New Z model with Intel Core i5 CPU

Yeah, in theory you could order from Friday 26th but they had so much orders that they blocked it until today...And same thing is happening now...
Hum... Does anyone knows if we should reserve for next Saturday? Sounds like it's going to be tough, many guys couldn't reserve and are starving for the Z...

 

You can order now; there are just technical difficulties with the ordering systems so you may have to try a few times for the order to go through (it took me around 8 tries last Thursday!).

 

Can't wait till some of you start getting your Z's and we get real hands'on reviews. CeBit will keep my attention this week. It looks like there is significant pent-up demand for the Z and the ordering/shipping process may be quite chaotic for awhile. I am ready to order but still have questions about the SSD and would like the true high def screen as a CTO option on the US sony style site. Before I pay the premium of a foreign reseller, I'll wait a short while to see if there are changes made to the US CTA.

Bronsky

 

Anybody knows which Z models will be sold at USA SonyStyle retail stores ? Sometimes they are different from SonyStyle web.

 

Judging by other reviews, I fear that site might not be technical enough to be able to answer the questions. Opinions like "the colors were right-on", "to be honest, the difference is very minimal" and "we suspect that the battery will boost your life with approximately two hours" do not make adequate substitutes for actual measurements.

And, of course, like most review sites, it's based on very short term usage, so my guess is that there won't be any measurements on how the lack of TRIM will affect the drives. I very much doubt that this site will do "the Anand thing" and force the drives into oversaturation (or even know how to do so).

 

I notice HP has an interesting 13.3" option coming with brushed aluminum and ATI's 5350 GPU:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/01/hp-spices-up-probooks-with-core-2010-cpus-clickpads-and-caviar/

 

I'm just considering applying for the Sonystyle card here in Japan to get 5% discount... but I am a bit suspicous of all the small print (I noticed yearly fees of 2,100yen since second year of usage) and credit card business in general. Does anyone think it's worthy just for one-time purchase? Or where can I get some rabate coupon? Natadiem seems to have one worth 4000y, me wanna too

http://www.sonyfinance.co.jp/ap/sonystyle/

 

Japanese tend to have the nasty habit of paying their bills in full, much to the chagrin of creditors here. Therefore, banks and credit card companies make money off regular fees instead of late payments.

I think you can get a discount by simply signing up for a Sony account. I already had an account, so it didn't apply to me. I would definitely sign up. Coupons will be automatically applied at checkout.

 

For the coupon I just needed to register one Sony product.
I received a couple of useless email and a coupon for a few new Vaio notebook, including the Z.

 

Does anyone know whether the new Z will be compatible with "wireless display?" The BestBuy sony CS11 is an official 'Blue Label' machine and it would be nice to stream from the z to your tv without dealing with cables.

I ck'd into the minimum requirements and it seems like new Z has the platform requirements: HM57 express chipset, 6200 wireless card or better and i5m/i7m. However, Intel's site says something about the software must be "pre-installed and enabled."

 

no, it won't have that ability

 

Thanks for the info, I just created my Sony ID... now trying to go through the register check-out procedure, still unsuccessfully (about 10trials), seems like the shopping rush for the new Z is still going on... I'll try again tomorrow.

 

Does anybody knows, that the Intel Wlan drivers now support the Win7 feature with virtual Wlans - meaning to setup the Windows7 Notebook as accesspoint?

// Edit:

On the old Z it works now, with the builtin adapter: "Intel WiFi Link 5300"

Arghh: Intel have done her own solution:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20091106/latest-intel-drivers-windows-7-virtual-wifi-support/

Here is reported that Intel now support vwlan
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20091106/latest-intel-drivers-windows-7-virtual-wifi-support/

Does anybody knows, what chipset is used for the new z?

 

Why don't you apply for the card, get the discount and then pay it off right away ? Of course you need to read through the fine print to make sure that there are no hidden traps.

