New Z model with Intel Core i5 CPU

Well, I've has two non TRIM SSDs in my Z in RAID 0 for many months and I do not have any trouble or suffer any degradation. But yes, you can take them out thought the connector appears to be LIF or ZIF and not standard SATA like intel is using on theirs. that is why I linked to the Runcore SSDs.

 

Does anyone know if the dock for the old Z (C2D) works with the new Z?

 

Understood. Youll have to excuse me, Im pretty slow when it comes to this stuff.

So if im thinking about doing this, would it be better for me to get the 256GB SSD config or another certain SSD option? Also while im asking, is RAM upgradeable in these and is processor upgradeable?

 

No - Here is a link to the new dock - Coming Soon VGP-PRZ10 - http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666055167

 

Thanks! Any idea if that dock will support a 2560*1440 screen?

So the new Z breaks compatibility with everything except AC adaptors?

Also, is it stated anywhere whether the new Z can run 2560*1440 screens?

 

IMO, and I think plenty of others, will share the opinion that RAID-0, especially on a laptop, is overkill. The reason is that the speeds that are achieved will go above and beyond what is necessary.
I really can't come up with an example where RAID-0 will prove handy. You'll get blinding speeds and programs might load a couple of seconds faster. But ultimately, the speed can't be full utilized. And I can't help but feel this RAID-0 setup allows Sony to jack up prices on these units.

Thats just my take. Anyone on the RAID-0 boat care to show me the light?

 

This argument is very true for normal hard disks, but since SSD's typically fail on a block-level basis, the risk is probably (intuitively) much lower with SSDs.

 

I develop code. For my work a 2-HDD RAID 0 actually lets me build twice as fast. A 3-HDD RAID 0 adds another 30% or so on top of that.

I make the assumption that I will get similar sorts of ratios using SSD's.

I think that "what is necessary", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I am also generally amused by the argument that if 1 drive out of a RAID 0 set fails, you lose all your data.

It turns out that if 1 drive out of a single-drive non-RAID system fails, you lose all your data.

It will be interesting, however, if the quad-SSD unit can be configured for both striping and mirroring.

 

The problem is one of probability - if P is the probability of a drive failing, your data will be safe with probability (1-P) in a 1 drive system. But it will be safe with probability (1-P)^n in an n-drive RAID-0 system.

Plugging in real numbers, let's say chances of a drive failing is 5%. 95% chance your data is safe in a 1 drive system, but only 81.5% your data is safe in a quad-RAID0 system.

Is 5% reasonable? A quick google search showed that in March 2008 there were reports of 20-30% return rate in SSDs - of those returned, around 10-20% blamed on technical issues. So that's 2%-6% failure rate.

We expect technology (especially for something so new as consumer SSDs) to improve over time, so 6% is probably high these days, but it's probably more significant than we want.

-Peter

 

First off, (like it's been said before) SSDs are highly unlikely to fail as opposed to normal HDDs, don't take me wrong, they do fail but not as often.
My job is visual effects for cinema and TV and also automotive design.
I used to have HDDs but ever since mid 2008 I have transitioned to a 100% SSD setup after multiple HDD failures.
Out of a total of 12 OCZ Vertex, 8 Memoright GT, 6 Mtron 7500, 4 OCZ Core V2, 4 Intel X25-E, 1 Kingspec, 1 Photofast V3, 2 OCZ Vertex EX and 8 Photofast V4S, only the kingspec was dead out of the box and one of the 12 Vertex failed in a raid 5 config but I think it was my fault.

All of the above operate in various desktops, laptops and tablets, both mac and Windows computers standalone, in RAID 0, 1 and 5

As for an application where RAID 0 might be useful, I edit RED One 4K uncompressed footage from my camera on my Vaio Z on location and the ability to scrub back and forth one or two streams in faster than real-time for the director to see has more than paid for itself.

Also, doing VFX, dynamics simulations are cached on disk after being computed in Houdini. again, the ability to preview from multiple angles and scrub back and forth faster than real-time is what I need, otherwise I wouldn't be able to work.

EDIT: As for that return-rate for SSDs, does it mention if these were cheap- SSDs or high quality ones?

 

Hello all. after much lusting and lurking around here placed my order today for low-end cto: 2.53, 4G,196mb ssd, carbon black

i read all the posts since page 111 and decided not to be afraid of no-trim ssds no matter how much you all freaked me out about it.

