Sony History

Do Sony have a history of changing the spec after they release their line of notebooks? From what I know, they never change the spec in the middle of product line. Only in each new line of notebooks do they change the spec, ie from SZ1 to SZ2 or from FZ to FW but once they release the notebooks, the spec will never change until they introduce the new product line.

 

They will refresh a line several times before its replaced, some more than others, the SZ has had many refreshes before finally being replaced 2.5 years of release!

To my knowledge, I haven't seen them add extra ports or whatnot, but they will refresh the processors and chipsets as Intel provides (like SZ going from Intel Napa to Penryn) and also give options for larger hard drives as they are released, more ram, etc.

 

Yes but they never change the spec between refresh, do they? I mean, when they released SZ1, the spec of SZ1 didn't change until SZ2. And I am guessing that their new line of notebooks, FW1, SR1 and Z1 spec will not change until they introduce FW2, SR2 and Z2 which probably won't be out until early next year.

 

Yes, your right on that. Of course the specs differ on the different models in the FW1 series, the costlier, higher-end models will have better specs for example with the American FW140 vs FW198.

 

OK, based on our discussion, would it be a safe bet to say that Sony will not release FW1 with Radeon 3650 for the US market? Even for FW2, they may only update the CPU and network card but not the video card?

 

Unfortunately, I think they will not.

With the previous FZ series, the Geforce 8600 was available in either Europe or the UK and all other regions only had the 8400, even Japan, the home region!

I think again, Europeans will get the ATI Radeon 3650 and all other regions are stuck with the 3470.

I really want to know why only they are getting the more powerful videocard when even the Japanese cannot get it!
But to be fair, they have to suffer paying very high prices for their notebooks (among many other things) compared to us.

On a sidenote, with the CR series, Asia has an option for a ATI X2300 videocard and we are stuck with Intel's X3100 graphics.

 

My guess is that in Europe they compete with different manufacturers, like Acer, which typically put a little more higher end video card at a similar price point to differentiate their product -- look at how the Asus and Acer here in US typically has better GPU than HP and Dell Inspiron. Acer and Asus probably have not gotten enough market penetration in US and Japan to force Sony -- and other manufacturers big in US and Japan -- to raise the bar.