Sony SA Series Discussion Sony's next new 13.3 laptop

What puzzels me is that Sony didn't put out a statement yet how the earthquake and the tsnunami has affacted their company.
Nikon for example told AP directly after the event that their factory for high end DSLR close to Sendai was affacted by the tsunami but nobody was harmed and today a spokes person told Ashai that production will probalby not resume for more than 14 days.
Did anybody find a statement from Sony concerning their emplyees and facilities?

I just read on the German news site Spiegel.de that one of Sony's factories was badly damaged by the flood of the tsunami and the other five were midly damaged. Due to the rationing of energy all factories have been shut down.

 

man this notebook is doomed, first the damn intel problems now an earthquake, perhaps we will only be able to buy SA version 2, since how much time its taking to be available with all those problems.

 

Anyone tracking an order? I placed my CTO on 3/11. Sony customer service reports they'll have more information on order status tomorrow (Monday). Details below. I'll update this post when I hear more.
Customization Details
CD/DVD Player / Burner Large Capacity Sheet Battery 500GB Hard Drive (7200rpm) No Fresh Start Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30 Day Trial) Adobe Bundle (Free - $448 value) 13.3" VAIO Display with LED backlight (1366 x 768) Intel® Core™ i5 2520M processor (2.50GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.20GHz 6GB (4GBx1; 2GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1333 Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (Click More Info for details.) Black Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit AMD Radeon™ 6470M GPU (512MB VRAM)

 

Yesterday I got an confirmation mail from sony that my CTO Sony Notebook SB will be assembled at the end of the next week.
I will update my status here.

 

Lets face it, after Fridays events the fate of the S series and any other consumer gadgets is completely and utterly irrelevant and unimportant right now.

 

Steve, here's my thoughts.. in all due respect, this is a notebook forum. My work responsibilities are unchanged despite the horrific events suffered. My concern for my purchase doesn't reflect a lack of sensitivity -as long as my inquiries are expressed patiently and w/ compassion. In fact, Sony's answered my calls with grace and understanding. Their corporate strength and ability to quickly resume (something like) normal business operations is only going to translate to positive news for the people of Japan...

Sony Global - News Releases - Sony Support for Japan Earthquake Relief Efforts

peace,
Phil

 

On Sony Canada's website the S series (i3/i5 and Nvida 310m) and the SB Series (Sandy Bridges/ATI 6630) are both available for CTO. The estimated ship for the SB Series is March 29,2011 (3/29/11).

 

Flinder, when did you place your order?
Phil

 

I placed my order on 3/3 going to be sent tomorrow to friday. I will probably learn more tomorrow

 

I don't think the CTO is 100% finalized, this was the case for the first or second version of the FW a year or so back. Lots of errors on that site especially the sheet battery at 0 dollars and the cheapo Blu ray drive at 20 bucks.

anyways, I am glad to see the 6630M comes standard and I can get it with the i5 cpu and not have to upgrade. Hopefully once the CTO is all set I will probably order one for the summer.

 

I'm curious, does your online order status change from "processing" prior to shipping?.. -are there stages of status?

 

I was also looking at the same thing, there are tons of errors, the question that comes is if sony is going to honor the pricing.

However I do need the VT-d option that only comes in the i5 2500 and the i7 models

Anyway, how do you intend to ship your laptop to poland? Im very interested, since I was going to ask a friend to ship me one from the US, now due to the delays, I think Im going for the canada option, aside that its cheaper, and I dont need the power of the i7. And aside that Im leaning towards the blue model, its been growing on me, Im tired of black laptops.

 

I wouldn't bet on Sony honoring the pricing since they can claim it was an error on the website or something. Although it doesn't hurt to try and order one

I might also go for the higher i5, if the price difference is not much in the real CTO. As for the shipping problem, well my mom and brother are coming to visit me here during the summer, so they will just bring it with them.

 

Oh bummer, I thought that you had a reseller, that would send you the pc... now I need to find a viable option

 

I placed my order on the 8 of march on the German website.

 

Sorry I know as a newbie to this forum this will be a stupid question, but what is "CTO". I saw the comment that the SB was available on the Canadian site thru CTO?
Thnx

 

Customize To Order and welcome to the NBR forums

 

Thank-You and Thanks great forum. Funny I cannot find the SB on the Canadian site at all yet and the E-mail I got from Sony Canada pre-quake said it would be available at the end of March??
Cheers

 

VAIO S Series PC | Sony | Sony Style Canada

 

Hmm, I will wait till they fix the errors and finalize things. The price is way to good to be true and I highly doubt they will honour it. Sheet battery for $0? Upgrade to i5 for $0? Bluray drive for $20? Lol.

