Sony SA Series Discussion Sony's next new 13.3 laptop

I don't know if anyone here has seen this yet, it's from specialized trade publication for the shipping industry.

Sony Idles Japan Plants, May Shift Production
The Journal of Commerce Online - News Story

Parts shortages, power outages force suspended production

Electronics giant Sony said it may shift some production outside Japan as plant shutdowns spread amid parts shortages and power outages in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.

Sony said shortages of parts and materials would force it to reduce or suspend production through the end of March at five additional plants -- mostly in central and southern Japan -- that make cameras, televisions, microphones and other products. A sixth plant in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was set to resume production on Tuesday, but it could be interrupted by the rolling blackouts that are affecting some areas supplied by Tokyo Electric Power.

Production at six northern Japanese Sony plants has been suspended since the disaster. The consumer electronics giant said it was inspecting and repairing buildings and machinery with a view to re-starting production at these sites.

"If the shortage of parts and materials supplied to these plants continues, we will consider necessary measures, including a temporary shift of production overseas," Sony said.

Production was continuing normally at other factories, but the company said it was keeping a close eye on its supply chain.

Earlier, Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, joined the list of technology companies saying they expect Japan's earthquake and tsunami to affect product supply.

The Finnish company said it is seeking alternatives for the 12 percent of its components that are sourced from Japan. "Although a complete picture is not available, Nokia expects some disruption to the ability of its Devices & Services unit to supply a number of products due to the currently anticipated industry-wide shortage of relevant components and raw materials sourced from Japan," Nokia said in a statement.

The company said it did not expect any material impact on its first quarter results.

Other electronics and techology companies, including Apple, Panasonic, Hitachi and NEC, also have run into supply chain problems since the earthquake, tsunami and resulting power shortages and transportation difficulties.

Japan exported $91.3 billion worth of electronic products last year, including 20 percent of the world's computer chips.

-- Contact Joseph Bonney at

 

SD series in China

VAIO SϵÁÐ(SD) ±Ê¼Ç±¾µçÄÔ | VAIO ±Ê¼Ç±¾µçÄÔ Ë÷Äá¹Ù·½ÍøÕ¾

 

any chance of the SA making it out by May as it's so hard to wait managing with a dell netbook.

 

I think the point of this is that it'd be more intuitive that since Sony had decided that they would place all the ports on one side, that they'd choose to place them on the left hand side so that those that use external mouses would not have to have their right hand side of the laptop cluttered with cables, usb drives/recievers, external HDD's, etc. which is annoying if you're using a mouse right next to your laptop.

But since this is a done deal, i'd have to imagine how awkward it'd be to grab a CD from the left hand side tray... I'd have to reach over my left hand and keyboard with to grab it (as i am right handed). But i guess possibly Sony engineers figured that most people dont use DVD's anymore and by having all the ports on the right hand side makes it easier to plug things in there (I usually reach over with my right hand to plug things into the left-hand side ports too).

attached is an image of my sidewinder mouse and it's cables getting in the way... that's one reason i'd want the ports to the left. It's hard to dispatch a noob in an FPS(first-person shooter) or even just navigate when i have my lappy connected to an external monitor in extend mode when each time you move the mouse left it'd hit something.

 

still you dont understand about margin, still you dont understand about manufacturing process, still you dont understand how a notebook, dare I say how a pc works.

I would advice to stop your little bickering, and keep your comments to yourself, aside from posting nonsense, your only contribution here is the fear mongering, be it either contaminated products, or the never ending fiasco about the S series.

I do seriously wish that this boards have a ignore button.

 

Sony should put the DVD drive on the right side and all the ports n everything on the left side.

Now all the USB cable and ethernet cable runs on the right side and you try to tuck everything in.

I bet whoever design this new laptop might be against right handed people.

Terrible design.

