Sony Vaio S15 Haswell

Hello,

Does anyone know if we'll see an S15 with the new Haswell processor or will the S series be discontinued?

 

Anybody heard any news from Sony regarding a S-series (or equivalent) upgrade to Haswell? (Yes I know about the Pro line and the Duo...and neither system has what I need/want). If Sony were planning to offer a Haswell based S-series why wouldn't they just make a general statement of direction? At least that would keep me waiting for Sony. But with no word on S-series plans I'll most likely purchase one of their competitor's systems.

I'm looking to buy a Haswell based system soon....and I need something with 12GB of memory (lots of virtual machines), a matte 1920X1080 display and something more reasonably priced and upgradeable then the Pro line.

Come your lack of a direction regarding the S-series line will likely cost you my business (and I'm sure others business as well). What do you have to lose by making a general statement...unless of course you are planning to drop the S-series (hmmmm?).

If anyone has heard anything please let me know.

Cheers

 

Sony doesn't make statements like that. Things just disappear. The S series is gone. Want proof? Go to the mainstream website for Vaios in Japan, the S is gone. There's no indication of a replacement anywhere nor leaks, etc. It's the Fit, Duo, Pro. CHeck the Haswell/Z thread - we've been saying a lot of what you have. Sony just isn't making a laptop like that for the forseeable future with that much RAM and a non-U processor.

 

I believe they did announce that the F and Z were being discontinued when they did so. The Japanese site also states that the all in ones are new. Looking at their specs they're last years'.
Also I don't see a reason not to release a refresh/replacement of the S. The Pro and Duo seem to appeal to an even smaller audience than the S imo. At the moment, if I'm not mistaken, a great majority of devices with 4th gen Intel cpus on the market right now are ULVs. Most non ULV models announced are set to launch in August I believe. There's still time left for a refresh before we can be sure a non ULV model won't be coming from Sony.

 

For the past few months, I have been looking for replacement for my 3 years old Acer.
My attention has been caught by S15, but the fact that it has "luckbuster" GPU ( current overclocking options makes it solid among others slim notebooks ) have been keeping me from purchase.

Haswell refresh would be really nice, But I doubt that Sony will do it. Because, suddenly S15 vanished from online configuration from all online sites around my country ( middle Europe ).

New Fit line has ULV processor and weak battery ( dunno about GPU, but i believe it packs 64bit bandwidth ... which kinda sucks )
Pro line is again ULV with no real GPU.

Why Sony do not give some love to full voltage CPU with nice GPU ( 750m+ ) ?

 

The Pro isn't the S' replacement. To me it looks like the S and E were replaced by the Fit, and the T and Z were replaced by the Pro.

 

I never said the Pro replaced the S. If the Fit replaced the S too then Sony has to be kidding! The Fit does in no way match what the S or F series offered, and thus does not appeal to the same people. Sony has nothing to offer at the moment for that audience.

 

Interesting observation re: S series disappearing off their Japan website. I haven't been following Sony long enough to know whether that is a true indicator of their plans to discontinue the S-series...but I'll admit that this is just plain WEIRD. Could Sony possibly be that clueless to just discontinue a system and leave a gaping hole in their product offering or be so arrogant as to simply discontinue an existing system without any communication to their customers? Talk about alienating their customers. All I can say is the Sony needs some help with their marketing...and they need to learn how to communicate with their customer base. I'm hoping that they are just in the midst of updating their product line and will replace the S series with a new Haswell based system....in the meantime their silence on the topic of a S-series upgrade/replacement is simply frustrating their customers. Geez no wonder Sony has fallen so far in the last 15 years. It leaves me with little hope for the future of Sony..

 

Since you say you haven't been following Sony for very long,let me assure you - sorry to be the one! - that they truly are that clueless and that they are long famous for having models disappear without pre-announcement and without any logical migration path to their new products.

This can be a very frustrating company to deal with and they seem destined to have "on" years and "off" years, the past one being the former and the present one appearing to be the latter. The Z and S models (especially the S15, since the S13 was always plagued by a fairly terrible display) represent some of the best work Sony is capable of - the S even being a tremendous value as well as the go-to recommendation for anyone wanting reasonably powerful, reasonably light weight and entirely user-upgradeable platforms at fair prices. The Z was always a feat of engineering that (mostly) delighted those who could afford one.

What surprises many who observe the apparently clueless management, radical designs/materials often used and appearance of fragility of their high end notebooks is that they have been remarkably reliable in the main. This is just anecdotal - though if you combed the pages of the product threads you would see a large number of similar reports - but I have owned and heavily used and traveled with 5 Z1s and 2 Z2s and never had a moment's mechanical or electronic problem with any of them, two of which are still "in-service" and used daily, running as well as they did when new. You do have to use some extra care traveling with them as their impossibly light designs did make them more physically fragile than many notebooks out there.

IMHO, the Pro and Duo lines also represent some of the same design brilliance in evidence with the S and Z series, it's just that neither are logical replacements/upgrades from the premium notebooks that preceded them. With Sony, what you see is what you get and, for the next 6+ months at least, the Pro and Duo lines are "what you get" if you want a high end Sony notebook. Not only do they not appear to provide migrations of existing products to new ones but they clearly don't seem to care if that frustrates or alienates segments of their customer base. Taken as a whole I find the Fit, T, Pro and Duo lineups to represent the combination of "gotta have it" design hooks that keep Vaio customers coming back and some of the the best values to be found in the lower end of the price spectrum among Haswell-based models yet released or announced. Regrettably, though, that leaves owners of 2011-2013 Z, S and F models nowhere to go except to Asus and Samsung for the latest technology in non-Ultrabook, non-ULV notebooks for more "serious" work computers or entertainment oriented game-capable products. If you can be patient, I've found my own informal analysis reveals that Sony tends to fill in the serious gaps in their product portfolio. In all fairness to Sony, it's very tough to make money selling conventional clamshell DTR-capable laptops so they seemed to have picked the fastest growing segments and are offering up some pretty compelling designs for them and selling them at prices that are mostly competitive with the "premium" models with which they compete in the market.

