New Z model with Intel Core i5 CPU

It's not like you have any other choice if you need all the other features of Z...

 

Hello! Okay, after searching around for some definitive information about SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, I found a great article that may be of interest to others as well. There's no denying the performance boost it can give but I only need to deal with a MAX of 2 - 256GB drives for my main apps/ data storage + backups so I don't need mind blowing performance. The most important part of the article for me is quoted from Madshrimps below...

Reliability of a RAID 0 array with SSD is of course a lot better than what was possible with HDDs, but don’t go thinking it’s a foul proof plan. SSD can still malfunction, RAID array can still go corrupt and moving between systems with a RAID 0 array install poses an extra challenge. Also don’t forget that TRIM doesn’t work on RAID arrays, so you’ll have to manually perform the necessary steps if you want your RAID array to perform at its best.

Basically the new Z is like a Stock car, fast as hell, but requiring the finesse of a mechanic to keep it that way! I know many are more than willing to fill that role but I'd rather not be one of them. I used to be, but it's getting old

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=976

Now I'm wondering... EVEN if one were to bring RAIDed SSD's to their knees in terms of performance loss - am I to understand that that's still going to be 50% faster than a 7200 HDD at all times or does get even worse and worse where one has no choice but to reinstall everything? If always 50% faster, I can more than live with that.

Also - some info if you plan to encrypt your data on SSD...

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=965

BTW - Nutman using SSD in RAID for his 4K Red Camera footage seems to be the ideal type of user for this technology!

 

@Synchro:

They don't keep degrading. Once every block on the SDD requires a "slow write" the SSD will be as bad as its gonn get. How bad that is depends on the SSD. Most of the time it is still faster than an HDD but in some cases, esp the older Samsung SSDs, It'd. may be the same as a fast HDD. Doubt it'd ever be worse. Still, with the price premium commanded, I may well pass on this if it doesn't have TRIM or at least BGC.

Additionally.. there's a big difference between "sony doesn't offer TRIM" and "the Z can't do TRIM." If its just the former and the drives do support TRIM, , anyone with a little savvy can go in, break down the RAID array, switch to JBOD, reinstall, and TRIM should work. If the drives aren't capable of TRIM though that's a much bigger problem. I assume as we get more expert reviews, this will be determined with certainty.

 

I think it is a really a moot point with most drives nowadays, SSD has come a long way. I went through all this a couple years back when I bought my 160gb X25-m for my desktop there was all the talk of degradation and lack of trim support etc.. Intel eventually came out with a firmware that does garbage collection without need for trim support. I installed the firmware but honestly I haven't noticed any degradation at all in the couple years i've been using this thing. WEI is still the same and most people stated normal use you would not notice any degradation for the life of the drive. To me it seems more of a scare tactic than anything used as an advertising tool.

Also the trim thing is not a Sony thing it is just the nature of SSD you cannot have TRIM support when you use any SSD in raid config regardless of who the manufacturer is as far as I am aware. I have not brushed up on my SSD knowledge recently but from what I understand it was just a limitation of using drives in RAID and nothing could be done to fix it other than to not use raid.

 

And it should be pointed out that since the only purpose for RAID 0 is speed, to give up RAID 0 in exchange for trim is to, ironically, give up a significant performance improvement for the sake of a possibly meager performance improvement.

 

I see. So you aren't really concerned about having TRIM support then? Do you need to use GC at minimum? I know I use an 8GB SanDisk Extreme III in my SD Card slot and I love it. Multiple reads and writes and I've only formatted it once at the very beginning.

Are full system image backups quicker with SSD's through USB 2.0 ports (assuming you do full system image backups)? 100GB on HDD for me takes somewhere around 55-65 minutes!

 

So the HP doesn't have CD drive? Well then it can't be in the same league as the Z. The Z is over a pound lighter with a CD drive.

 

There is a drive, incl. BluRay + it's 14" which accounts for the extra pound - starts @ 4.16 lbs.

 

Maybe just brain fade but I'm not sure what GC is LOL, Sandisk are the best sd card! I think the latest one are the SDHC, all I have are some extreme II's haven't done much still photography lately so haven't kept up with them. doing full system image backups you will probably be capped by the USB 2.0 speed (depending on what that is, I have no idea honestly) I think SSD's are the biggest reason for the jump to 3.0 but I could be wrong as like I said I really haven't kept up with it. SSD will be by far faster than anything else though.

