2 and a half years and had to get it repaired (the laptop would be on most of the time, even during the night.

My current laptop is in its 2nd year and I plan on keeping it for at least 3 years but of course, the longer it lasts, the better! But I'm looking at the Z for my next laptop (especially with a 1080p LED screen!) and regardless, my next one will probably have an SSD so I was just wondering.

 

My point exactly.

 

Thanks. That's very clear and helpful. Am I correct in assuming that copying/backing up data from the quad SSDs is still easy, with the data being automatically reconstituted in the external location(s)? But with the data split into four parts, is the backup process more prone to error? And does it take four times longer than it otherwise would, though presumably faster than with a conventional hard drive?

 

ok, so looking at the (fantastic) motherboard and disassembly pictures, we can see a couple of things (I think):

- The WWAN card seems to sit just where it was before, top right corner under the keyboard by the battery.

- The wireless LAN card is now right in the middle (instead of to the left side before, on the daughter card.)

- The new WLAN card has 3 antenna instead of just 2 before: do we have some MIMO?

- Based on some of the cable routing (that long flat strip coming from the VGA port on the right side to the middle), it looks like the NVIDIA is right in the middle, underneath the WLAN? Then again, this being an Hybrid graphic models, it might not be true but the CPU looks to be under the big radiator on the left, by the fan... so do that mean we might get a hot point in the middle? It's a small board, only so many places to put things I guess !

- Either that or the 330M is on the left side, below the CPU by the radiator extension?

- I keep reading quad SSD but looking at the disassemble, I only see 2 SSD (1.8" without their enclosure, as usual to same a few millimeters) connected with the same weird cable as we currently have. No?

- Also, looking at the chassis, I can't find the docking port but it's definitely not in the same spot as before. It might be just above the bottom middle vent, top right corner by the battery?

bottom line: still can't believe how incredibly tight this package is !!!

 

No, there are absolutely no other downsides to it (other than what is mentioned above, about what happens IF it fails) and it will behave exactly as if it were a normal SSD or HDD. Due to the way the data is written and extracted, this would be significantly faster than a regular non-RAID0 SSD, which in turn means that the fastest HDDs would not even be able to keep up with it.

 

Pic of a 1.8" Samsung SSD with a Lenovo Ultrabay DVD. If you compare the rough dimensions with the DVD/SSD in the Sony press shot, 1.8" for sure.


Also, I'm not sure if it's creative freedom the illustrators had, but that's two independent PCB's. Do we know where the RAID stripe is being done? By this I mean, is the RAID controller "on-drive" or will it be controlled through the Intel chipset? I'm not sure if the QM57/QS57/HM57 chipsets even supports 4-member RAID, or even 4 devices at all, so apologies if this has been covered elswhere.

The Dell Z I had used two caseless Samsung SSD drives of this size. Ironically, part of the reason I returned it was that Dell didn't allow them to be stripped, only Intel's lame IRRT or JBOD.

Lastly, for the naysayers worried about drive failures, this machine is pretty much over the top in all categories (13.1" at 1920x1080??! Awesome). Get a good backup and an extended warrantee. Enjoy the speed.

EDIT: The HM57 chipset supports 6 SATA channels and RAID0/RAID10 on up to 4 of them ( sections 5.16 and 5.16.6).

How cool would it be if each of the "drives" have two seperate controllers?

Apologies again if this has been discussed before or if I'm missing something basic.

 

It really sucks that there is no usb 3.0 and no RAID backup option rather than speed... why would the high end model be missing the cutting edge usb 3.0 where other cheaper alternatives have them.. pretty disappointed about that

 

If you really need usb3, or firewire for that matter, you could just buy an express card adapter.
As for ther only being 2 ssd's in the pictures, the base model only has twin drive raid. I'm sure higher configurations will have 4 drives for 4x raid0.

 

Intel didn't include the USB 3.0 spec in the new chipsets. Manufactures have to use 3rd party solutions to get it in. Be it extra space, extra cost or simply a timing issue, Sony didn't manage it this round.

On the SSD, speed has a cost and it is reliability.

The machine is conflicted in this regard. The drive is fast, but it is complex and might break. 4x more likely to break, by some accounts in this thread.

Following this logic, having two USB subsystems is complex too. It's fast, but it is twice as likely to break as a system with one.