 

ah crap :/

 

I would have liked a complete mirror layout as well, i never use the dvd drive but having the cables on the left is a lot better. It's still better than my current laptop, it has 3 usb ports on the right side in front of the laptop.
Well left handed people are going to like this laptop even more.
Why would any one want to have a usb port on the right for use with a mouse ? having the cable that close to the mouse is very irritating, i like to run it all the way to the back or left.

 

Everyone will have differing opinions and this is fine. You have choices.

Sony engineers didn't do anything wrong here IMHO. Smart move. Use a wireless mouse. No problems. Most people will be comfortable with the onboard interfaces though.

 

I have a wireless mouse as well, but with a wire id like to have it on the left side. Well, port location is the least of my demands in a laptop so.

 

My sidewinder x8 mouse is a wireless mouse... with a wired charging port (and a looooong cable). In any case, my Logitech VX Nano works fine, but if i wanted to game, i'm going to want to use my sidewinder and if i'm going to have to plug it into the right hand side, it gets in the way.

As for onboard interfaces, i think apple is brilliant for making their touchpad as large as it is. I'd like to see Sony make their laptops 16:10 and increase the size of the touchpads, as good as the one on my Z is now, it'd be better if it were larger. However, i'd want the screen res to go 1600x1000 as opposed to the 1440x900 BS that apple pulls off to get a 16:10 screen. Anyone else want a 1920x1200 13" ultraportable too???

 

I like 16:9 screens better but what I've been noticing is that on the latest Vaios Sony's been increasing the space between the screen hinges and the top edge of the keyboard, resulting in a shorter touchpad and palm rest. If they decreased that space, they could definitely fit in a much larger touchpad. But for me, it is not the height of the touchpad that matters as much as it is the width of the touchpad-I find it much more annoying to swipe side to side to navigate across the screen as opposed to swiping up and down, which feels more natural since I only have to move my fingers and not my wrist. You don't notice this important this is until you try a horizontally narrow touchpad like on the Vaio X.

The other thing I'll say is that I hate clickpads, whether they're from HP, Apple, or whatever. IMO from my past experiences with these it's far too easy to accidentally click something you didn't want to click or worse on the 2010 HP Pavilions the cursor jumping around in numerous use cases. Clicking and dragging on clickpads is also incredibly annoying. Apple's willing to sacrifice usabiliy IMO for a cleaner look and their constant moves to eradicate buttons but I'm glad Sony's continued doing their own thing with ignoring Apple's clickpads and iOS stuff in coming out with the NGP. Maybe it's just me, but since on the 2011 HP Pavilions HP's decided to go back to normal touchpads with two dedicated buttons perhaps they agree.

 

The new hinge design may resolve your issues there.

I'd rate this as being a pretty big touchpad for a 13.3" laptop, although it's a bit smaller than the 13" Mac I think.

 

Hmm that's a good point. I too also like having two dedicated right click and left click buttons, but the size of the touchpad itself should be larger. I guess i've never experienced a narrow touchpad as the one on the Vaio Z is slightly smaller in width as a debit/credit card and about half as tall. I see how that could be a problem constantly hitting the edges as you're navigating.

As for the hinges, at least on the Z, Sony just crammed a buncha things up there, the graphics switch, the indicator lights and the 3 vaio buttons + the eject button. On the SA/SB they got the same, but then they introduced the sloping keyboard tray which takes more space away just so they could entirely close the lid like a MBP. I guess having the extra bezel does allow them to fit more things...

Yeah... the 13" MBP touchpads are hard to top in size... they're humongous

 

Any speculation on the video card being underclocked? I heard sony underclocks all their video cards to make the laptops thinner. It will be a shame if they do that to the 6630M

 

What sloping keyboard tray?!

No idea. This one's got the 6470 but I've only been using the Intel graphics so far really. Wouldn't even know how to tell if it was underclocked.

 

I don't even know why they offer the 6470 since its barely better than the Intel GPU

 

Unlikely as the whole reason AMD released a larger range was so vendors could just get one specific model rather than have different vendors tweak clocks of cards.

