TZ Questions - Help

First of all I want to say I am so impressed with this website, it's so helpfull. Everyone who contributes really does deserve a pat on their back.

I have owned a Sony TZ for the 4th time now. I aim to stick to it but am confused with all these new models coming out. Does the Z series take over the TZ? Is TZ a discontinued line?

Does the TZ perfom better under Vista or XP? If so how? and why?

Is it easy enough to change the TZ's hard drive to a SSD? I felt it would be cheaper to do it myself instead of paying 2 thousand pounds for the model.

At the moment I have vista and I have owned a TZ several times but the battery life only goes up to 2 hours 50 minutes on 50% charge? isn't that crap? or is that normal?

 

my TZ when i had it last around 6hrs 40mins with screen dimmed two notches and no bluetooth on but wifi on. No the Tz is bought to get a refresh to the new intel platform which means it will be less power hungery and have a better graphics processor. I think it prefers better in XP because Vista can be hard on a 1.8 4800rpm drive. I never opened my TZ myself but several people have open theirs up to install SSD if you search you will find the procedure and you can judge by yourself if its too difficult.

 

+1 to Dany's answers.

The TZ should either be refreshed, or possibly replaced, with the Centrino 2 platform sometime this fall. That should bump the CPU up from the U7600 (1.2GHz) and U7700 (1.33GHz) to the new SU9300 (1.2GHz) and SU9400 (1.4GHz) - both with larger L2 cache and faster front-side bus.

The TZ performs better with XP, unless you tweak the heck out of Vista (disable indexing, scheduled defrags, unneccessary services). At best, a super-tweaked Vista should perform almost as well as XP on the TZ.

I plan on swapping my TZ's 1.8" HDD to an SSD either after my warranty expires, or when 128GB 1.8" SSDs become readily available, and less than $500 - whichever comes first. The procedure doesn't seem extremely difficult, but there's a good chance you could break your machine if your not very careful.

My battery is set to charge to 80%, and that gives me around 5 hours of wireless browsing.

 

I thought the centrino 2s will start implementing Wimax I havent seen any notebook manufacturer done it yet.

 

can anyone explain what this means in real terms please as i find it a little bewildering still
is there a huge difference in general apps/browsing between the two (older vs new centrino)? i've googled but not finding any satisfactory understanding at this stage

also i presumed a new TZ would use a ULV again - but isn't the SU9300 not a ULV?

thanks in advance

 

Any links on the hard drive changes? thanks for the help

 

Yes, the new TZ or its replacement will use the upcoming 1.2ghz SU9300 and 1.4ghz SU9400 processors.

In general tasks, you wouldn't notice much of a difference. I think the noticeable improvement will be in power consumption, heat and battery life.

The Toshiba R500 which had the same processors as the TZ did recently was refreshed to the SU9300 and SU9400 processors and also added an ESata port. They are to come out on September 20th in Japan at least.

 

The old ULV, U7700 and these new SU 9400 CPU's are all 10 Watts. I am not sure if it will be less heat unless they increase the fan speed or power, but this is my opinion. You do gain 100 MHz cpu speed, and significant fsb speed. In real world surfing, it wil not be noticeable. However, if you can put the new cpu in balanced mode, it will likely be the same as full power of the old cpu, again my opinion.

I used the TZ (U7700) to do photo post-processing, using GIMP and it is quite fast, almost as fast as my desk top (single core AMD64 @ 3 GHz, 1 MB ram). I think the 2 MB ram saved the day.

 

thanks for the clarification on the updates guys

that has helped me to decide that i will be quite happy with the older model if i can get a good deal for it, as i don't need more than basic task work and internet browsing.

i hope to use the photoshop elements to, so if you're doing some photo processing now i think my needs are sufficiently covered indeed. and i don't need a better graphics card or HDMI output etc if they do that. current battery life etc will do me fine as well (i'm looking at the U7600)

cheers

 

Does it come with 2 MB ram? That is a must for photo processing. I remember my TZ (U7700) used up 1.1 to 1.3 GB ram on vista with all the bloatware.

 

2MB? Lol, I'm guessing 2GB will be standard, with 3GB as an upgrade or standard on higher-end models. Don't think 32-bit Vista recognizes anything much higher than 3GB anyway.

Plus, this is all speculation based on Intel's Centrino 2 platform and what other manufacturers have planned for their ULV notebooks. Sony hasn't announced anything at all for a TZ refresh or replacement yet.

 

AFD: thanks for the correction, I meant 2GB which is max for TZ and is a must for photo processing on vista.

 

yes i'll be certainly upgrading to 2GB ram!

i will also try to strip down the vista install as much as i can

i've tentatively discussed with the store about having the ram upgrade free and extra warranty and a slip case on top of reduced price. they've said yes initially so hopefully that is still all good.


i'm still doing some last minute comparisons and research before i take the big step