 

It's said that starting price is just $1k here: http://www.hardwaresphere.com/2010/01/19/sony-unveils-vaio-z-series-ultraportable-notebooks/
If I could get the configuration of the VPCZ11X9E for around $1k1 => $1k2 (not so optimistic about this of course haha), then definitely my SR has to go then

 

I did not know Sony uses MLC, but still...

Here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3036991

7 years is enough, I bet everybody will be changing their drives in a few years when SSD will be very cheap.

 

Here is the product page from Sonystyle China:

http://www.sonystyle.com.cn/products/vaio/z11.htm

Check out the available colors.

 

ok, so it looks they WILL have models without SSD? From a (lousy or hilarious) automated translation courtesy of Bing, it says "* Z115 不配 No. solid 态 hard 盘."

Interesting hey?

And just for fun, here's what the automated translation made of the first paragraph:
"VAIO Z119GC dice for one new generation British special 尔 酷 睿 i7-620M 处 logical machine (2. 66 GHz) *, British special 尔 睿 频 acceleration technology 术 root installation 高端 construction 负 a 载 request 智能 ground catching 运 line 频 rate-Shou arrival 3. 33 GHz, 满 foot heavy time for 应 and speed requests. High 达 4MB a three level performance is a high update 缓 is provided and update having effect of 缓 it is child-统.
British special 尔 ® 睿 频 acceleration technology 术, large limit-Shou 复 杂 for 应 and 处 reason speed and ability 够 root installation, a construction 负 载 affection changes 动 态 development pleasantness 处 and machine speed — — lives, and the demand 时 at provide and update performance.
British special 尔 ® Super book about technique 术 * ** significantly-Shou 计 calculation 吞 list amount. Many duty-处 reason-is 让 处 and a machine 每 personal in nuclear as 时 处 and 两 personal duty-. "

I personally find it hilarious. I'm guessing the 'Bristish Special' is somehow the Intel Turbo Mode... but expression like 'foot heavy time' or 'personal in nuclear' are just indications of all the untold riches coming with the Z

Bottom line:
- There *might* be non SSD options
- I understand better where some of the random instruction manuals I've seen lately are coming from

 

Egads! I'll never understand white laptops.

 

Here are some live pics from the Sony launch event in China.

http://tech.163.com/digi/10/0119/18/5TDM070F00161MAH.html

Nice to see some new live pics of the Z...

 

Pretty much everybody uses MLC these days.

Consumerism is selling the lowest quality product the market is willing to buy at the highest price they are willing to pay.
The consumers (may their dangly bits fall off) and OEM bean counters choose price over quality, and are simply not willing to pay more for less capacity or speed, even if SLC drives can take more wear and has a much higher MTBF.

7 years expected life for a single drive equals 5 1/2 months for a quad stripe solution where the health of all drives depends on none of them failing. All I can say is that the customers better buy a good backup application.

 

RAID 0 isn't really RAID, but pure striping. There's no parity calculations needed, and as long as the drives are DMA, there is no perceptible speed advantage to using a raid controller over software striping. All you have to do is a single division to translate the virtual block number to the physical block number and drive it goes on.

 

A translation using Google reveals that there will be a version without SSD.

Compared with traditional hard drives, solid-state drive has a read speed, quality and lightweight, the data is not easy to damage, and many other advantages of low power consumption. Use of the Z11 series of solid-state drives give you greater peace of mind to cope with the heavy work.
* Z115 is not equipped with solid-state drives.

 

Luckily this time there's no problem with the translate

Sony VAIO Z series of notebooks aimed at business people's flagship notebook, using Intel's Core "i" series processor platform with the next-generation dynamic graphics switching system, upgraded carbon fiber material at the same time, VAIO Z series is still the body weight of control to only about 1.4kg (with standard battery) around. At the same time Z series is also equipped with 8G DDR3-1066 memory, and SSD solid-state drives provide faster data read speed, lower power consumption, lighter weight and more reliable data storage, while Z series uses RAID O technology, data parallel operations, significantly improve the overall memory access performance, data read speed can reach common configuration notebook HDD hard drive for more than several times.

In addition, Z series dual-graphics cards based on the design of a revolutionary upgrade, the first time, a new generation of 'dynamic graphics switching system', with 'manual' with the 'automatic' two kinds of graphics cards to switch modes. In automatic mode, VAIO Z series will be based on connections and computer demand for the use of smart cards in the Independent with automatic switching between integrated graphics; users can actually use, select the discrete graphics or integrated graphics. In the SPEED (power mode) mode, Z-series is a new generation of NVIDIA ® GeForce ® GT 330M (GPU with CUDA) discrete graphics, an independent video memory up to 1GB. In the overall body design, the new VAIO Z series is 13.1 inches 16:9 screen. The new generation of carbon fiber panels and SSD drives use solid-state makes the machine's weight dropped to about 1.38kg, the thinnest at only 23.8mm.
(This article Source: Netease Digital) Yao Fei


I dunno why so of the sites in my country (Viet Nam) said that the two shown models will have the price of approximately 1k ROFL ( I bet that it's because of lame translation) But still, need to hope....