As far as TRIM no i'm not really concerned at all, the difference between platter HD and SSD is amazing and I have not noticed any difference in the speed since originally installing the Intel in my desktop, I am still amazed everytime Windows boots up and moving files etc...I'd be even less concerned in a laptop where I am more likely to set it and forget it, in my desktop I am constantly adding and removing things trying to keep as much space usable as possible and always downloading movies and music etc... Far more files get moved from my SSD to my Storage drive than will ever be moved on my laptop so if I don't notice any performance drop here I sincerely doubt I will with the laptop even given a much bigger timeframe but if you are big into photography or something else and will constantly be moving large amounts of data off of your Laptop and onto to your Desktop it might be a concern for you. I cannot say for sure.

 

Garbage Collection

Also - I reformatted the Extreme III card and use it for general use in the SD Card slot. If I want to take a pic I just pop it in my Canon and then back out again which doesn't affect my other saved folders. I use the 2GB, 4GB & 8GB versions for all kinds of purposes - it's a great card for sure

 

Ah yea Brain Fade LOL, the GC is in the firmware, doesn't require any user interaction. I would assume most drives have something similiar these days especially if Sony is putting them in thier laptops in raid config I would assume there would be something similiar in their firmwares. Not at all sure how important it is as Intel stated it wasn't neccesary back then they said they just did it because of a particular review that in their words simulated 10 years or so of use in the SSD and found a problem which 99% of users would never experience. That review was then later adjusted after using the GC firmware stating that there was no longer a problem. I don't know what is what as far as that is all concerned, i don't usually buy into all the hoopla until it starts affecting me and it never did but I did install the GC firmware anyway so can't really say it wouldn't have if I didn't.

But honestly I think it's all much ado about nothing, it's certainly not going to dissuade me from purchasing this laptop.

 

Sorry to go way off topic but I live here and became aware of this - Nodar Kumaritashvili died during Olympic Training on the Luge right before the opening ceremonies in B.C. @ 140 km/h : (

Apparently the Olympic Committee is trying to have this footage removed, but I think people should know about it...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/akdobbins/nodar-kumaritashvili-luge-crash

Not a good start -

 

Well, I'm going to give them another call and see what they have to say about it -

EDIT: So I phoned U.S. support again knowing that they don't support TRIM but asked if there was any alternative such as GC in the firmware - after the usual Hold the rep came back and told me that TRIM is not supported (which we know) and that as per their dept. recommendation - reformat / reinstall OS will be required.

 

I think you are painting an unrealistically rosy picture of SSD degradation. From what I understand, the Intel X25-m has always had GC implemented in its firmware. It was just that a specific issue was found that could be reproduced if you followed very specific steps, that you would normally not encounter in real usage. And that is what Intel patched. But its always had fairy aggressive GC features from the start, which is why you didn't encounter a lot of performance loss. If Sony has neither GC or TRIM, it will lead to a lot of issues.

 

Perhaps I am a bit too trusting? I don't know my experience is just that i've never had any problems. I don't think a company like Sony would go to all the trouble of designing this whole quad ssd sytem for their laptops without any awareness of the degradation if it really was a serious problem. Like I say I'm not going to let it dissuade me from purchasing this laptop however I can understand the concern as it is a significant investment.

 

Based on past experience, I would not put much faith in what the support department tells you, to be quite frank. It was the very same support department who "confirmed" that Sony uses Seagate SSDs (Sony does use Seagate HDDs but uses Samsung SSDs).

Of course actual users posted (by going into the device characteristics) that Sony uses Samsung SSDs.

I think it was posted a while back that Sony does use BGC (background garbage collection) in their Raid 0 SSDs. Whether they are using something similar in their latest Quad SSDs is of course an unknown, till these laptops get into the hands of actual users or some comprehensive reviewers.

 

I Never call support for anything from any company LOL These people are given books with a page to flip to to answer your question they have no real knowledge of computers they are just paid to turn pages and answer questions. It is a very frustrating experience I choose not to endure! 9 times out of 10 they had no idea what I was actually talking about and 10 times out of 10 they have never helped me solve a problem I couldn't solve on my own. In otherwords I always leave empty handed after waiting on hold for 30 minutes Gave up on that a long time ago.