For example - the 5650 was used in many models last year, Acer models typically had stock clocks and were easy to overclock, whilst some HP models were locked at lower than stock clocks.

With the new range - HP could in this example buy the lower-clock GPU instead of buying another and downclocking it.

What this suggests is that Sony will not have to underclock the 6630m, as its stock clocks are already quite low anyway.

 

Video decoding is quite bad on intel gpu's, no 3:2 pulldown and other features the hd6470 does have. Intel doesnt optimize games like ati and opengl support is better on the ati. So you can accelerate software like photoshop.

 

whats the cheapest you can get this laptop for with the 6630M?

 

I may be wrong, but:
$999 Base
+ $250 upgrade to i7 (Requirement )
+ $50 upgrade to 6630m.

$1299

 

$1499 from Sony Style online. AMD 6630M apparently won't be shipping till March 25th or so.

The initial $999 shipped out and sold out of its first batch already.

CTO could have come configured that way and I posted the link however CTOs weren't being accepted for checkout and processing.

So the price is $1499 right now. With other extras though included.

Sony has a very nice machine but as others have reported, they work hard to maximize profits, and some have said that Sony may be using Spyware on the machine. Also some have reported that drivers for alternative OS's non Microsoft are non existant.

Sony has good engineering and design qualities but is poor in other aspects.

 

Is there really Spyware on new Sony laptops???

Shouldn't that be illegal?

 

If they underclock... overclock it back. I think the rumors you heard about pertains to the Vaio Z. The 330M on the Vaio Z is not a underclocked chip, but in fact just a lower clocked version from Nvidia, meaning that Nvidia never meant it to clock higher (but it sure does OC well to "stock" and above). I don't know how underclocking will make the laptop any thinner... it's the same chip... just clocked lower... will OCing make the chip bigger?

I mean the slanted edges of the SB... down to the keyboard (sorry i didnt know what to call it). You can tell if it's underclocked by using one of a few utilities, GPU-Z, or any Overclocking tool that'll tell you the current clock of the chip

is there student discount? I'm sure you know one student somewhere.

 

Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sony has a habit of doing it and bad habits are hard to break. Though yes it was illegal and someone at Microsoft called them up on it and they were forced to remove it which resulted in a legal settlement.

I have not scanned the system software included in the VAIO however I have heard at a minimum a lot of bloatware has been included so I am not sure the extent of it all.

It could be fine. But just pointing out Sony's bad habits.

 

Are they purporting that it's embedded in the management programs or something? In other words, part of the crapware? Because if that's the case, it'd be super easy to get rid of it.

Something tells me there are no rootkits preinstalled on Sony's laptops. That'd be a terrible move and techs like myself would quickly discover it and raise hell.

 

Not sure.

But I need to ask a direct question here:

Lenovo's Tech support is 2nd only to Apple. However in reliability charts, Lenovo shows up very poor not regards to durability or accidental damage but in terms of hardware failure rates.

Sony however is known to have poor repair service when machines fail.

Some people like Lenovo, others like Sony, then you have fans of others as well. So its hard to make a clearcut choice.

Gateway has some good performance figures on some desktop machines.

 

You forgot to ask the question.

 

Underclocked card doesn't run as hot so less space required due to cooling considerations

 

I don't know about the rest of you, by my 330m runs just as hot at stock ("underclocked") clocks as it is overclocked 20% or even 30% (yes, 30% OC from stock clocks) when i play BFBC2. HWMonitor and EVGA precision show 94C at max temps (and under sustained loads). Personally, as long as Sony can fit the parts in and can keep average temps fine, they'll put it in. Even if they underclock it, most will OC it back anyways.

 

VAIO SA/SB/whatever it is. I wonder how long till its in the stores.

I'll check back in a little while from now to see if its available anywhere so I can view it.

 

LOL are you kidding me? hahahaha best post by you in this thread by far. classic

also did you hear that sony tracks your every move online on your vaio and physically whenever you move around with the laptop, scary.

