Perhaps an alternative to the IB/Z

ASUS Unveils 1080p, Ivy Bridge-Powered Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX21A

 

It really is getting harder and harder to justify the Z's price tag given other ultrabooks are catching up so fast...

 

Not an alternative if you need a fast CPU. The Zenbook Prime will use ULV CPUs. And I'm sure Sony is quite aware that competitors are getting close to where they were 2 years ago.

 

I think Z3 will be cheaper!!

 

We still have 3 external monitors using the PMD, double the battery lifetime with the sheet battery, 3G, Fingerprintreader with TPM and less weight. So it still is the king of ultraportables!

 

Here's hoping Sony lowers their price

 

Very hard to justify it these days.

Samsung Series 9 900X3B review - Laptop - Trusted Reviews

That Samsung is half the cost of my 2010 Z series. Sony would be doing well to get on par with that machine, but to charge around £2000 for the next Z, just how can it be justified? It can't, can it?

I don't do anything that CPU intensive, so a 'full monty' i5 & i7 just isn't a requirement any more.

 

If a ULV SB/IB processor can turboboost to the max in the given chassis, it performs roughly in the range of a full-voltage arrandale CPU. Depending on the application, of course.

 

in theory, yes

but the cooling system has to be able to sustain full turbo clock under load. Also heavy graphics and cpu load might push the TDP too much for turbo boost to be activated

 

This begs the question: do "average" users need any more CPU performance than that? On which applications would one notice the lack of cpu performance from a ULV IB cpu vs. a SV? Of course, the HD 4000, even at lower clock rates, would outperform an SB with HD3000, yes?

 

I'm hard pressed to disagree for my own case. Given how Pyr0 compares the ULV IB cpu to a full voltage Arrandale, my little Z13 looks more and more like the ultrabook nobody is making: 3 lbs "light" (not paper thin, but geez louise!), awesome screen, wonderful backlit, full-stroke keyboard, ports galore, even the OD, which I still value (me and one other person in the known universe, to hear people speak!) . True, it lacks the endurance of the SB and IB ULVs, but packing an extra battery for the day pretty much takes care of it.

That said, it's gong to be hard not to get something shiny and new - and thin as paper It just better have the ergonomics of the Z1, and I'm hearing most don't.

 

There is no "average" user. I would say most people do not even need a Core 2 Duo system as they do not fully utilize it most of the time. The most appealig benefits of the new technologies in the mobile segment is that they do offer significant better processing power/battery life ratio but that's it. If you check out the i7-2677M (Asus UX21) on notebookcheck benchmarks, you will find that it is everything but slow (in some benchmarks, it outperforms high performance SV arrandale chips like 620M or 640M) and that in a 17W package. That's simply amazing. Only the chips with least leakage current will become ULV chips (so they are actually more valuable than their full voltage counterparts).

The HD4000 will be a lot faster than the HD3000, about 40% average. See current benchmarks here: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Benchmarked - Notebookcheck.net Reviews.

My personal guesstimation is that the ULV HD4000 will be as fast as a full clocked HD3000.

 

Long story short: IB U-books will have the approx cpu (ULV) performance of the Z1/Arrandale SV and HD4000 will perform about as well as the gimped nVidia 330 in the Z1. The IB U-B will get approximately 3X the battery life of the Z1 with standard battery.

Those were meant as questions.

 

Excellent to see the ASUS UX21A full HD screen confirmed: hopefully it makes Sony come out with a higher resolution sooner

Still, Z has plenty of advantages, but even for me, if UX21A gets 8GB RAM and at least 160GB worth of SSD, I might take that while waiting for a 1440p Z