That's like a loss of over $250 per laptop. So unless their profit margin is even higher than Apple, around 30% for upper MBPs, they'll be making no money or even losing money. They should put a donation option on their CTOs so I can donate some money for the relief efforts. I'd donate $50. I'm a poor uni student so that's pretty much all I can afford to donate. Though people ordering $2000 Z's would be willing to donate more I bet .

 

Certainly in my country (UK) & I suspect in most others, an incorrect price on a website or in a shop does not have to be honoured, as it is an invitation to treat not a contract of sale.

 

In the netherlands it depends if the price is clearly too low or normal.

 

Have you had any updates from Sony yet (you were about the second person after me on here to order one I think)?

I haven't heard anything so I guess mine didn't ship Friday, I'm about to call them to try and find out what's going on. Looks like a delay is pretty likely though.

 

Latest from Sony: according to their system my laptop should be at the main Sony Europe DC in the Netherlands today, but they are unable to 100% confirm this is the case for 24 hours.

The rep (a different one this time) told me again that SB manufacture/assembly is in Japan, so expect to see some big delays guys.

 

I just called them, the SB are made in japan as said before. They haven't had an official message from sony about the orders so the status is still unknown. My order was going to be sent on the 16th in japan to arrive at the 17th in the netherlands, well have to see if that will really happen.

 

Yeah from what the guy was saying I think the info on the system showing that mine should be in the Netherlands today dated from before the earthquake, but he was unsure whether it had actually been shipped. I'll find out tomorrow, otherwise it will be a long wait I think - I doubt they'll be shipping anything this week.

 

But as I told you, I got an email after the earthquake, that my vaio sb will be asembled at the end of this week. We will see, whether this just was a standard system mail or a real confirmed information. We will see.

 

I wonder if VAIO will be affected by this. Tokyo and other areas are going to have rolling blackouts.

Sony, Toyota Shut Factories After Power Shortages Follow Earthquake Damage - Bloomberg

 

Interesting - I had missed your post. They seem to be fairly clueless though, so it might be an automated email.

 

Lets hope it's not lost somewhere in this lot:

 

With the worst part being - if it is, they don't seem to know!

I can't really fathom a stock control system that only gives them the information that it 'should have' left the factory Friday, & it 'should have' reached Rotterdam today. Apparently they won't know until they unpack the consignment & enter the laptops onto the UPS tracking system?!

 

Not a chance. Sony and rest of Japan know there is nothing more important than ensuring that some geeks get the latest toys without delay.

 

When I have ordered my VAIO's in the past, you can track the progress, if it has a time stamp for Holland, then that is where it is. Normally you can login to Sony Style and check.

I wouldn't be surprised if things are going to be a bit messy over the next week or two though. At least your order was in the process of being shipped. There's going to be a severe delay on existing unshipped orders and Sony have removed CTO models from the website...

 

I think it's more likely that it's shipped, hopefully I'll find out more tomorrow. I didn't create a Sonystyle account when I ordered it so I don't think I get a tracking facility until they give me the UPS number. Although from the sounds of it the Sony tracking facility would only give me the same information that the people on the phone tell me when I ring them.

But yeah, definitely going to be a lot of delays on anything coming out of Japan for quite a while now.

 

I think there will be issues with everything from Japan right now. The nuclear situation is unfolding right now and a core Meltdown is possible. A US Navy vessel just turned away because of radiation. Exports of radiated goods will not be allowed in due to restrictions, in fact even the airlines are checking for radiation right now from airplanes coming in from Japan.

The situation is unfolding and this includes VAIO SA/SB Shipments in all likelyhood.

 

holy steve, amazing picture, really shows how powerful the earthquake was

 

Yeah the Canadian page is available now but there seem to be a few problems:



But the starting config at $999 is precisely what I would like, great to see the 6630 as the only option(That seems odd to me, I'm thinking they will add at least the intel integrated option). It's strange to not see the 6470/6490 as an option. I assume the one USB3.0 port is standard accross all models?

 

Yep, I can't add one to my shopping cart. I could yesterday but the SPRING200 code wouldn't apply.

Wireless mobile broadband is 3g/4G now wifi.. so not really a big problem as I don't think thats a feature available on many Canadian spec laptops.

 

yeah one usb 3 is standard with no options to upgrade, my thinking is its better than 0 usb 3's

would be interesting for them to ditch the 6470 as the base gpu. maybe they know you canadians dont get out much and need your gaming... joke dont flame me.........

 

Reply from Sony Canada regarding the fact that the order wont work.

 

I got the same reply in regards to my girlfriends laptop. They cancelled the order as well.

 

that is good news!

There was or is a coupon code for the SB in canada, it is SPRING200

 

Just to be clear, getting irradiated does not make something radioactive. So if a person or laptop gets hit by radioactive fallout from a meltdown, the laptop (or person) does not become radioactive. In fact meat is often irradiated to kill bacteria- and this does not damage the meat in any way (although it would hurt the cow if it was still alive.)