BTW, some one asked if the new z was intel Wireless display compatible; i wondered too, and according to intel's site it ought to be from a hardware perspective - but i think the official certification (bluelabel?) is reserved for laptops that Bestbuy stocks.

chipset HM57express, core i5/i7 & the wifi card in the US-spec z meet the requirement.

really hoping i don't have to wait til 3/16 for shipping. first non-thinkpad laptop for me, can't wait to get a screen that doesn't stink

 

I don't disagree with you that SSDs should be more reliable than HDDs - no moving parts is a huge win for SSDs. If they aren't now, they will be. I suspect the high failure rates that were reported a couple years ago have more to do with ironing out bugs with firmware, and not with the mechanics of the drive themselves. The one thing HDDs have going for it is a lot longer time to stabilize and perfect the technology.

-Peter

 

Understandable.
toddler firmware is the most likely cause.
One more thing to point out, for over two decades I have been using mostly SCSI and since 1999 almost exclusively SCSI Ultra 320 disks but something happened early 2008 and I lost a lot of valuable stuff while recovering a backup from one RAID array to another and ever since I have moved to SSDs without a single regret.

So keep in mind everything I say about SSDs will be biased, I cannot help it.

 

Bingo! This is the question NOBODY is able to answer even regarding current Z.

 

The only reason to pay more for any computer is speed and size. That applies to both laptops as well as desktops (but more so to laptops). In any case, we all know we can pay $300 for an atom processor. We all know that 15" or 17" 6 pound laptop the cost will be less than a Z. Ultimately there is no argument of "necessity" as you describe it. Only a matter of how much a light, fast laptop means to you.

I don't feel Sony is trying to fool us in any way. They know that there are dozens of laptops available. The niche for this one involves building the lightest, fastest thing they can build for a reasonable price. Considering what you get I think it's pretty reasonable. The price of other laptops that start off low, quickly climbs to equal the Z price, generally with less performance and always with more weight.

 

I like it too, but I can already see the fingerprints and smudges on it -only if it weren't glossy. I like that shade of gray though. I'd go with the non-gloss premium black. It's has a sheen to it than a gloss.

I was just told this about a month ago at the SonyStyle at South Coast Plaza.

Weren't the Z7xx and Z8xx, included a nice cloth in the box? Or maybe, it was only offered in Japan. But I do remember someone posting a cloth that came with the Z.

 

Agree with Oscar 2,

It's probably overkill for 99% of us...But it's good for Sony reputation to bring such a high tech jewel on the market. This is their flagship, so you can customize with the best of the best and/or improve the design. As long as there is a regular HDD option I don't see the problem.

Also (a bit off topic sorry), Japanese culture is all about beauty, what is important in America might be very different here.
Small and powerful IS beautiful here. I tried to sell my M17x desperately in Japan, nobody wanted it...Not even SOFMAP (Japanese Cash converter) I sold it after two hours on this forum thanks to a New Yorker and I received tons of offer from the US...
Sony is really successful with women here, actually I had two office ladies asking information about the new Z in front of me in the VAIO booth.

 

This is only true if the entire drive fails. As mentioned, SSDs don't fail like traditional hard drives.

 

The current Z (i.e. C2D Z) cannot output 2560*1440, with or without a dock.

 

I prefer the Z (C2D) dock to a thinkpad dock, because it's faster to undock - you press a button and it usually (almost instantaneously) undocks and you can lift the Z up without having to play with a locking switch.

Note that while in the dock the Z is hard to undock accidently, only a lifting motion will disloge the Z. I've never undocked it accidently, in the last 1.5 years.

 

+1

Very interested in a good colour profile for the current Z running Win 7 x64. Can't get any good color reproduction, irregardless of what I do. I always have this horrible reddish tint ;(

 

So dock has single-link DVI, right?
And did you use HDMI-DVI or simple HDMI cable?

If Sony supports Hdmi 1.3 it may be able to drive 2560 screen with Hdmi 1.3 input. Did you try this?

 

See:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4458565&postcount=55

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4450873&postcount=47

I think there's still hope the new Z will support 2560*1440.

 

Hmmm, if it does not include a nice lint free cleaning cloth then I am going to cancel my order guys, that's a dealbreaker.

BTW, tried the Z dock with my Dell 3007 30" display and it will not work., only up to 1920x1200. But that was a whiiiile back with much older drivers and Win XP.
Will try again with Win 7 in a few days.

 

I'd want a single SSD option (with TRIM and optical drive). That would solve concerns of many of us.

 

I would guess that at least for the US, there's a chance that an authorised reseller such as Portable One/laptopsinc might provide that - a single 1.8" Intel should fit?

No affiliation with vendor.

