New Z model with Intel Core i5 CPU

So what do u guys think about extra warranty on the Sony, is it really worth it, or is the 2 years from the Z enough. Can't seem to decide this, i have to take it to school about 4 years, so maybe 4 years warranty would be nice.

 

Id say not worth it given the price. Buy it with Amex or certain other cards and the card will extend your warranty 1 year (to 3 in this case I guess?)

 

If you take the notebook with you where the surrounding environment or the good possibility of damage occuring are likely, then I'm all for and in my case did, purchase a 3 year warranty with the accidental damage handling ( ADH ) plan. The screen on the Z has been known for duability issues in the past for some so one screen replacement will pay for the cost of this particular warranty from Sony. If the Z is going to stay inside and not travelled, then probably just a regular extended warranty quick ship repair plan would be enough.

 

Just wondering, how hard is it to swap out the RAID 0 SSDs? Since they are naked (without casing), I would imagine you would need a special SSD bracket and ribbon to mount your replacement SSD/harddrive.

The lack of ability to switch out the factory installed SSDs down the road somewhat bugs me, apart from the bulging palmrest.

 

It's usually 1 yr in addn to manufacturer's warranty(Provided it is 3 yrs or less)

 

interesting... my order went from 'Backorder, shipping on 3/19/10' to 'Available, Shipping tomorrow'...

View attachment order_capture_update.bmp

I know from the previous post that it's likely it still won't ship until 3/19 but why would they update the date like that then? Just to be able to charge the CC? I believe they charged it anyway, right?

Confused, as usual

BTW, I'm happy I check this site regularly: I'm still waiting for that automatic notification from Sony Style to tell me the Z is available for pre-order... I registered 3 different email addresses and none got it

 

I believe they would be shipping it out soon. If they updated the date to "shipping tomorrow", I would wager that it would ship out tomorrow. Let us know when your laptop gets in and definitely post some pictures and first impressions.

 

Some of the resident perils of rampant globalization, fueled on by the profitability demands made on corporate America by wall-street !

 

Still no vaio Z in Canada...

 

Come on sony, put a regular HD option, please....

 

Covered a lot in this thread. No one owns it, therefore no one has popped it open and seen how Sony connected things. It's probably not a straight drop in and SATA connection.

 

Totally, Ultimately correct.

Many friends of mine living in US, does not have cell phones yet, no DSL too, just 56K or ISDN Tops, they are late, they are lazy, and they are poor, even labors in 3rd nation countries have those techs available at hand with good prices for Services/Products.

 

Interestingly, Google seems to agree with you .....posted today:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/08/google.policy/index.html?hpt=Sbin

 

Sorry I don't want to go through all the pages so I'm going to ask this again if its already been asked already. Will the price on the Z drop in the summer? I won't be getting one til then and I like to know.

Thanks.

 

What answer did you expect to get from that question?

Yes. Maybe. Probably. No. Who knows. Stupid questions get stupid answers.

And hey, should this thread be about the new Vaio Z, or the US? Get back on topic, pls.

 

Looking at your post, you don't live here do you? So why making so many hasty assumptions?

Let's please not look at America as a whole please. Sure, a lot of the smaller countries in Europe and Asia are more technologically advanced if you put it like that. Partly because it costs a lot less to implement new technologies in much smaller geological areas. America as a whole may not be that technologically advanced. However:

There are approximately 6.6 billion people in the world today and close to half of that live on less than $2 a day.
There are over 300 million living in the U.S. (less than 6% of the world's population), yet Americans have half the world's wealth.

Also, let's not forget that the statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the richest 1% earned 21.2% of the total income reported to the IRS in 2005.

Sure, there are underprivileged people living in America. But that does not mean your dial-up friends are going to spend >$2000 on a laptop does it?

Sony is somewhat like Apple in that regard. They don't usually lower the price for their CTO versions for more than $100, they prefer to upgrade the components (CPU, SSD), rather than to lower the price.