 

That's why I asked for some oppinions, because I'm too lazy to read thru Japanese legal fine print... I'd probably wouldn't understand it even in English.

I'm also tempted to apply for Wimax internet contract (max speed 7.2MB), never used wireless internet... seems so tempting + there is a 30,000yen cashback now while ordering new Vaio models. Perhaps too good to be true, better study the footnotes once again, seems like they send the money back to some account after 6months if I fullfill certain criterias, sleeepy....zzzzzzz

 

Maybe we should all send Anand an email once asking him to review the laptop. Oh and of course tease him about how awesome the 1080p screen is (ie 8-bit screen, 96% abodeRGB, etc.) since he has been asking to see a laptop with a display that doesn't suck.

 

I finally succeeded at getting thru the check-out process (3:30am) using my newly created Sony account, but there is no discount waiting for me there, unfortunately. The only discount available seems to involve paying by the Sony (credit) Card, which seems to be a cashback later on... in any case, the displayed price doesn't change no matter what

Once I get the courage to press the "confirm your order" button, I might just check the "payment in cash" option, guess I am old-fashioned, but I don't like credit-cards...

My desired configuration so far:
Windows Proffessional
Core i7-620M
1600×900
4GB ram
128 SSD (dual)
WiMax
headphones
webcamera
Japanese keyboard (backlight)
AC stick adapter
price: 222,800 yen (2,498.56 USD... hmmm, pricey)
estimated delivery: first third of April


note: if I chose iLink, the estimated delivery would be first third of May

 

Very interesting. But, they all have low res screens. Crap.

 

And it looks like the 5350 was a typo - the press release says the gpu is ATI 4350.

-Peter

 

Amazing how many typos occur with mission-critical specs. One might reasonably assume every PR and marketing department on earth are staffed by dead, blind, infant monkeys with ADD

 

Forgive me if someone already responded to this - as I am still reading through this enormous thread (nothing elicits longer threads than the Vaio Z) - but I'd be interested in seeing the perverse math that manages to degrade the lifespan of each individual drive from 7 years to 5 1/2 months, just because they are in the same machine. That just makes no logical sense at all.

 

On the other hand, a December, 2009 ATI press release said that the HD 5350 was being installed on Pavillion or Pavillion Elite Notebooks.

http://www.guru3d.com/news/ati-radeon-hd-5350-and-5570/

That's a pretty weak card. I don't think that any of these HP's are going to be competition for the Sony. Now if HP would pay attention to the 13" Envy.

 

With multiple drives, when one drive fails, that doesn't affect the other drives.
With striped drives, when one drive fails, they all fail. Not physically, but the data on all drives gets corrupted when any one of them fails. With four drives in a stripe, you not only increase the risk of failure, but effectively quadruple the scope of the failure too.

An example: Say a brand of drives have a linear[*] MTBF of 10 years. Sounds good, right?

Machines with a single drives will have a data failure rate of 10% after a year.
Machines with two drives will have a failure rate (risk of at least one drive failed) of 1-(1-0.1)^2 = 19%
Machines with two drives in a stripe will have a data failure rate of 1-(1-0.1)^(2+1) = 27%
A machine with four drives will have a data failure rate of 1-(1-0.1)^4 = 35%
Machines with four drives all striped will have a data failure rate of 1-((1-0.1)^(4+3+2+1) = 65%

Oops, not so good after all?

This is why many admins won't use stripes except where the speed advantage and storage capacity are both paramount, while data integrity isn't.

If all you need is read speed, RAID 10 is just as fast, but allows at least one drive to fail without losing any data.
And at a small sacrifice in speed, RAID 5 also provides redundancy, with less drive space lost than RAID10.

Summary: Striping is for ricers, or those with a legitimate need for the speed/safety trade-off.


[*]: In reality, the failure curve isn't linear, but a dual bell curve, with a large top at the "new" point, and a much flatter top near the median lifespan. So reality is not as bad as the above example for drives that survive their first few days of operation, but worse if taking DOAs and early failures into account. However, it serves to illustrate, as it greatly simplifies the maths.