 

High-quality video from Sony Style Osaka:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=813mS96RF6Y

Close-up shots of the unit and great view of the three black color options...

Silver details are here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/kunkoku1#p/u/1/mA_IC8bQfvw

 

me too, in fact I will boycott sony products forever

 

Thanks

Nice video.

Hope they will make video with standard application like (web browser, word,excel,outlook) open on screen with high resolution (1900X1080).

 

I wonder if import places like Dynamism, Geekstuf4u, etc. will be able to bring the glossy carbon fiber to the US.

 

Great video! Call me weird, but tbh if I was given the choice id choose black. I think it looks best. Not that I have a choice in the US

 

Actually, I liked the silver color palmrest better. The silver would look great with the black glossy carbon lid, but I'm not sure I want to deal with the maintenance hassle. I think I'll check them out tomorrow in Ginza.

 

I have a stack of broken SSDs that say otherwise.

Or, rather, first they fail on a block level, and the blocks get mapped away, and then they fail catastrophically. Due to efficient wear leveling algorithms, there's not always a lot of time between "first" and "then".

And "failing at a block level" isn't unique to SSDs -- that's just marketing. SCSI drives have had a reserved zone for remapping bad blocks since, oh, the 1980s, and these days, most ATA drives have automatic remapping too.

The difference in SSDs favour is that a block remap doesn't incur a slowness because the head has to go somewhere completely different. But the downside is that once it starts occurring, it's likely to occur a lot, all over the disk, until you're out of reserved space, whereas with a HDD, it's likely only going to affect one area of one platter.

An example, from one of my older drives:

Code:

# smartctl -A /dev/hdf | grep Reallocated
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   091   091   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       210

(The value 091 drops down from 100 towards 0 as failures occur. It's currently at 91, and the drive will be considered failing once it goes down to 36. 210 is the total number of sectors reallocated.)
This drive is perfectly safe to use.
However, if an SSD started showing the same behaviour, it would likely fail Real Soon Now due to the wear leveling causing blocks to become equally tired and failure prone.

Again, from my professional expertise, the failure rate of SSDs isn't really any lower than on HDDs over time, and especially not for MLC.

 

"Ground" means different things in different countries. In the US (and Japan, I believe), "ground" is just shorted to one of the two live wires. Other places, "ground" may be earth ground, or it may be floating ground.
So depending on where you are, you may not be able to plug a 2 prong plug into a 3 prong outlet, or the other way around. With the Z, Sony is marketing towards the business segment, where the sockets are likely to be grounded.

 

Silver paint is the pits for anywhere that is likely to be rubbed against. Go with non-painted palmrests if you can, and if that's not available, anything but silver.

 

What do you do that you have so many broken SSDs?

Also, plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

No sure, bad sector remapping is fairly common, but the difference is the amount of space set aside? My understanding is that current SSDs tend to have an extra 20%, I don't know what a current number for hard disks are, but I thought they tend to be more in the 5-10% region.

Any link?

What do you do?

--
I would say generally you might be right, and there are no reliability studies I know about which conclusively demonstrate that SSDs are more reliable (from a data loss perspective, they are more physically reliable). Having said that, given their current rate adoption we should find out soon.

While I would never use Raid 0 on a laptop with HDDs, given the other inherent SSD advantages (more shock-resistant, lower power draw, etc) I can imagine it being useful.

I am also assuming that the risk of data loss is somewhat lower - either Sony agrees with me, or is being very reckless. If SSD failure rate is as high as HDDs, "Quad SSD" means that the failure rates for the new Z laptops with such SSDs will be phenomenally high - this will bite them in the , so, well, hope that's not that they're doing.

 

Ground is never shorted to a live wire! That could kill someone. In the U.S. you can use any 2 pronged plug in a 3 prong outlet it just won't be connected to the ground at all. They actually make adapters to plug 3 pronged plugs into 2 pronged outlets as well called "ground lifts" which basically just disconnect the ground.

 

Thanks for the video! That metal mosaic actually looks quite nice in the video. I did not like it at all in the pics on Sony's site the vid really gives a good representation of the designs/colors available. Best I have seen so far.

 

Makers of 2-prong universal world-wide AC adapters (Kensington, Targus, etc.) must know something. They may have different AC plug heads for different countries but AC side of the adapter brick has 2 (two) contacts. Indeed, even Sony has 2-prong "worldwide" AC adapters. Do they sell total duds?

Laptop is never guaranteed to be grounded the same way as external devices simply because it may run on batteries, i.e. be not grounded at all. Why bother with grounding laptop AC adapter?