Personally, I am salivating for a Haswell Pro 13 even though it is no faster or more capable (rather, it is less so in some respects) to the Z models I own and use daily, and it doesn't even improve on the battery life I get with my 2.58 lb 2011 Z2 i7-2640M/8GB/256GB RAID0/WWAN/1080p 95% color gamut display nor does it meaningfully outperform my 2010 Z1 equipped similarly (RAM,, SSD, FHD display) though with Arrandale i7-640M/nVidia 330M (which benchmark surprisingly close to the Pro 13's ULV cpu/HD4200 gpu combo) and which has a far better keyboard than any models that followed it, many more ports and user upgradeable parts and even a blu ray burner that has some real utility - in its own right or converted to providing a bay for an additional 2.5" SSD to double or triple SSD capacity at today's very affordable prices (as compared with having to pay usurious sums to "upgrade" the Pro to 8GB or to 512GB SSD capacity). Oh, and did I mention the Z1 weights in at a crushing (!) 3.06 lbs and, with replaceable high capacity batteries enables me, with some extra weight in the bag and a bit less convenience, to achieve 6-9 hr battery life on the road.

Still, as soon as the Pro 13 has been out for 6 months and has a solid track record of reliability and driver support, I'll be ordering mine and writing a $2,000 check to get what amounts to a very, very slick (IMO) notebook that shaves 0.2 lbs off my Z2's and is all but portless, totally non-upgradeable product, which nonetheless looks sexy as all get-out, has latest generation electronics and achieves 6-7 hrs on a charge without an auxiliary battery. Can I bear to part with the two long-in-the-tooth Z's? Probably not! Especially not the 3 year old Z1 that's worth about $600 in the secondary market but remains a far more versatile and equally powerful alternative on a road trip in which I won't know for certain that I won't need to connect to a VGA projector, ethernet dataport or possibly the access to four USB ports.

I really only meant to validate the poster's instincts about Sony, mention the allure that it's products manage to contain even when they represent a step backwards functionally. I guess I got a little carried away. Sorry.

 

Thanks for your detailed and insightful comments....I agree that the S series offers a nice blend of performance, expandability, upgradeability and portability. It would be a shame if Sony doesn't continue to offer a S-series class machine (or another laptop in that segment) in the future. It's disconcerting to hear that Sony has a history of stranding and frustrating their customers...not sure I want to give my business to a company that is either so clueless (don't know their own strengths) and/or so arrogant.

I get the fact that Sony needs to offer solutions to address what is perceived as new emerging markets (hybrid & ultrabook solutions) but I can't see what Sony has to lose by simply stating their intention to continue to offer laptops in the S series segment...if in fact they do plan to continue to offer laptops in that segment. Without any such statement and the removal of the S-series systems from their Japanese and European websites it certainly seems like they have abandoned this segment of the market.

I plan to purchase a laptop in August...looks like I need to rule Sony out as a possible solution. Perhaps Asus or Samsung will be a better alternative?

 

If you highly value what the S15 offers, you may find you can get a great deal on a closeout - fully loaded - and with a slice battery you will do as well as a Haswell version would have with the base battery. Nothing else of consequence has improved on Haswell, and I've read more an more articles that for 15" standard mobile quad machines, Haswell has little to offer. Not my favorite source, but this article seems well reasoned

 

There's also the Samsung Series 7 which offers a quad core CPU, strong(er) GPU (albeit AMD), great battery life and a decent (but not IPS) screen.. Also haven't had a Haswell yet refresh since it's not that old in the market.

Review Samsung Series 7 Chronos 770Z5E-S01DE Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

I would say got for the Lenovo Y series

 

True i could purchase the current generation S15 series and get a free battery sheet (btw the same "promotion" they offered when the system was brand new and also offered again near christmas 2012)...but I'd rather not at this point because if they are going to offer a S series replacement system I'd hope it would have some improvements over the prior generations system.

1) Better IPS display (no orange when it should be red...remember Orangegate?)
2) Higher overall system performance (e.g., 1600 MHZ vs 1333 MHZ memory, higher speed SSD option, etc.)
3) Much better battery life without dragging around a sheet battery
4) Slightly better graphics performance than Ivy bridge graphics integrated graphics
5) Maybe an even lighter machine that is still expandable to at least 12GB of memory (I have many VM's running for Software development);

oh yeah....

6) Better speakers/sound....today's S series sounds pretty tinny...so ironic coming from Sony.

If Sony doesn't announce something soon I will have to evaluate what is in the market at the time and purchase the best system available...if Sony were offering $400 in discounts for the old S series I'd consider it...but their wimpy free sheet battery offer just isn't incentive enough to go with last years technology when buying a brand new laptop.

If Sony would only announce that they intend to offer a "S-series class" Haswell system (don't care what they call it) then I'd wait to see what Sony delivers before making making a purchase decision...but without that assurance and knowing that they've completely removed the S series machines from their Japanese and European websites without any explanation.... I'm going move forward with my purchase decision under the impression that Sony has simply killed the S series and doesn't intend to offer a system in that class based on Haswell.

Cheers.

 

I'm sure you and I are one of the many that will be abandoning the idea of purchasing a Sony system....

Sony...if you are listening.....how about a statement of intent regarding your S series?????? Are you abandoning the S series "class system"? If you are just say so...geez you really know how to alienate your customers...and guess what when you do so they won't be coming back anytime soon!!!!