Sony VAIO Z VPCZ1 - Unboxing Photos and Movie

There shouldn't be a restocking fee if the laptop is in the condition it was in when it was new and you're not missing any of the packaging. This is what the sony rep at the sony store specifically told me, could be different in the U.S though.

 

Had been posted earlier by zoinks http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6007387&postcount=19

 

Yes im sure.. I called twice and spoke to someone to confirm this. I'll let you know tom if it ships. You never know maybe tomorrow I will find out it got delayed but so far twice they told me the 19th.

 

They told me the 19th as well until the shipping date on the Sony site said the 31st.

 

Same here for two VPC-Z11FHX/XQ
aaaargh!
I am in greece now and i was informed by a local reseller that they stock the VPC-Z11Z9E/B
might just grab one as I cannot really wait.
Specs for the Z11Z9E are:
core i7 620M
1920x1080
6GB Ram
256GB Quad SSD (we'll see about the "quad" thing)
WWAN
DVD-R
Carbon Fibre chassis (I will only get it if it has a carbon fibre shell, not just plain black.)

And I noticed it comes with a black palmrest (not silver)
Will go pick one up on Monday.

 

Hi, Folks!

At long last, I can finally join the clan! I brought home a Sony Vaio VPCZ11CGX/X today, and it's not only looking good, it's working great!

Cheers, Fellow Z Owners! I should have more tomorrow.

Have Fun!
Mark

 

Hi, Nutman,

I'm seriously impressed with both your purchasing and modding skills! Well done!

Many thanks for the kudos in the other thread, or was it this one? Anyway, thank you!

Very Best Wishes!
Mark

 

Thanks, I've already seen them and was wondering if there were any more candid english ones... haha, I've literally seen almost all the vids related to the Z that has been posted so far.

 

Out of curiosity, what kind of keyboard format do you get if you buy from Greece? What is the price that they are selling for there now?

 

I'll have you know the background hiss both videos was in perfect English

 

Well crap, that is a much more reasonable pre-configured setup. If it was available in the states, I might have selected it instead of the VPCZ11FHX/XQ.

 

This is the same model sold in many European countries, including Sweden (where I have ordered one).

In Sweden it is sold for around $3400 including sales tax. In the UK it's about £2150 inc VAT - which is around $3250. The prices I have seen in other places in Europe are roughly the same.

 

I took some pictures to demonstrate how the lighting and angle changes the appearance of the Metal Mosaic (Lower-end Signature Series Z11):
Lid Tilted Towards Me: http://img704.imageshack.us/i/z11metalmosaiclidtilted.jpg/

Lid Tilted Away From Me: http://img509.imageshack.us/i/z11metalmosaiclidtilted.jpg/

Lid Viewed from a Side Angle: http://img717.imageshack.us/i/z11metalmosaiclidfromas.jpg/

Lid Straight on Taken with Flash: http://img87.imageshack.us/i/z11metalmosaiclidstraig.jpg/

 

Love it or hate, it sure looks unique. The Z is already a looker, with that lid, I can see people walking up to you to ask about it, or atleast few stares.

A "mid-end"" VAIO Z siganture with that striped look or carbon in the 2900-3500 range would have been great. The gap between 2200 and 4500 dollars is too big.

 

Thank you kind sir!
To be honest, it's a result of sony not offering any kind of technical support or official servicing options here in Greece, You gotta do everything on your own or you are done for.

Congratulations on your newest purchase, glad you like it.

It's the standard US layout with a few keys marked with double characters. (Illuminated)
Price for VPCZ11X9E (i5 520, 4GB, 128GB (2x), 1600x900, Premium CF, unlocked WWAN, DVD-R) is 1799 Euro incl VAT
Price for VPCZ11Z9E (i7 620, 6GB, 256GB (4x), 1920x1080, Premium CF, unlocked WWAN, DVD-R) is 2499 Euro incl VAT
I have the option to make my purchases without VAT and that is 21% and then I will probably get another 5 to 8% off at checkout.

 

From what you saw inside, do you have a sense that you could pick up a Z configured with a 128 and and then purchase a second 128 (if Sony or someone sells the right parts) which would really give you 64x4?

 

Z owners, do you guys see horizontal lines on ur screen described from the owner's forum? Deciding whether to open mines or not... Point of no return if I open. I have the same model as Zoinks I believe... Any inputs?

