SZ available around end of march in OZ

Sony Australia has confirmed that the SZ and prolly the FE will be available in OZ around end of March 06

Any Aussies waiting for the SZ out there?

 

Thats nice to know Seb.
I've been needing to get a laptop for a while.
I contacted sony australia with the exact same request on the 26th of January. Unfortunately for me they said they did not have any ETA on the SZ.

The wait till the end of march will be painful. But atleast I now know when the sz will be out here

cheers

 

Oh yeah its a painful wait...

 

sony has removed a few laptops from their australian website .
But alas, no updates about the SZ or FE yet.

 

Yeah, i've noticed that...

 

I've been keeping an eye out for news regarding the SZ series' Australian release for a while now. This just came through in a Sony Style email:

Fingers crossed they'll be available as advertised.

 

Went to sony central melbourne and they didn't even know what's the SZ is
Lame retards

 

The specs are a bit thin - is either of these a "premium" model like the sz-160? The sz18gp says "Set in Carbon Black colour and enhanced by premium aluminium hairline palm rest, sophisticated design details create a style suited for any occasion." - but what is it actually made of?

Also, some of the specs seem a bit lightweight - 128M graphics ram, shared? No mention of the hybrid graphics (except for a mention of "stamina" mode under battery life). They seem to have cut several corners compared to the US options - hopefully more models will come out in time...

I've never bought from Sony Australia before - do they give you much scope for customising the machine (i.e. more RAM, bigger hard disk) or are you stuck with what they offer as the default? (I know, you can buy more RAM yourself, but salary sacrifice makes getting everything in one bundle rather more attractive)

 

I did the same thing last weekend and got a similar response. The sales assistant quite frankly admitted to being "lazy" as he hadn't "done [his] homework in a while." In his defence he did offer to call someone who would know (probably head office) but, being a weekend, he didn't get through to anyone.

 

80GB HD & 512mb ddr2 & 128mb video for $3699 , SONY that's lame I'll pass on the SZ

I'll wait for the Asus W3J

 

Wanting to know more about the SZs before I laid my hard earned cash on the line, I subbmitted the following questions through the Sony Australia website:

The answers I got back a week later left a lot to be desired:

It's good to know Sony Australia endorse the use of eBay to compensate for the shorcomings in their product range. I'll keep you posted on any future updates.

 

I can help but agree with seb the price for the congif is just absolutely ridiculous. Poor effort on sony's part i mean for $3500 atleast 1 GB RAM with more hard disk space and even then its over priced

i just ordered bine in HK since i travel there often...saved me around $700

 

I got the SZ out of my thoughts and bought the ASUS V6J which comes with T2400, 1GB, 120GB HDD and it cost me AUD$3200. But i'm not quite happy with ASUS Australia yet. Their service needs improvement. The techie here are slackers

 

Even though they're more than a kilo heavier (2.8kg) and physically bigger than the SZs, I've started looking at the new Dell 6400. No accellerated graphics yet but thats bound to change in the near future.

Aside from the ASUS V6J, what other lightweight, resonably spec'ed Core Duo notebook options are there in Australia?

 

I'm still dithering between getting an ultralight (and a separate desktop for gaming) or going for something heavier. The sz series is the *only* one that seems like a good compromise, and even then the 7400 is possibly a bit slow for games like Oblivion.

Lightweight core duos in Australia are:
- The Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad X60 - slightly lighter and smaller than the sz series, but has external optical drive only, integrated graphics (intel 950) and 1024x768 resolution. May well be more rugged than other options though.
- The sony "vgnsz18p" is the higher-end sz series, which would be appealing if I didn't know the sz160 overseas is so much better
- The Asus w5j is also smaller and lighter but with integrated graphics. It at least has 1280x800 resolution. Won't suit me though because I want a pcmcia slot.

There may be other options. Or maybe if we yell loud enough Sony Australia will release a better version of the sz.