Edit: Nevertheless if people are really worried it only takes 15-20 minutes to make a ghost image, format and reapply the image if they are really concerned. So worst case scenario (which i doubt) you have to take 15-20 minutes out of your day once a year or so to restore performance to new not a big deal for me at least. I tend to do this anyways just for peace of mind.

 

But Sony doesn't design notebooks (other than the exterior). It's a Quanta technical design. So if there are problems with the tech specs, I think Sony's lawyers will make sure that Quanta compensates them.

 

I was at Sonystyle HK yesterday and the new Z should be up for preorder next week with a price of around 20,000 HK dollars. It also showed up in a local PC magazine quoting a price of around 20.000 HK dollars.

 

Possibly meager? On degraded "high performance" SSDs, we're talking about write access times above 500 ms (when it has to erase a whole sector before writing), which is waaaay slower than a regular HD.

On "average" a degraded SSD may still be faster than a regular HD, but that won't be much comfort when you want to Install Microsoft Flight Simulator with its 54000 files which the installer syncs after every write, and it takes 6 hours.

You have to measure the worst case scenarios, and find out whether those are acceptable. Averages are irrelevant. Put one foot in the stove and one in a bucket of ice water, and on average you'll feel just fine.

Garbage collection helps when you rewrite files. It doesn't do anything for deleting files, because the drive doesn't know that when you zonk the file inode, all the blocks that belonged to the file are now free too. Because the drive doesn't know which blocks belonged to a file: it doesn't speak file system, it speaks raw blocks.
TRIM is the translator that tells the drive just which blocks that are now considered deleted, which gives the drive a chance to preemptively erase them when idle, before a write comes in.

 

I think you will find that Sony, like ever other laptop brand, does have a lot more say then just "we like barrel design hinges".

 

Meh seems like you are trying to stir up a hornets nest where there is none...I'll gladly be the first to purchase the laptop and everyone else can wait a couple years for me to report back if I notice any SSD degradation Not trying to be a smartass but seriously this is all conspiracy theory stuff at best from all accounts of early reviews the laptop is nothing short of amazing so I would much rather just purchase it now and use it for a couple years then deal with SSD degradation if neccesary (which I doubt) rather than sit idley by and watch everyone else have all the fun! I don't usually keep computers more than a year anyway before upgrading LOL

 

For what it's worth, part of my professional job is running benchmarks on and perform forensics on SSDs. I see more of them than most people, and think I know pretty well where they excel and where they don't, without having to resort to "conspiracy theories".

 

The way I see it, even if your theory comes to fruition (which I highly doubt) worst case scenario is someone has to make a ghost image reformat and reinstall a year or two down the road. Takes like 20 minutes with SSD's. I fail to see the problem? I apologize if I am wrong but it just seems like your trying to stir up a hornet's nest to me...

 

Just curious. Does anyone hae a comparison of the SSD speed (at least the initial SSD speed ) between the MacBook Pro 256MB vs the Z 256MB?

 

Who is going to keep this past 2 years, when the next Z will be even better (we hope)?!

 

No, that's not a worst case scenario. A worst case scenario could be when a CFO stares at "Synchronizing files" while he has a plane to catch, and has to leave without all the business documents he potentially needs.

And 20 minutes? Get real. A format won't cause an erase operation on an SSD, so if that's what you're doing, you're no better off than you were beforehand.
And you can't dump, erase and restore even a 32 GB SSD in that time, never mind an array of much larger drives.
And you also need somewhere to dump the drives to, which also dictates the speed. Were you planning to get these amazing write speeds over USB or over ethernet? Enquiring minds want to know.

SSDs are a marvelous technology, and I fully appreciate them for what they do. But they do have some pitfalls, and solutions like TRIM weren't added to the ATA standard because they weren't needed, but because they were.

 

How about a disk wipe. It seems to me that if you just do a disk wipe, with the correct write value, that it gets you back in the saddle with cleaned sectors.

 

Yes, you have to do a wipe (erase), which causes the drive to actually mark all the blocks on the drive as unused (and, if "deep wiped", also actually erase them ahead of time for extra speed benefits).
The problem is that erase operations are not standardized, but depends on having an erase tool that works with your drive, and through your controller.
HDDErase works with most SSD drives, but not all. And it still needs go get past the controller, so if there's a custom hardware based RAID solution, it's not certain it will work.