However, from past experience, if you look into pre-configured versions from other sellers (amazon.com, costo, etc.), you may find some pretty good deals that go for a couple hundred dollars lower than the retail price.

Sony will probably release a refresh to the Z by the end of this summer, so the price of pre-configured Z11 will drop even further.

 

I live here in the US, and his assumptions are, unfortunately, correct.

This is an often heard counter-argument, but it's just plain wrong. Let's compare the US with, say, Norway.

Population density by country:
US: 83-86 / mi^2 (depending on whether you count Puerto Rico / Guam or not)
Sweden: 53 / mi^2
Finland: 41 / mi^2
Norway: 32 / mi^2

In fact, less than 3% of Norway is arable land, according to CIA World Factbook. That should. by your reasoning, mean that Norway would only have cell phone coverage in the population centers, and close to no coverage in most of the country.
In fact, the opposite is true. Geographical coverage is in the 90%s. Compare that with, say, Oregon which has similar geographical features (coasts and mountains), and a somewhat comparable population count and density.
Yet, outside the Portland/Eugene corridor, there's almost no mobile phone coverage at all!

Similar for broadband penetration. How come that, say, providers in Sweden can offer 10 Mbps to people living in what's rural areas by US standards? For a fraction of what "up to" 1536/256 kbps DSL costs here? It's clearly not because of the geography and population density of Sweden.

Unfortunately, we are a third world country when we compare Average Joe with Average Sven or Average Hiroshi. That there are a tiny minority in the US that are privileged doesn't change that.

Most people here, alas, can only dream of being able to afford the top model Sony laptops. So cutting costs and options for the US market is a given.

 

I'm all for related side discussions, however this is REALLY getting off track.

 

Awww man, here we go...bashing America. God forbid that anybody should stop to say, "Thanks America, for providing me with a quality of life that allows me the luxury time to bash America on forums where I can sit safely on the sidelines complaining".

Look man, I like my odds of providing Tier 1 coverage to 20,000,000 people of the same ethnicity in a rather small geographical area than I would providing Tier 1 coverage to 350,000,000 people of varying ethnicities across that vast landscape that is America. You're comparing apples to oranges when you compare small homogenous countries and what they can do to a country like the USA.

 

Ok...Pulling the thread to back on track strong rumors that MBP is going to get upgrades tomorrow.

Wondering what Apple is going to bring to 13" MBP That was the other laptop I was considering other than the Z.

 

Honestly, nothing Apple could do would interest me.

 

I have lots of Apple products but i feel the same as you after their Ipad

Watching the Z video's on youtube for the nth time

 

Wonder if they are going to match the mighty 330m , at least for their 13' model.

I'm not interested in Macbooks either, but Jobs sure makes good presentations. Gotta give him the credit for ALMOST convincing a few apple fanboys to buy the infamous iPad, or I'm sorry, is it the Ipad?...

 

Scratch the 13" and make it 17 I didn't research much but alienware m11x is the other laptop I know other than z using the same graphics chip now in the 13" or below.

 

Yea I have read about it too. Apparently it gets you around 6 hours too. But man is it thick! Hehe.

 

Here's my take: Apple will struggle to keep up with the new Z. Why? The current 13" MBP uses a 25W TDP processor; the first gen Z uses a processor up to 35W. This means the Vaio Z has a better cooling mechanism than the 13" MBP, hands flat down. Apple has to do some serious makeover if it wants to closely match the Z even, let alone like for like (i.e. GT 330M graphics). Sorry, Apple, but it may take its future 15" MBP to make proper comparisons with the new Z.

This is already set in stone--the new Z is thinner than the previous. Volume-wise, the new Z is more-or-less similar to the 13" MBP, but the new Z has a few things the 13' MBP doesn't have--one extra USB port, >30% lighter, one expresscard slot, HDMI port, and a few minor things. All this into one pretty laptop, yet more powerful than the current 15" MBP; this is one epic engineering feat right there!

 

Apple better go balls to the wall on their 13. I suspect they won't and Sony is going to take the trophy with this new z. Does anyone know when they will have them on display in the Sony store. I'm in San Diego.