 

There's also the downside that you can't take the drive out and hook it up to another machine and read the data, unless that machine uses the exact same striping format. There's no single standard for this. So if you later upgrade to another drive, you can't simply hook both drives sets up to a stationary PC and copy away.

Another disadvantage with striping is power consumption. Drives hardly ever get to go to sleep, due to writes hitting all drives instead of one at a time. Consider someone copying a few hundred raw photos from a CF card to the hard drive (and the speed of the CF card is thus the limiting factor). If using a separate drives, that might mean 15 minutes of saving to one drive, while the three other drives sleep in low-power mode. If using RAID 0, it means 15 minutes of saving to all four drives, and none of them get to take a nap. Similar for other copy jobs where the limiting speed factor is where you copy from, like downloading from internet.
What about reads? Same problem, in reverse. Imagine watching a movie that's been saved to just one out of four drives. The other three drives get to sleep. But if it's been striped on all four, none of the drives can nap. Again, the limiting speed factor is on the other side -- in this case the viewing speed of the movie.
The net result is a lower battery runtime. Granted, this effect is much worse for HDDs, which physically spin platters, but even SSDs have low power states.

 

I understand you aren't happy about the quad raid 0 config, but the HM57 chipset can also handle RAID5. I'm guessing that Sony is simply touting RAID0 because it is the fastest, and you can get capacities up to 512GB - but in the RAID systems I've worked with, nothing stopped me from simply reconfiguring the drives to use RAID5, and reinstalling/reimaging the OS. I could live with only 384GB and small sacrifice in speed over RAID0 for the redundancy RAID5 gives me.

-Peter

 

I'd even go with RAID10 and 256 GB, which has the same great read speed as RAID0 at the expense of disk space.

But to be able to switch, it depends on Sony not having raided the entire drives and then put the recovery partition on the raid, but done something more sensible like adding partitions to the raid instead of entire drives. Even then, there must be an option to restore to an already formatted drive, and not just a factory restore routine that always formats the drive one specific way.
Given that this is Sony we're talking about, I fear switching from RAID 0 to 1/4/5/10 will be limited to those who buy an extra full copy of Windows. I'd love to be wrong.

 

Time to switch to the faster CF-cards that read/write at 90MB/sec, than rely on ancient ones that read/write at 20MB/sec.

Which essentially will mean that in the RAID 0 scenario above, the harddrive will operate for 15 minutes to save the data to one drive, while the SSD in Raid 0 will get the job done in 5 minutes.....and then all 4 drives take a nap for the next 10 minutes (while you go do something else), while the hard-drive is still hammering away for another 10 more minutes to get its job done.

And conversely, in situations where there is no such external constraints like a slow CF-card download etc, the RAID 0 will get the job done in 30 seconds, while the equivalent fast harddrive will be plugging away for 30 minutes.

You need to stop looking perpetually at the "glass half empty" side of things, just to get an even-handed picture.

 

You are correct, it states: Z115 is not equipped with solid-state drives. But this may be a China only model.

Use Google translate, it works MUCH better

 

Or, just buy some imaging software, image the laptop before you switch the RAID config, then place the image back on after you've set up the drives the way you like it. The imaging software I've used allowed you to place an image for a larger drive onto a smaller drive as long as the actual disk space used fits on the smaller drive.

-Peter

 

Hi Rachel,

any idea who has the vpcz11z9e in stock?

 

Since it has been years, where is the best place to buy a custom Z: The Sonystyle site, Sonystyle store or somewhere else?

 

I think that one model will probably have dual raid SSD and the other will have quad SSD's. It will likely be 2 64GB microSata SSD's. I cannot really imagine Sony doing the config differently. I could be wrong though but i doubt it. May be they will go for 4 32gb SSD's but i haven't seen any microSata ones around yet.

thepinkpanther, this is being released in March in the EU and in February in North America so you won't find one for sale anywhere yet. May be some will allow pre-order but i haven't seen any stores doing that yet. This may well start selling in Asia first.