What's certain is that a normal format won't help when a drive is in "saturation mode" and thinks that all blocks are in use, and will only do copy-erase-rewrite operations. Cause all a format does is write even more to the disk, whether it's a quick format or a full format (in fact, never ever do a full format on an SSD drive, or you may bring it into instant saturation mode).

 

Companies that replace their users' machines on a 4-year cycle?
Individuals who for some reason or another can't afford a new machine after two years?

 

Hey arth1, you seem to be very knowledgeable with SSD. From what I understand the slow down will only affect the write speed of the drive right? Which means that Windows/Programs/Games load time should not be affected right?

Also, I have made it a habit to never save any work documents on my laptop's hard drive because I have multiple workstations and will need access to the files where ever I go. I currently save everything in an encrypted 16GB USB thumb drive or 32GB SD card that I always carry around. With my current practice, would I be affected by these slow downs at all? Since the slowdowns are for write only and I pretty much never write to the SSD except for the initial installations Windows, Programs and Games.

Thanks in advance.

 

Thanks for this informative response... so silver it is for me, whenever it gets released in Canada that is !






Great pics and review??? in chinese http://www.eprice.com.hk/nb/talk/?prod_id=457&tid=991

Windows Experience Index 得分只有 4.5

PCMark05 得分高達 9213， Core i7



& the asian Vaio Z page http://www.sony-asia.com/product/vpcz117gg

 

Hmmm Z, E, or W?
The Z makes her look huge!!

 

Is that true?
As far as I understood it, the top-line models "Made in Japan" (like the Z) are still made by Sony for the biggest part (including circuit board design and assembly) - the Z for example uses a quite complex mainboard very different from the normal designs - even the packaging of the "Made in Japan" notebooks is entirely different.
The consumer-series are specified by Sony and then developed/build by OEMs in China (like Quanta), therefore the much lower build-quality.

 

I feel like if I were to carry around the Z and hold it like that, I'd scratch it up or get fingerprints all over it. I wonder if anyone makes transparent sticker covers?

 

http://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/sony-vaio-vgn-fw140e-cases-covers-skins-shields.php

they will probably carry one for the Z.

 

Hi,

Anybody knows if all new Z USA models are Quad SSD ? Or at least Model VPCZ11FHX/XQ ?

Thank you.
Alex

 

1) What network card will it have? (Will it support 450?)

2) 3 USB ports... USB 2.0 or 3.0? (From what I've read, only 2.0.. can someone confirm or deny?)

 

Network card we won't know till its out. But USB is 2.0.

 

1) Too bad.
2) Too bad.

Thx for the answers.... but that was a bit disappointing...

 

The lack of USB 3.0 is a disappointment for me as well
perhaps a workaround to try like http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/09/buffalo-outs-usb-3-0-expresscard-adapter-we-see-a-trend-coming/
eventually to buy
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-3-0-Expre...Components_InterfaceCards?hash=item4a9d0f0daf
well, let's hope the next Z series (or eventually a different letter series, but 13inch sized with even better specs of latest Z ) won't forget it...

for now, the newest Z doesn't seem to have a competition out there anyway...

 

Well that looks an okay solution, and would mean you then had a total of 5 USB ports...

 

Right.

Wrong. You'd be surprised at how many random writes Windows does during normal operations.

Yes. Not as much, but yes. You'd be surprised at how many write operations to your HD that happens when you do something you don't think of as write operations.

Just try DiskMon from Microsoft Sysinternals for a few minutes. Run as an administrator, and press CTRL-E to toggle on/off logging of reads and writes.
Turn it on before opening a document on a thumb drive, and turn it off afterwards. Now look at the hundreds if not thousands of writes that has occurred to your HD.

Most of them will have a duration of 0.000NNNNN seconds, meaning they are imperceptible, and you won't notice them happening. Now enter a situation where small writes get delayed by a quarter second or more. Guess what happens? Stalls.

Your own saves are the least of the problem. It's all the other saves that can turn painful. Like updating the icon cache every time open a window in Windows Explorer. Like all the temporary files for your browser. Like if you have Vista Business / W7 Pro, and it auto-syncs remote files when you log off. And not the least, all the temporary lock files that are created and deleted all the time in the background:
You open a file for read? Well, that means that no other process should open it for write while you have it open, or Bad Things may happen. So a lock is created, and a temporary file updated. And you open it with Word? Well, all the dlls, plugins, templates and whatnot that Word uses are also opened, and the system has to keep track in a way that's visible to other processes than yours. So more writes. Plenty of them, in fact.
Then there's the undo buffer, and your changes that aren't saved yet, but which get saved to a temporary local files in case your computer crashes and you want to resume without losing your work...

