TZ 150,170 vs TZ 190+

Im purchasing a TZ within a week or two and was having a question that I couldnt find answered on the forums.

Im currently looking at the TZ 198 with the flash drive and also the 160gb hdd TZ.

1).I understand that Vista starts blazing fast in under 1 minute on the SSD and over a minute on the HDD. I understand that disk access is a mere .3 seconds or so, now how is the rest of the functionality in Vista (Opening control panel, changing settings in various places in controls panel, non file access duties)?

2).Also with the version that has a HDD as the optical bay drive, is it better to keep the SSD with just windows and a few core applications such as office and keep the rest of the space free to quicken response time or with the advent of flash technology its ok to load 90% of its' space up and load unimportant programs into the 2nd drive?

3).What would happen if you compress the SSD drive to give more space in vista? Would that slow the flash down ? and if so not by much since its a flash drive and access time is near nothing?

Thank you for any answers and sorry for the many questions Im just SO EXCITED to purchase this laptop that the pricetag isnt even getting to me that much.

 

THE 90% question is a good one, bump

 

And you've come to the right place Flamenko should be all over this in enough time.

 

Guys,

I've bought the TZ with the SSD hard drive about a week ago and...still find that the computer grunts quite slowly.

I don't see it running as smoothly as my SZ 48 which is using a hard drive.

So perhaps the advantage of the SSD may not be so overbearing. (We all know that the SZ is a far stronger machine in terms of specs.)

They're both running on 2 gigs of ram.

Let me play with it a little while more and I'll try to update you guys.

 

Thanks would love to hear as detailed of opinion/fact as possible

 

whwtan...

with all due respect, you have TWICE as much processing power in the sz as in the tz... amazing how much people care about disk speed on a 1.2ghz machine lol

 

1. Programs / control panel should open instantly on SSD as long as the calculation doesn't bottleneck by CPU. SSD generally perform much better than M.HDD except transfer large files or duplicate same file. In these cases, SSD may perform worst than M.HDD if not equal. Top of the line 7200RPM notebook M.HDD have better sustained transfer rate than current TZ's SSD.

2. Unlike Mechanical HDD, SSD doesn suffer for defragmentation nor the outter platter suffer lower speed. So, the speed is constant through out the entire disk. You can occupy 99.9% of the capacity and it still perform as good as 1% capacity. However, some program does need some empty space to perform properly, such as Photoshop need scratch disk space.

3. Um... U meand disk compression or volume compression? In theory, compression not always lower performance. There are cases where slower HDD benefit from compression since there was less data to be stored. However, it does utilize smart amount cpu power, but whats not? Compression should have neglectable impact even on slower HDD. I believe this is the same with SSD. BTW, Window does compress some of its files by default. We don't compress file today is not because it lower performance. Just that we can buy a 500GB HDD for $100 and no one care anymore.

 

I just got the tz195. I have not noticed any slowness in running simple office stuff (word, excel), dvd's or the internet. I am not very computer literate, but I am really pleased with this nb.

 

Correct. Boot-up on my TZ195 is extremely fast. As for other operations, as I commented in another thread, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed. The control panel operations are instant, as are fairly intensive programs such as Office 2007. I also use Photoshop CS3 and other similar resource hogs and have had no issues -- they operate fast.

I already have my SSD 63% full and there has been no degradation in performance.

 

I've had both the TZ190 and now the TZ198, both with SSD, and I am selling my SZ670 so I can compare it as well. If your TZ is running "slowly" it could be you need the other 1G of RAM if you don't have it, or you may still have some Sony bloatware that comes installed -- if you get rid of all but what you really need that will help. Also, there are a number of suggested ways to tweak Vista and thereby speed it up (search this website for "vista tweaks"). One "easy" help is to install an ExpressCard memory card and use it for ReadyBoost. I got my TZ190 fine-tuned so it was quite snappy (in Vista) and that included having installed all my "basic" software on the SSD (OS, Office, Quicken, etc.) -- put my "non-basic" software on an 8G SDHC card in the slot for that, but the data transfer rate for the SD slot, ProDuo slot and Express Card slot are all at USB rates -- slower than the SSD or typical internal HDD rates. So I ended up selling my TZ190 so I could get the TZ198 with the 64G SSD and 200G HDD. Same experience with this machine -- except with all the storage space I'm able to use both the SSD and HDD for software as well as data -- very speedy.

As for comparing the TZ and SZ, we all know the SZ is a more "powerful" machine with its higher speed processor and separate graphics card. However, having said that, I found my TZ198 can compete well in all but games -- office apps, surfing, routine programs like Quicken, etc. all run just as well/fast on my TZ as they do on my SZ..... and IMHO the TZ display is far superior to the excellent SZ display.

 

When I rec'd the TZ198 it had ~33G free -- some of this was recovered by uninstalled Sony bloatware, but I've tried to strike a balance with where I've installed my software. On my TZ198 -- my OS, office apps, utilities, Quicken are all on the SSD while virtually all my other software is on the HDD together with all my data files. I've even partitioned the 200G HDD and am using the partition for backup files.

While I agree with the comment that the SSD should function when nearly full, I found with the TZ190 32G SSD that when I got down to 3-4G free (after removing the recovery partition and virtually all bloatware) it seemed to choke more -- may have been the integrated graphics needed more space but it was frustrating.