 

MBP is a good looking laptop but for me, lightness, not thinness, is the the deciding factor when it comes to physical design.

Z is a pound lighter... when you move around as much as I do, it matters.

 

I completely agree. Anything beyond an inch thin is quite unnoticeable. With weight however, the same cannot be said.

 

I posted a small off topic photo of what could be the iPad, and I got bashed for it (LOL). Turns out the photo was exactly what the iPad looked like on presentation day. And it was 1 post compared to multiple discussions on "America". Talk about favorism (LOL).

$2400 for a Z is too much I think. I'm contemplating going really low in specs and CTO to get the black premium carbon at 1999.99 and upgrade later. I'm just worried if 128SSD will hold my iTunes library, a few good programs, and store a decent amount of movies when on the road. Do you think Frys, Micro Center, P1 will only sell the silver model? It appears the black prem. carbon is only exclusive to Sony. Fry's use to sell the SZ/XC, but they never sold the Z/XC, no one did except for Sony. Perhaps, the economy was in better shape during the SZ era than the Z.

Does anyone know a good compression program for movies to save onto the hard drive?

 

...and still not even an announcement here in Japan. I hope they offer the Owner Made model with no optical drive, 1080 screen, and Intel 6300 wireless (I currently have the 5300AGN card in my previous-gen Z).

I hope I can obtain it before Golden Week...

 

well you can always use a compact external or express card drive for your music if 128gb isn't large enough.

 

1920x1080 resolution on a 13" screen???? wow

 

Getting the CTO down to $1999.99 is great IMHO. However, you'll only get a 128DG SDD with that price & at this moment, it is hard to tell how easy it is to upgrade the SSD in the Vaio Z in the future, depending on the size of the SSD setup, the kind of proprietary connectors for the SSD, etc. I mean since this new Z series is going to be similar to the current (old) Z with SSD configurations, this means that doing a straight forward swap of the SSD for one that is available for sale in the retail market is not possible. So maybe you may want to wait for someone here at NBR to get it in his/her hands & is willing to open up the new notebook & only then make your config decision. Of course, if upgrading the SSD to one that has a higher capacity is of no concern for you, then what I've suggested shouldn't matter too much.

I think Frys, MicroCenter, & P1 will sell both the Silver & Premium Carbon versions. Sony seems to be making the Signature Models to be exclusive to SonyStyle, which means only the Metal Mosaic & Glossy Premium Carbon top lid finishes will be available at SonyStyle only.

 

Some nice pictures of the Z plus a minor write up in Taiwanese:
http://www.eprice.com.tw/nb/talk/?prod_id=457&tid=3073

 

anyone know if the new Z model will have backlit keyboard?

 

Yes it will.

 

Aside from perhaps the Japanese keyboard. The new VAIO F Series only has the backlit option for the US English keyboard here.

 

wow, those cystaldiskmark scores are crazy!

 

4.5 in graphics? little lower than I have expected.

 

That's when z is in stamina mode (score for integrated graphic) .

 

Could maybe running the WEI assessment using stamina mode have a determination on that score ? That is pretty low considering the current Z has a graphics score of 4.3 and a gaming graphics score of 5.5.

 

This is a big reason I got the Panasonic CF-S9. With the extended battery (standard on the S9), it's under 3lbs. The Z is over 4.

 

Ahh....you beat me to it.

 

In the review they said that was result for stamina mode.

 

the Z is only 3.4 lbs

 

FenderP is talking about the Z's weight being over 4 pounds with the extended battery, but....not to be trivial about that weight, I'm thinking it is just a fraction UNDER 4 pounds with the extended battery, 3.74 pounds to be precise. I own one.

 

my bad then.

 

Z is 3.74 pounds with the 9 cell extended battery.

 

Sound's like the Z's hybrid mode is actually what nvidia calls Optimus
http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3737&p=1

maybe this is the reason behind the Z's "late" launch? Sony having to wait for nvidia to lift their NDA and present their new tech?