Use of "Office" type applications cause far more writes than, say, video or photo editing, where you have few, but large writes. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it's definitely the case. SSDs are near perfect for things like photo/video editing and other large file handling. And great for normal OS use, as long as it still has free clusters available for immediate writes.

In real life, what you're likely to see when an SSD is in "saturation mode" are inexplicable stalls for a second or more every now and then. It may very well be far faster than a HD for most operations, but the stalls can become a real pain.

(And then there are the "special cases" like installing Flight Simulator X with its 54000 files taking hours instead of minutes -- this is a very real example, by the way. It's in part due to how the installer works, by forcing a sync after every file, which prevents the drive from bunching up multiple write operations, but allows an install to be aborted and resumed.)

TRIM really helps a lot, and is the best thing since sliced bread for SSDs.

 

Solved. Seems lite a doable workaround. But would be *even* better with build in. But as so many have already said... there simply isn't any competition for the new Z. I'm waiting for the new MBP, but don't think it will have enough power to compete...

 

Sony previously used Foxconn for their cheaper builds, and Quanta for their more expensive ones, but I believe they last summer started switching all of it over to Quanta due to quality concerns.
However, that's builds. But Quanta isn't just an OEM, but an ODM, who designs motherboards and all that good stuff for the big customers, whether they choose to use Quanta for production or not. Almost all notebooks on the market have their internals designed by one of the large Taiwanese ODMs, whether the exterior design and manufacturing is done elsewhere or not.

 

The ones with 192GB, 384GB or 512GB HD are the Quad SSD models.

 

Maybe 20 minutes is underestimating I don't see it taking a substantial amount of time though, I have weekly backups made while I sleep so the image is already done. Just have to wipe and reinstall. Sure if you have a full 512gigs of info it might take substantially longer but most I ever have is around 50-60gb on my OS drive everything else get's moved to storage.

Anyways as I say I've been using my Intel a couple years now and never wiped it. It doesn't have trim and I have reinstalled Windows on it 3 times twice with formats and it still works as good as new so i'm not really worried about it. Maybe I will wipe it sometime in next couple days and restore and see how long it takes.

 

I don't even see one for the current Z. And do you know how long it takes them to get those in after a laptop has been launched? Knowing those things exist, I seriously don't want to take my new Z anywhere until it's protected. Too bad they don't make those for the keyboard... I'm borrowing my brother's Sony NW right now and after two months it's already got the shiny keys.

Does anyone know how much the Verizon wireless internet costs? Or do you get it for free when buying the $100 hardware (yeah, right)?

 

The Verizon Mobile Broadband plan costs $60.00 per month. The plan allows you to use 5GB per month of data use. Anything over that and from what I hear, they notify you that you went over your plan's amount and either they won't do anything initially, continued overage and they could charge you for the overage, and in some cases could terminate your service without notification. Other users also when nearing their 5GB cap have experienced down throttling of their EVDO speeds.

These 5GB caps are common across the carriers...ie: Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc. The only exceptions might be for customers who are " grandfathered " such as myself who have had the service for a long time and still have the " unlimited " plans.

Honestly, the imbedded EVDO chips are not worth it as then the service is locked to that 1 particular device. A better solution is to skip the imbedded chip and buy an external EVDO card. They are available as USB modems and also Express Card devices. I have the USB modem type and the advantage is that you can use the one EVDO modem across how ever many computers you own. The USB modem doesn't care that you plugged it into another computer.

A better solution is to use an EVDO Router, such as the Cradle Point MBR900. http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/2973/179/

This router uses your EVDO connection and your computers wi fi connection. I use this one when at home. I am using my 3 VAIO's on a 3mbs Sprint connection and am averaging 144mbs over 802.11n. And this one I use when I am at work. http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/2355/63/ This one is an 802.11g modem but it also supports 4G whenever my area gets it.

Two of the best gadgets I've ever bought.

 

Hi,

Anybody knows the difference between i7-620M and i7-620QM (last one showed at USA - VPCZ11FHX/XQ model).

Thank you.