TZ31XN vs Asus EEE S101

Hi, this is my first post. I just bought a Vaio TZ31XN, not to shabby But since we are all gadgetfreeks, here are some pics to compare it to my S101 (another real mens gadget!)


S101, TZ31, Old HP pavilion 15" and a 26" acer screen for comparison. You can already see the difference in resolution, 1024*600 vs 1366*768 vs 1920*1200 (didnt bother to boot up the hp, has a 1024*768 resolution).



A closeup between the S101 and the TZ31, major difference! Not only in resolution but also in brightness, the S101 is on max brightness with eeectl!! And still the sony is brighter and has better colors. But as you can see, the keyboards are about the same size. The sony has 'chicklet' style keys like asus put on the new 1000HE. The touchpad on the S101 is bigger and wider and multitouch, easier to use if you ask me. Ofcourse the sony had the fingerprint reader between the buttons.



Now who's fat? The TZ is considered a very thin ultraportable but the S101 is thinner! Ofcourse, the sony has the battery that sticks out a bit. But even without that, the S101 would still be thinner.



The screen on the sony is thinner. Here you can see the seperate keys of the sony against the normale keys on the S101.



On top of each other. The S101 is a bit smaller in depth and width.



Together the are just about as thick as the old HP


There you have it, now that i've used the sony i dont i will ever use a netbook. Unless they get the same screens, performance and batterylife for the low price ofcourse It's an amazing machine that surpasses my expectations, i dont think i'll need another notebook/netbook/portable device ever again (until the sony breaks down ofcourse).

Greetings!

 

lol.. thanks for the pic! yea, my TZ190 is still going strong, and it will be quite some time before netbooks start matching it in terms of performance. even then, as long as i can run firefox and office, im gonna run it to the ground

 

I see you also posted this on eeeuser . Nice comparison. If the TZ/TT had switchable graphics and were cheaper, I would love to get one. After using my EEE for so long, I am beginning to prefer it to larger laptops. Hopefully with Nehalem, Intel can improve its graphics performance to be able to play the two games I care about (Sim City 4 Intel graphics can play well, but for Cities XL I am not sure).

 

Nice pictures

I was in a similar boat - upgraded from a EeePC 1000H to a Sony TT...I will never return to netbooks after this little baby

Although I really dont think you can compare (apart from dimensions) a Vaio and a cheap netbook though.....the Vaio is a real ultraportable notebook not a netbook after all

 

Yup. It's one of the quandries I'm in right now. Love the form factor of the netbook, hate the performance. The Intel Atom just has no balls.

Love the form factor of the Vaio TT/TZ but hate the price.

Am strongly considering pulling the trigger on the clearance TZ-290N that Sony is offering at $1,439 (new, not refurbed). Yeah, it's a year-old model, but still will blow the doors off a netbook.

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor U7700 (1.33GHz)
64GB PATA SSD + 250GB 5400 RPM second hard drive
2GB DDR2
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
11.1" 1366x768 XBRITE display
7.8" x 10.9" x 1.0"
2.8 lbs with large-capacity battery (included)

Thoughts?

 

I know a very good deal for sony vaio TZ31XN for european people, price around 1100€, but more info via private msg, if interested!

 

Thats a VERY good price for a TZ. The TT is basically the refresh of the TZ, you will not be losing much in terms of real world performance (ie. web, office apps).

The TT does have a slightly faster CPU with 3MB L2 (TZ has 2MB) and faster FSB. But, for web browsing and office apps. i doubt you will notice a difference... esp. with that SSD. For photo apps and video performance, you may notice an improvement on the TT, but, at what cost.

 

It seems to me this model is missing optical drive?

 

Yes. It has a second hard drive for data where the optical drive would be. I already have an external USB DVD/RW in the event I need to install software.

One thing that has me enamored with the dual hard drive configuration on a laptop is the ease of swapping/playing with operating systems (although multiple partitions accomplish the same thing I suppose. I would optimize Vista as far as I could then save an Acronis snapshot to the data drive, then install W7, get it running, save a snapshot, try XP, snapshot, etc., etc., You get the idea. It's a lot more convenient (and faster) doing this all internally than dealing with external USB hard drives or network volumes....

(sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread. )

 

Hmm...so second HDD is connected via same cable as is for optical drive? Is that SATA cable?

 

My version has the optical drive, the dont offer the SSD + HDD version over here. Would have liked a SSD + DVD combo though, the stock drive isnt very fast. Maybe i'll change it to a SSD drive but the 1.8" ZIF versions are hard to get.


(TZ on the left with dvd burner)

 

If the second HDD is connected via SATA, then you can get a really cheap OCZ SSD and hook it via SATA.

 

ACK! Hell no.

I've dealt with OCZ's crappy SSDs and the stuttering is doom for any application. I have a 64GB OCZ Core being sent back for replacement. The Intel X25-M, on the other hand, works extremely well. Granted, it's a much more expensive drive. Still, they've dropped from $549 to $369 in the last 2 months.

Also, there are some other models out there showing promise. There's a lot of development in the SSD world right now. Most of it is in the 2.5" world, but there are also advancements in the 1.8" area.

Some of the Asus eeePC netbooks have multiple SSDs, but they are ultra-slow cheap SSDs that are slower than mechanical hard drives.

I'm really curious to drop a high-speed SATA SSD into the TZ and see what it can do. I haven't gotten any response in the thread I posted as to whether you can make the SATA SSD the boot drive in the PATA+SATA dual hard drive TZ configuration, or if you're limited to booting from the PATA drive. If the latter is the case, that would defeat the purpose of replacing the 5400 RPM HDD with an SSD...