 

I just want 256GB of solid non moving storage. I dont give a rats *** if its seriously fast as hell as long as its not slower than my current 120GB 5400rpm HDD.

So whats for me? JBOD? Raid 10? Raid 5?

 

Yellowfrizbee: if you get the 256GB model then yes, JBOD will work for you as the safest solution.
Even at their slowest, Samsung SSDs of that series (don't remember which but I looked it up earlier in this thread) will operate much faster than a 5.400RPM HDD or even most 7.200RPM models.

 

Is there a difference in what you can do depending on which size you buy? I was going to get the 192 GB.

 

JBOD, a.k.a. individual drives.
The down side is that you have to portion out what you use each drive for, e.g. one for system software, one for games, one for downloads...

While that can be a hassle, it can also be a benefit, simplifying backups, for example. There's often a less need to make backups of downloads or game installs, while you can set aside a drive solely for making local online backups of the most critical data.

Neither RAID 0, RAID 5 nor RAID 10 works with TRIM. Which is why I'd recommend JBOD (or RAID 1 for the ultra-cautious who can live with far less disk space).

 

The 192 GB will likely show up as three drives of 64 GB (well, 59 GB or so, once you've fed the kibibyte monster and subtracted the wear leveling area).
Which limits you to the following combinations:

JBOD: 3*64 = 64 & 64 & 64
RAID 0: 3*64 = 192
RAID 1: 3*64 = 64
RAID 5: 3*64 = 128
RAID 0 & single: 2*64 = 128 & 64
RAID 1 & single: 2*64 = 64 & 64
RAID 1 & spare: 2*64 + 64 = 64

In other words, you lose RAID 10 and RAID 5 + spare, both of which require at least 4 drives.

 

I asked this question in the parallel thread, but I'll move it to this thread to keep things together (and to get an answer )

Is it possible to configure the Z this way, to have just 2 of 4 SSDs in RAID and the other 2 as JBOD?

If I intend to use the Quad SSDs in RAID 01, how can I configure it in a way to have the data and the mirrored data on two separate physical drives (i.e. in case of 4x64GB SSDs not to have 64GB of data and its mirror copy sandwiched together)? How can you recognize which drives are sandwiched together and which are not?

 

What would we do without you Arth?
I admit I do not have the patience to explain everything as you do.
I do that with the people I work for and I have "trained" everyone to just take my word for it so I do not have to say the same thing twice or if I do not feel like going into technical details. If I say some solution is going to work they accept it and move on.
So when I am on my computer I rarely have enough time to be online, let alone explain once more why something is better than the other.
So really thank you for that.

 

I don't know that you can. You'd have to trace which SATA port equals which physical drive. I believe if I remember some screenshot posted a while ago correctly, the Quad array has drives on SATA 0, 2, 3 and 4 (presumably 1 is for the DVD). Now logically I'd expect the first "physical" drive to be ports 0 and 2, and the second 3 and 4, but that would need confirmation.

 

The controller allows for multiple RAID sets and allows for spared to be added to an existing set. I found that somewhere in the Intel Storage Matrix literature... will try to find it.

 

Thanks! This would be important to know (given someone wants RAID 01), because having the data and the mirror copy on the same physical drive (i.e. same sandwich) wouldn't make too much sense.
I suppose these double SSDs can only be changed for another double SSD, not piece by piece.

Thanks, didn't know that this is possible.

