The Official Haswell/Z Speculation Thread

Yeah, it's pretty big, but I don't use it and it's not a distraction because of its location perfectly situated between the heel of each hand. And Sony wasn't kidding about this "zero entry" infinite wrist rest; the downward pitch of the wrist rest area allows your forearms to rest on a desk very naturally. No fatigue.

It's really smooth, I really like it. I've had notebooks that had really sloppy keys, spongy keys, and stiff keys and this one is just right. It leans towards the stiff side, but travel is very good and you don't need to pound the keys to make them respond.

BJ

 

hi boltjames,

Congratulations to your new pro! Could you please tell us how the heat/fan noise in this build? thanks!

 

My statement was made in relation to Intel aggressively pushing the ultrabook. We'll see where this way is going when those mentioned manufacturers release their haswell devices.

 

figured they would opt for china and not japan. It seems Sony kept it's word when they said the stickers would match the colour, black and white and not blue.

 

Thanks a lot for the information guys, and BJ congrats on your new laptop!

I'm almost convinced that I'll be getting the Pro 11 now. Just need to find somewhere that will sell the matte non-touch version. It'll be damn hard getting here in Canada

 

Okay, I've been putting the Pro through its paces, here's the verdict:

Heat: None.

Fan: Noisy, but doesn't come on that often.

BJ

 

Contact Conics.

 

As for a possible replacement, just saw the msi ge40 on Engadget.
i7-4702MQ processor, gtx760m gpu, 1600x900 display in 14" form factor and 4.4 lbs. Not sure what battery life will be like, and ram may be capped at 8gb, but it does support dual external monitors and has apparently good speakers to boot. All for between $1300 and $1400.

Not z-like in weight/size, but still portable for true desktop-replacement specs.

 

Pro 13 just got to NYC Sony store on Madison like 1hr ago.
I tried on there. So far can't migrate from Z11 to this one.
Keyboard is awesome as well as build. It has more flex in general but I'm ok with that.

But that glossy screen is no go for me. I also dislike it being thick, nonflexible and fixed in one angle. Btw it is uncomfortable to use in store when you standing.
I also found that it is less glossy than Dou but also has more friction. Perhaps this is because of being new one.
It is not much faster of Z11 as it turns out. Tried some FHD flash stream tests

Going to wait for next big thing

 

The VPC-Z was released in late 2009. We were mired in the worst recession since the great depression and had been since 2007. Housing prices had fallen up to 60%,the stock market indexes were at 5 year lows and unemployment was 10%. Nothing was much better in 2011, when the Z2 was introduced. You need a new theory.

Touche! (and both a "like" and a +1). It's hard to know how large the market would be for a new Z, but that's partly because we can only extrapolate from previous versions as to what a 2013 Z would be like, particularly relative to the competition. Since there are numerous "high end" ultrabooks and 13" laptops on the market, easily nearing $2,000 well equipped, there is clearly enough demand for high end machines that cost twice as much as very good machines with close to the same power, not nearly as much panache and missing a couple of key power assets, eg, ULV cpus vs. std voltage. There is unquestionably demand for the kind of product a new Z would likely have been, and the Pro and Duo 13 are not contenders. One thing Sony knows absolutely nothing about is branding. At the very least, they should have traded on the brand equity in the "Z" moniker, even if with a less inspired copy. It's just that Sony appears to have other fish to fry and clearly are going for volume and profit and it's not clear the Z brought them either. The Z may or may not be dead, but "long live the Z!"

I, for one, am unlikely to "love a laptop" (which means I'll have to change my NBR screen id ) like I did the Zs, but then again, in a very different way I am in heavy like with the Asus UX51 and even my 8GB/256GB Ivy Bridge HP Envy 14 Spectre, (an unsung hero of this market if ever there was one, but don't get me started!). A classic is a classic and maybe they are doomed to short life cycles. As long as some have used cars as analogies, I consider the MBA and all which emulate it to be Honda Accords or Accord competitors. It's actually a darn nice car these days and goes like stink and handles like a sport sedan. Excellent transportation and some more. I wouldn't want one unless it was the last car on earth! And I do bemoan the softened ride, numb steering and so-so handling of the latest BMW 3 series. It is probably analogous to the various not-Z Ultrabooks of 2013/Haswell: nothing wrong with the best of them, more than sufficient for my needs, but functionally not much more than a modern Accord with upscale branding at 75% higher price. None will get my blood pumping like the Z, nor like my 2006 335! My 2010 Z1 remains my daily driver, as does that 7 year old BMW.

It looks awesome! It may not be a Z successor, but it is drop dead gorgeous and so seductively thin and light that it might just fill some of the hole inside me waiting for a new Z to fill it. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

I love the specs but it's butt-ugly, like pretty much every other MSI. What's with the "Fast & Furious" graphics on those tings?

 

Fixed in one angle - what do you mean?

 

I agree - it's understated for a gaming laptop, but I'd still feel self-conscious bringing it into a business meeting. But so far it's the only laptop I've seen that has really good specs below 5lbs. 10 years ago, I used to lug around a 10lb Clevo just to get desktop performance in a laptop, but the Z totally spoiled me. Now I think 5lbs is too heavy.