 

I have 1600x900. I personally do not see them (so I still don't know what all the fuss is about). I have tried several times to see them but have had no such luck. The display contrast and colors look good to me. I have had many laptops, but know that I am a software developer not a photographer so I'll be the first to acknowledge that I may not have the most discerning eye.

I know one person has a huge problem with the lines. I don't know if others can see them. But, ultimately I think you are going to have to judge it for yourself.

 

Thanks Oscar, that sounds assuring. Let's hear from a few more folks..

 

There's room, sure.



Don't know about the cables, might need a different one. With Sony, your best bet is to buy what you want at the original purchase.

I didn't see the tread mentioned. Are these lines problems with the display's output, or physical lines caused from the screen touching the keyboard?

If it is the latter, the new screen seems to be better suited to prevent this kind of damage. Better rubber stoppers, upper lid lip...

 

I see you have a last gen model in your sig there. How does the display compare to you in terms of viewing angles and contrast?
I would assume that Sony used the same panels. May be this is not so though? In reviews the old model faired well.
Some people seem to have an issue with viewing angles of this new model though and i cannot remember it being a concern with the last model.
Also, i think that the lower end display will be judged by some people now as may be the inferior display compared to the high res display.

 

The previous gen might be a bit brighter at max. Viewing angles are about the same.

 

The posts I was thinking of are SurferJon in the 1692-1709 range of "Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread"

 

I see none of that

 

It's getting close to the end of my run with the Sony VPCZ112GX/S. The 14 days expires soon so I removed the 2.5" drive installed in this thread:

Z11 - Replace DVD with HDD - Working Solution

I popped the SSD out of the chassis and it's holding bracket for one last group of pics.

The booger is really small. I would be interested in seeing one of the 3 or 4 drive setups. I'm not entirely clear how they work together or are cabled to the main board.

 

Stare at the screen. Does it look pixely to you at all? Look reeeeal close. On mine you don't have to look close because anyone can see it, but maybe I got a lemon.

 

Hi, SurferJon,

I can't see any of the artifacts that you're describing on my 1600x900 screen (i.e. what sounds like video noise, if I'm understanding you), and I'm awfully picky about video quality. You may indeed have a lemon, but there's one quick experiment that could possibly be relevant. If you enter the nVidia control panel, and change back and forth between 40 and 60 Hz, does that change your perception of this?

Good Luck!
Mark

 

It doesn't change anything, I can still see them. They look even worse after doing that.

 

Do they dance around on yours (like noise) or are they fixed (like low resolution)?

 

Hi, Jon,

Just in the interest of completeness (since I myself made this mistake recently, though without visible impact), have you by any chance done any overclocking of the graphics? If not, this really starts to sound like a hardware problem.

Sorry!
Mark

 

Did it arrive and, if so, can you provide a brief summary of your thoughts?

 

Nope, can't see anything at all. Got real close, squinty-eyed even, don't see the problem or any problem for that matter.

Maybe my eyes are defective.

 

Just some fun facts about the chips:
K9HCGZ8U5D-RCK0: NAND, MLC QDP, 4G density, SSD, x8 organization, 2.7-3.6V, Quad nCE & Quad R/nB mode, 5th generation

S3C29RBB01-YK40: controller, MASK ROM, 32-bit ARM9, ROM master 64KB

K4X1G323PD-8GC6: DDR SDRAM, 1G density, x32 organization, 4-bank, LVCMOS (1.8V, 1.8V)

So, technically, it's an ARM-based system with its own DRAM and ROM (for firmware). Quad nCE (Chip Enable) and R/nB (Ready/Busy) apparently means that each NAND chip is like 4 chips in one in terms of speed.

 

They're just always there and fixed. I remember back in the early 2000's, one of the cool effects people did in Photoshop for online images and backgrounds was a TV scan lines effect... that's kind of what it looks like.

Haven't done anything work-intensive yet and I noticed the lines as soon as I got into Windows for the first time. Do you think if I sent it in that Sony would even change the screen?

lol. I don't know. I think someone in the Owners thread said they could see it too, sooooooo...

 

And you are definitely set to 1600 x 900 dpi in the screen resolution right?

Might as well send it back. You definitely shouldn't be seeing scan lines like you are describing. otoh, if it is going back. In the meantime, you can do lots of ssd tests a'la Zoink and help verify trim on the 9.6 vs the 9.5 drivers.

 

Nice, plus one rep to you.

The Samsung s3c29rbb01-yk40 has 128mb of cache, right?

I really appreciate the relative simplicity of the card. Two controllers, one on each side, small and compact.

Getting anxious for somebody with the 256GB or 512GB drives to do some disassembly/take photos.