I understand importance of proper grounding of power source for analog radio or TV but this is completely different. I know that in a switching power supply the DC side is not completely isolated from AC (unlike in transformer based power supply) but they typically utilize half voltage between mains rails as a ground and that works fine.

 

The video also shows well how finger prints are visible on the glossy version of the lid...not really practical. Also is it just me, or the premium carbon one already has two scratches?

 

Yea I saw that too lol, Silver is the best for me it doesn't show the scratches or fingerprints, really easy to keep clean. I guess that's why all the Macbook Pros are silver. I don't really like the glossy either it kinda makes it look cheap like those shiny plastic netbooks but maybe it's different in person.

 

My apologies if the following links have been mentioned already, just to let you know guys:

(one by one from "weakest" to "highest" option as for now)

http://global.ebay.com/Sony_VAIO_Z_1190_Core_i5_293_GHz_nVidia_GT330M_1GB_N/260555156406/item

http://global.ebay.com/Sony_VAIO_Z_1190_Core_i5_306_GHz_nVidia_GT330M_1GB_N/250582294476/item

http://global.ebay.com/Sony_VAIO_Z_1190_Core_i7_333_GHz_nVidia_GT330M_1GB_N/280466876500/item

 

You'd think so.

US homes uses a "Live"+"Neutral" system, and "ground" is directly connected to "neutral" in the wall outlet (and quite often to live instead). So yes, on a three-prong outlet in the US, ground and one of the two prongs are directly connected. In many other parts of the world, you have two lives plus a "ground" that can either be a local neutral, an earthed ground, or floating ground.

The reason why the US system is the way it is is like the reason for most things in the US: Capitalism. Copper was expensive, and it was cheaper to string just two wires instead of three.

The down sides are that there's no real protection, and that lightning strikes tend to take out large parts of the electricity grid because the ground doesn't extend past the individual home.
The benefit (apart from saving copper) is that there's no potential between neutral and ground unless there's a grounding fault, so you don't run into the problem that floating ground countries have, where if you touch a faucet (earth) and a "grounded" piece of metal at the same time, you can get a jolt because of the potential difference.

US IT installations and newer buildings have a three-wire system, with the ground being a separate wire for all of the building, but it's usually still connected to neutral somewhere in the building, so it's not as useful as one might think, and a surge protector with ground isolation is still heavily recommended.

Anyhow, the differences between the electrical systems worldwide is a good reason why expensive business equipment should be delivered with a 3-prong adapter. You can always just use two wires, but you can't always go the other way and create 3 out of 2.

 

So.. any pics or videos of a 900/1080 comparison released yet?

 

Never to the hot/live side that would allow a tremendous amount of current to flow through the wire which would trip the breaker as long as the house was wired properly, it would also make the metal casing of whatever you plugged in a live conductor potentially electrocuting anyone that touched it if the circuit breaker is faulty.

Grounds are all connected to the neutral inside the breaker box in US homes. The electricity comes in from the hot/live side of the plug (the smaller of the two slots) and flows back to the power company through the neutral side (the larger of the two slots). The device you plug into the outlet completes the circuit.

The third prong on the outlets (round one) is the ground it is basically a safety feature created for appliances with metal housings in the event that a live wire inside the device we're to fray and come in contact with the metal housing it would trip the breaker to prevent the casing from carrying current and electrocuting someone.

The ground (round prong) is not neccesary for the machine to operate, it is only there as protection in the event the metal casing to which it would be attached comes in contact with a live/hot circuit.

Some devices use two pronged plugs because a third ground prong is not neccesary likely in the case of the Z because the device actually runs off of DC current, the AC Adapter/Power Supply which turns AC into DC is encased in plastic and the cord is insulated so a user would not normally be able to come into contact with the AC current from the outlet so there would be no risk of shock/electrocution.

 

I've got a joke for us VAIO people!
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5543&review=dell+latitude+z+z600
For that price tag it got me rolling on the floor
Just 0.5oz less than the Vaio Z.
One question; WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???

EDIT: now that I think about it, maybe if someone needs 16" worth of less than full HD display then it may be worth it if they do not mind it being an ultra low performer...

 

A "Thin and Light" 16" laptop does seem a bit of an oxymoron. Don't know who would wan't one of those over a Z the whole purpose of the thin and light is to be ultraportable and a 16" just isn't ultraportable no matter how you shake it, not to mention it has netbookish performance which pretty much totally negates the need for a 16" screen. I don't think this one will be a very big seller LOL

 

The glossy looks kinda girly. Premium carbon FTW!