 

Anyways.

YouTube - VAIO S?SB???????????????

The VAIO SB has loads of colors on display in that video but in the USA the cheapest model is only available in White and Black and the pricier models are available in Black.

I guess we will see if they will allow further color choices later on.

The units do look impeccable. Ive been going back and forth between Lenovo T420S (which may come in discrete) which is a 14" at the same weight as the Sony which will also have the premium screen option.

Lenovo T420S will have business class video (arguably the GPU may be weaker) but will pack a mighty punch with a 14" at the same weight as this 13.3"

Lenovo has a better interface but at the same token, the VAIO SB looks like a beautiful piece of equipment while the Lenovo looks rather bland.

Am waiting for both of these models to arrive in the stores so I can compare each one.

I don't think any other models are in the running though since Toshiba announced its R830 and none have discrete video and specs are weak.

 

just messing with ya, the canadian CTO model had 3 colour options I believe, the black, white and a blue model, the dark blue looked good in some photos, wonder how it would look in real life.

 

On the net loads of complaints against Sony Repair service and Customer Service.

Should I be scared of the VAIO like this? Or is technical support and repair service decent?

 

Ah I get you. Recessed probably a better word than sloping.

If you think about it, it's only because it's a chiclet keyboard. The keys stand proud of the piece of aluminium, so it's recessed down so they stick out. The tops of the keys where you hit them are flush with the wrist rest though, same as every laptop I've ever owned. It's just the recess is only visible because of the type of keyboard, if you see what I mean.

You really don't have the slightest clue what you're on about, do you?

It's not very helpful to prospective purchasers if you spread FUD like this about a product about which you know nothing, especially when your source is a Wikipedia article about a rootkit that Sony BMG (a record label) put on some CD albums six years ago.

 

I own a TZ12MN/N which went to refurbishing due to some contrutcions problems with cables around the bezel which could make the CFRP in the bezle and around the power input break. The notebook was picked up by DHL an Monday morning 11am and was brought back to me on Wednesday 10am which really impressed me. I also found a letter inside the parcel explaining why the refurbishing was vital for the longvivity of my notebook and to make up for my inconvinience they included an USB stick and a cleaning cloth.

3 month later and exactly 25 month after I bought the notebook the CFRP on the bezel and the power input broke. I wrote to Sony that this must have something to do with the cable problem. But Sony claimed that the fault happend after the warrenty ended so I would have to pay for the replacement.

If I had gone to court wit the problem, I probably would have won, but since I was eager to replace the notebook, I didn't do it.

So see for your self what you think about Sony's customer service and goodwill policy...

 

Has anyone figured out whether it will be easy to swap a standard sized (9mm) SSD for the HD on these yet and does that void the warranty?

 

it wont void the warranty, and you can grab the user manual in this thread, its a pretty easy swap, Im going to do one of that when I get my hands in one of those fabled SB

 

Still on the sidelines. I want a super equipped notebook thats reliable with excellent support.

SB still doesn't cut the mustard though. Lack of the better screen and blueray reader. Also would like vPRO technology which I know was available on the Z and hopefully it will be available on the SA or even the Z replacement.

SB is too pricey for what you get though its new. Hopefully prices come down and CPU speeds will be improved so I can still get the i7 2620M but at a cheaper price.

Not in a rush to buy and even the SB that was ordered above wasn't even made available yet.

Someone posted a link of a stolen macbook and how the owner was able to get into the web logs and the owner wound up giving it back cause he was able to identify him. Even before this was posted, I was thinking about LoJack and GPS technology which is why I really do want the vPRO feature which actually has the gps feature built in.

With the new vPro Core chips and related chipsets, Intel is cooking in a few more technologies that were not available in prior vPro setups. This includes the Anti-Theft Technology 3.0 "poison pill" and GPS capability, which enforces data encryption software authentication when a PC comes back from a nap and isn't where an end user expects it to be.