You can get radioactive products on you (like radioactive dust that has to be washed off.)

 

just leave him be, he doesnt even know that every exported fruit gets irradiated, as the meat, and several other products considered food.

there are in several ports of the US, equipment for scanning goods with too much radiation as well, those are against of course for glow in the dark terrorists.

at least now we dont need the nightvision googles to see them.

 

Nuclear fallout of plutonium which is in one of the reactors in Japan is fatal.

Meat irradiation is ionizing radiation and is a totally different class of radiation than what would happen from nuclear fallout.

In fact the US Navy Vessel en route to Japan kept offshore because the radiation levels were just too high that they were facing. This was not the same as the meat irradiation process and these two are not comparable.

If in fact it was comparable, the Navy vessel would have fully made it to Japan and would not have had to worry about increasing radiation levels on approach closer to the mainland because in fact irradiated meat does not cause any known health consequences.

Apparently we will learn more and the events are unfolding now. A status update will hopefully be given by Kaku on ABC (6:30PM EST) in the USA as he seems to be following these developments carefully with his collegues. He has top credentials and has always been an outspoken individual on these matters. By sheer coincidence he happened to be a Japanese American before this crisis unfolded.

As far as the status on these notebooks, I am sure in the future when they are supposed to come due we will find out if there are any known delays due to the ongoing events.

As of right now, I sincerely doubt that production will be rampant on the VAIO's in large supply. The most they will most likely be able to do possibly is limited supply with batteries out of an alternative factory assuming the notebooks were ODM's at the Chinese plants which is most likely Quanta on these models which would be manufactured in Taiwan.

The batteries and perhaps blueray drive options came from Sony's Japan factories which were impacted.

So the Japanese versions of the notebooks will likely have issues facing supply.

Sony usually uses Quanta on models like these so my guess is these would have been manufactured in Taiwan or China however it is possible they could have moved initial shipments to a production facility in Japan for final assembly. Unclear on this point.

Gokouun o inorimasu.

Bows politely.

 

they havent even start distributing the potassium iodide tablets.

of course production would suffer, mainly because of the power shortages. Although I dont think that this would be much longer. Sony would lose much more revenue, which they cant afford due to the terrible profits that they have, from stopping the production instead of relocating the necessary materials.

 

adamj023, no trying the minimize the seriousness of their nuclear issues. Just pointing out that things do not become radioactive when exposed to high levels of radiation. People are at risk, but laptops that they ship will not be dangerous or radioactive.

Delays will be due to problems with infrastructure because of the disaster. Not concerns that the products themselves will be dangerous or need to be quarantined.

 

Disagree. Radiation levels will be a factor. Computers are delicate and radiation exposure will also harm the operating performance of such systems not to mention the impact to human life.

At any rate: Sony has not even mentioned anything yet and the laptops have not been released to market and we will see if they meet the deadline.

US Customs has radiation detection on hand and if Sony were to ship out radioactive equipment such would be rejected and barred entry.

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/port_activities/cargo_exam/rad_portal1.xml

I am not anti free trade. The Japanese were and are terrific people as a whole and have every right to compete on American shores. However IF radiation was detectable that were harmful to humans and/or causing problems with equipment, they would not be accepted nor received on American shores.

So yes the nuclear radiation threat is involved here. If equipment was produced in this area and there was no fallout or quality control problems then the equipment would have no problem being received. However in all likelyhood the opposite is true and all parts and supply were likely damaged forcing new plants to be built elsewhere or plants in other areas expanded when possible.

I honestly don't see how Japan can rebuild in facilities that were located close to the nuclear plant sites.

We will in due time see how it all plays out but it could take a year or years before it all gets sorted out.

When the release date for this notebook approaches, we will see what happens. Such as if they get shipped out and if they possibly were able to procure a new battery supplier or whatnot.

It will be 15 days before we see if Sony is shipping these notebooks out at all.

 

Radiation doesnt do much to computers. The radiation of Alpha, Beta and gamma rays is also ionizing, like radiation done on meat. The problem isnt radiation its radioactive particles. The radioactive particles that where released in the atmosphere in japan aren't that radioactive and almost all of it has already broken down because of its low half life.
So even if a laptop was made in japan in the current situation there wouldn't be any harm when we would use it.
The manufacturing doesn't happen with open roofs just to let in enough radioactive particles to make the laptops a danger.

 

Most likely will not affect the blu-ray drives for the VAIO SB series if they use similar Blu-ray drives to the ones found in the VAIO VPC-Z series.

The Panasonic/Matsush*ta UJ242 Blu-ray drives found in the VAIO VPC-Z series notebooks are assembled in the Philippines.