 

Would it be possible to call a sales representative and somehow omit the SSD drive off of a CTO configuration? Not only would it reduce the price, but it would allow one to choose what they find most suitable for their needs. The ambiguity over the SSD's long-term performance, and the reaffirmed lack of TRIM support (which will no doubt be the main culprit when it comes to performance degradation) has made the SSD drive seem more of a hassle than of a convenience. After reading through these forums, Sony's 'special' SSD has become all the less appealing. Besides, hard drives have been around for a long time, and are more reliable. Taking into consideration the high price of this notebook, issues in the stability of Sony's SSD are still questionable. The lack of an option to choose a traditional hard drive is disappointing for those who want to stay on the safe side... Therefore, it seems like a better choice to install a hard drive/SSD oneself, and have the necessary supplementary software shipped with the notebook. Will try to call a sales rep to see if such an arrangement is possible. After all, its better to do a clean install anyway...

 

Figured thats what the answer would be. Once more, I thank you kindly for your wisdom.

Not such a bad thing. Sounds a little inconvenient but only for the lazy. Then again if I end up being a slob, I imagine I can just fill up one drive then move onto the next and so on. Hah, kinda makes the Quads pointless if im sticking to JBOD eh? Might as well have one single 256GB. Rather that tbh unless there is some advantage to Quad that I do not know of (other than the fact of Raid compatibility)

And going off of what youve explained, I assume the Quad SSD 256GB would play out:

JBOD: 4*64 = 64 & 64 & 64 & 64 (separately making up 256GB in all)
RAID 0: 4*64 = 256 (Four physical drives to make up one big 256GB drive)
RAID 1: 4*64 = 128 (two out of the four physical drives acting as mirrors)
RAID 5: 4*64 = 192

Sorry, just me trying to retain the knowledge. If there is a mistake, I apologize. Never claimed to be the best student ! How easy is it to switch between Raid arrays and JBOD etc?

 

read/write speeds approaching 3x that of a single SSD....might be considered a benefit.

 

Are we going to have to get you and Arth a room?

 

While running in JBOD? As in no Raid. They are simply four separate single SSD drives whilst in JBOD are they not?

Just wondering, what is it that you guys are gonna do when you get the machine? Like what Raid option etc are you planning? JBOD? Two in Raid 0 and two in JBOD? Do share

 

For those living in Canada, check out what I have found at the University of Calgary Micro Store website--to the bottom of the page (price included)

http://www.campuscomputerstore.ca/ucalgary/search.php?search_mode=basic&search_string=vaio&x=0&y=0

 

The battery life is back up on the US sony site, it changed from 7.5 to 6.5........ how sad ...

also i have a question, someone said they got a 5% discount and a free 3 year warranty, was this in the U.S? has anyone else been able to do this? and was the order CTO or pre built?

THanks in advance

 

6.5 hours for the regular battery or the extended one?

6.5 is awesome in my book. The Gateway and Toshiba laptops I've had could barely ever last for 2.5 hours (maybe it was less than that). Since I've been borrowing my brother's laptop (Sony NW), I'm amazed at how it lasts for like 3.5 hours - it's so amazing to me compared to what I've had.

 

Anyone have any idea if we could somehow order the 1080p screen? That's what I'm really lusting after. And for some reason, Japan doesn't have the 256GB SSD option on their site.. And I really just wanted 192GB. I could just get one when I'm in Japan this summer, but it'd be nice to just get one in the US...

 

^ 6.5 battery life on the standard is perfect in my book as well. Id be grateful with that.

Damnit! All I really want is 256GB in JBOD. As opposed to four drives of 64GB. My concerns? Its much easier to keep one drive of 256GB under 70% full than to keep four different drives of 64GB under 70% full each. I want all my eggs in one basket please!

Unfortunately the only way it seems I can do this is in one of the many Raid arrays. Which gives terribly unnecessary speeds for my tasks and requires me to do much more maintenance than Id like to think about. Not to mention safety issues!

 

In Switzerland, Sony doesnt offers the 512 GB quad Raid Drives, only one maxed out config, with HD Display and 256 GB SSD Raid :-(

But it isnt a problem to order in NL oder Japan, but - how do we get our local language Keyboards? For me, i need a Swiss-German keyboard (not same than German).