I admit Im security conscious these days and I want all security features built in which in real world testing work rather well and stories like stolen laptops where owners find them missing just justify them even more.

 

Isn't all the back end software for vPro aimed at the enterprise sector, and therefore presumably $$$$$$? Or can you get a consumer licence for tracking one laptop?

(I have to admit I only know the basic details of it, we don't use it where I work)

 

It's aimed at businesses so you can hardware disable access to the data on the laptop. I don't think the 1st gen Core i- Processors had it, but the second gen (the Sandy Bridge chips) are starting to have them. I don't think the SA/SB have those chips though (it's a hardware thing)

edit: found the engadget article on it:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/08/intel-brings-vpro-to-sandy-bridge-cpus-makes-losing-your-work-l/

 

Yeah I know what it is and what it does - they've been doing vPro laptops for a few years so I think you could get them on 1st gen Core i (also, which the Engadget article doesn't mention, it's not just instruction sets on the CPU like VT or AES-NI, it's a bunch of extra chips that do various crypto/monitoring stuff as well)

But what I was saying is that I don't know enough about the software you then need to run to track/trace/monitor the laptop, since it sounds like he's buying it for personal use. It's clearly aimed at enterprise (i.e. larger than just 'business') so I don't know whether you'd end up having to spend $50k on software to monitor one laptop, or whether they offer anything on the consumer level.

 

The software is freely available on the internet and there are several different free software packages available.

vPRO hasn't been released yet for Sandy Bridge mobile but they will appear shortly.

"VAIO Z650N/B Notebook - Intel Centrino 2 vPro Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz - 13.1 - 4GB DDR3 SDRAM - 320GB HDD - DVD-Writer (DVD R/ RW) - Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth - Windows Vista Business - Black"

VAIO's have come with vpro on the business class machines. VAIO SA/SB have not yet been listed on the sony business website. Older models are listed there. vPRO is being added so the next generation should be out soon.

I am presuming the SA or SB may indeed have a business class vpro available, or they will have it for the Z replacement. Not sure how they will do it and so I'll wait it out.

The choices for me seem to be narrowed to Sony VAIO vs Lenovo but I am leaning Sony.

Not sure about the vpro yet but I know its due out and I am presuming that it will be on the Z replacement, not the SA/SB lines since its usually reserved for the priciest machines.

Not sure if I will get vpro or not at this time. A lot is up in the air since models haven't been fully released.

Was just bringing up vpro because the feature sounded attractive, but no I am not using this in an enterprise situation. The feature can be useful without buying enterprise based software however since free applications exist.

At any rate: Haven't bought anything yet.

 

If anyone wants to see, i uploaded pictures to the owners thread.
https://picasaweb.google.com/117558...?authkey=Gv1sRgCN6zjIWcr4ndUQ&feat=directlink
(yes its a cross post please don't hurt me )

 

blueray is on the CTO list for SB although you'll need the SA for the screen (as im sure your aware).

As far as VPRO goes my reading would suggest you forget about it. The SA will share same hardware as SB except the screen and case, base spec will be higher on SA but if you go CTO then thats irrelevant.

My unofficial guess on SA pricing will be £1300+

As for comparing to the new Z, bear in mind the price difference it will hold over the SA/SB if you have the cash / patience and the Z holds the same form factor as we expect, you would be best waiting...

 

ace pics nutral, making my wait more painful. Although im not sold on the screen borders, hey cant have everything

 

cheers for the photos, + rep.

oh wow, stickers galore on the palmrest, damn you sony.

 

I took off the stickers on the palmrest, the intel sticker was a little more sticky but the rest came off quite easily.

 

Nice pics. It looks like the screen isn't as washed out as the old S from BB. Looking good but I too am going to wait to see the actual unit.

It's either this or the Lenovo T420s for me but I prefer the Sony SB so far.

Gotta hold out for another week or so.