I really want to know how 3 and 4 drive systems are configured. It has to be a different ribbon cable or some bridge on the cards themselves.

 

Yeah, 1600x900 and 100 DPI. I can't send it in now though because I will need it for school next week. I'll just wait until it breaks.

What tests should I do? I've never done it before.

 

Sorry man, can't repro the issue. I did see some waves but they were an artifact of the Vaio background image. Changing to a solid color made it go away.

I've tried a white background as well, just don't see it.

 

Well, I hope to answer one or the other, I'm either picking up a 128+64 or a 256 system, though I may not have it until next week, depending on shipping.

 

Don't feel bad, I placed my order on 2/8 (less than 24 hrs after StefanB posted ordering his!) and mine is still in 'Shipping update' status, with a dummy ship date of 2/9...

I called Sony again on Friday and the only thing they told me was that it was delayed until 3/31 (won't ship on 3/19), that they ship in the order in which orders were placed (apparently not !) and that they would 'Expedite Shipping'... when it becomes available, on 3/31

 

Hopefully, they'll include a HDD option in the next refresh for those who don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with a propriety SSD that will degrade in performance overtime.

Reliability is important, and until SSDs make the necessary improvements and become cheaper, a traditional hard drive will always be a more practical choice. For it is a tried and trusted system for data storage.

Besides, the new processors will make-up for the lack in speed.

 

Jon: I'm having difficulty picturing what you're seeing with terms like "pixelly" and "TV scan lines" (which would indicate alternating bright/dark horizontal lines or interlaced-style artifacts).

Are you sure you aren't just used to glossy screens and are seeing the matte coating? A lot of people often describe it as "sparkly" like there's something over the screen (which there is).

Do you have a good camera you could use to photograph the issue?

 

The same connector on the mainboard is used for all configurations, i.e. it has lanes for all 4 SSD SATA devices that can be connected to it. The connector is one towards the front of laptop from the Wi-Fi card on your disassembly photos.

On some photos I've seen the ribbon cable is split into 2, one going left and one going right - individual SSD platters oriented so that their connectors are opposite each other. So the ribbon looks like inverted T. In your case it simply turns and does not split.

Note that in this particular case each SATA device does not need as many lanes as typically used because these SSD drives are not hot-swappable. Typical SATA has several lanes of different lanes in connector so that, as you remove or plug the drive, different circuits are turned off/on in certain order. No need for something like this here.

Another SATA connector on the main board (to the right from this one and perpendicular to it) is used for DVD/Blue-Ray/HDD.

That's my understanding of it thus far.

I am not sure about exact numbers of platters, whether they are single-sided or double-sided, etc.

Here is how split ribbon looks. Found it on http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=258&t=1457882&last=18024497

 

From all the tests that have been done, it looks like these drives won't degrade in performance over time. The new Intel drivers seem to support Trim from the tests done. Also, even with the old drivers the SSD drives were never slower than a standard HDD. In fact the speeds were no where close to a HDD.

Also, SSD are more reliable than a standard HDD, so again, I am not sure why you would want an HDD. I at first was all for a HDD option because it would be cheaper, but the 128 GB SSD base model is a very decent price, so once I saw that, I don't have issues with no HDD model being offered.

 

Like the old saying, "Once you go SSD, you never go back to HDD." EVARRRRrRRR!

 

With all due respect, I disagree with every one of your comments.

On the first one, TRIM is everything but verified (looking for somebody to independently test). Degradation should be mostly mitigated.

Reliability is very good in current generation SSD's. Are SSD's practical? Absolutely. Is a 4 member RAID 0 volume practical? Yes.

Lastly, a slow disk is a slow disk. CPU has very little to do with this. Try booting a Virtual Machine with a single 2.5" spinner, then with one of the RAID SSD's. This will prove the point.

IMO, the pro's using a SSD far outweigh the cons. At least they do for me.

 

ZugZug,

Thanks for the link. It answers my question.

 

Reasons to still get a HDD:

* You are easily startled by fast-moving programs, and prefer to see things progressing slowly.

* You like to hear that soft scritch-scratch sound as your computer works.

* Your hands are freqently cold and you like your notebook to keep them toasty warm.

* You like the soft vibrating effect it gives your notebook. Mmm, laptop.

 

ROFL That is seriously funny!

 

You like keeping money more then spending money?
You like more space rather then fast but low amount of space.
You don't trust RAID and rather go for 1 good SSD instead of a custom SSD.