I thought that couldnt be a problem - and try to find a way to order the swiss-german Keyboard of the old Z - assuming that i could order there later a the keyboard of the new Z...

But unfortunately - i doesnt find a way to order the keyboard :-/

I am in march in Miami - and could buy there too the new z - but will stuck again. Does anybody here knows a way, to get the swiss-german Keyboard?

 

I just looked up some numbers. According to http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667 , a lack of TRIM support could affect performance pretty bad, in that case it's ~3x slower when it hits the wall.

However, remember that the SSD array in the Z is still more than 6x faster than a HDD, so even if you hit the degradation wall, you're still up 2x for *sequential* reads. But often, the real drag with a HDD is the seek times, and then most SSD leave most HDD in the dust.

 

So yeah,

I was the one who started the other thread because I knew that the question I was asking was specifically only for those who wanted to find out about SSDs in RAID.

So what is the conclusion?
I am being led in that thread to believe that all we have to do is to format the whole thing and viola the whole thing is working like new.

I've been reading Anand/overclock blah blah and nobody even suggests anything close to that.

If fact, Anand specifically said that you should avoid any SSD without TRIM.

Did I read something wrong somewhere?
Can someone point me to a particular link which tells me otherwise?

Cos like I was saying, SSDs without TRIM is like a hard drive without defrag except you hit it MUCH faster. In about 3 to 6 months of normal use.

3 times slower is pathetic. I wouldn't accept this since we're all paying premium for them.

 

Again, do we really know this is the case? You would think Sony's flagship model wouldn't have such an obvious problem like that. Let's see what those crazy Japanese have in store once some people get their models this week and tell us.

 

Hey emev,

The key question that none of the review sites tackled was the sensitive question [I suspect none of them want to be blacklisted by Sony from further previews] of whether the SSDs have TRIM. This was conveniently left out considering how the issue of TRIM is known for at least over a year and the big players are all working their asses off to solve this issue.

For 2) The reason why people ain't complaining could be either, a) They didn't know that their SSDs are actually running up to 3 times slower now. Most people don't benchmark their PCs when they get them and compare them down the road. b) They know about it and can't do anything about it.

I believe you can't use JBOD to utilize TRIM. It's once again a array of drives and that's sorta where the TRIM function is lost unless the RAID controller has TRIM capability. Even Adaptec/Intel hasn't launched anything in the world with that functionality at the moment. The best bet is to have them as seperate drives...unfortunately.

The question still remains for the early adopters to help us.

Do the drives have TRIM?
Quad SSD or not...it's crippled if it lacks TRIM.

 

I second you EC.

I have the VAIO SZ at 1366 and the previous generation Z at 1600.
Gosh...I practically have to sniff the screen to read stuff on my Z.
Too bad the Z is a far better machine compared to my SZ I'm forced to stick with it.

Changing the DPI on Windows doesn't help. In fact, it usually breaks a helluva tonne of applications. You start losing your buttons to click on because they hard coded the window size to a specific pixel. ["Can't click 'Continue/Next' syndrome"]

1920 is sweet...on a 50" TV it is.

 

Arth,

Great way of describing lack of TRIM problems. I was already saying it was worse than lack of defrag for HDDs but you put it in a much simpler and elegant way.

Perhaps Cataphract is not slamming the dpi. He's pointing out a very real issue actually. Because like I was saying, I do have the same 13.3" SZ and Z with me right now and the Z requires me to squint to read stuff. There's obviously no right or wrong about the design. Just a matter of what the requirements of the user is.

I'm a hardcore VAIO nut. I have a few of them myself and never sold a single one. Still have'em all.

I love the Z the most and am extremely excited about this particular upgrade considering the video card. [That to me, is far more exciting the the SSD now that we're still waiting for a verdict on TRIM]

For me...a very nice customized Z would allow me to choose a lower resolution because I am far more likely to plug it into a 22" and above external monitor knowing how powerful the graphics card is and when I'm forced to look into the 13.3, at least I don't have to squint.