 

I'm going to wait until I see more from the new Zenbook, the Asus S7 and also what Samsung has up their sleeves. Hopefully they'll reveal their new laptop lineup next week at their event.

 

Gigabyte U24F gets in the middle. Has 750M graphics but ULV CPU. Much lighter and compact. But they all have that 14" 900p terrible screen. If one could only replace it ....

 

I mean you cannot tilt the screen when laptop open. It is always in one position.
So even though it is IPS screen you would like to adjust it to sit somewhere, put on lap or avoid reflections. Can't do it.

 

2009. Hmm. The very height of the LCD HDTV revolution, money pouring in, sales through the roof, yup, sounds like high times to release a Z. Good theory.

It performed like a champ today at work, really fast and a pleasure to type on.

My 12 year old son lives for Paint.NET, always making XBOX covers for fun and does a good job too. I get home a few minutes ago, he begs me to let me use the Pro. He launches Paint.NET. Wants to select a section of an image to copy. Puts down the mouse. Uses his finger. Suddenly I realize why the touchscreen I've been ignoring might be useful.

BJ

 

Sure you can. It has, what, 20 degrees of pitch, certainly enough whether you're slouched in a chair or sitting upright at a desk. The hinged rear has plenty of play.

BJ

 

Um - no - it's not quite like that.

The screen only goes back to about a 120 degree angle (you can't move it tilt it back further than that). That's becomes an issue where the laptop is significantly lower than your head height. This is one major difference between this and the Z2

 

Yeah, touch can be a nice feature for certain things (especially graphical things like drawing) but if I was going to buy a laptop with touch I'd want it to be designed around the feature (i.e. like the Duo 13 with a tablet/flat mode, drawing stylus, etc.) I find it to be cumbersome on a traditional form factor laptop just due to the constant transitions between typing/mouse and touch, and I definitely don't think it is a feature that should be on a professional laptop (independent of any of my other issues with the Pro). But I know Intel/Microsoft are basically forcing touch screens down everyone's throat, so it's not exactly Sony's fault...

 

You forget the VGN-Z which came before the VPC-Z but right after the SZ (which was the transition from S back to Z) That was the first Vaio with the proprietary RAID SSDs. The VPC-Z built on what VGN-Z brought to the table. Sony made the VPC change later in 2009.

 

Brief video comparison of the pro 13 and the Vaio Z
Sony Vaio Pro 13 vs Sony Vaio Z full comparison - YouTube

 

I see they've dropped the function key next to the arrow keys that was on the recent Zs. Not having that with my VPCZ, I find that additional function key an excellent addition to the Duo for paging up and down and use it all the time (for the VPCZ, I ended up mapping other keys to page-up/down). So for me, that's a real shame that it's gone in the Pro.

 

After a bit more research, looks like the Sager W230ST is the closest (so far) to a real Z replacement:

13.3" (up to 1920x1080) screen
up to i74900MQ quad core processor
nVidia GTX765M/Intel + Intel HD4600 (w/Optimus)
up to 16gig RAM
9.5 mm SATA hard drive + 1 mSATA SSD drive
1 HDMI out, 1 VGA out (maybe dual external screens?)
backlit keyboard
3 USB3.0 ports
Battery life up to 5 hours
4.4 lbs

Taken from this thread and a site with pre-order specs

 

Interesting, specs are great but 4.4 pounds is getting up there and it's like 1.3 inches thick? Aka, twice as thick as the Z. Ports are good too, but not sure that's gonna do it for me, although I'd probably still take it over the Pro, especially if it comes with a matte non-touch screen as it seems to...

 

My god, the flex of the Pro in this video. It really looks like a toy notebook. And the reviewer got the weight of the Z wrong, the weight difference is much smaller, and when we consider what we lose....

 

The specs are great! But how reliable are these "off-brand" laptops? I've always only bought from the major, better known vendors (Dell, Apple, Sony). My experience has been consistent---only one or two warranty servicings needed over a ~5 year lifespan for these laptops. What I don't want to be doing is sending the laptop back three times a year for repair like some horror stories I've heard (most specifically regarding Acer but others too).

 

Intel Haswell gaming performances - Sony Vaio Pro 13 - YouTube


Seems the graphics performance is very limited
quite surprised my 425M (2010) still performs better (My Dirt 3 runs better that that video shows)
I think people really need iris (you can always wait for broadwell in 2015..) on the integrated graphics if they need "satisfactory" gaming

 

(From http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...well-z-speculation-thread-67.html#post9230095)

Just to say I had pretty similar reasoning for buying the 3 Vaio Zs I've owned since the z505hs. Paying top dollar and keeping jobs in the "West", whether US, Japan, Europe seemed sensible to me. Better than moaning about off-shoring and doing nothing in my book - but it's a personal view. Paying top dollar for items Made in China often entails many of those top dollars going somewhere else along the way. And not even to the Taxman if the Apple Ireland model is anything to go by.

 

anyone know if you can the buy the z3 anywhere?

 

I just got my pro 13 today at the Sony store. I went with the i7 256gb model. After a few minutes of playing with the Demo I was hooked. I always wanted a good well built macbook air style windows machine. This machine has a better display (though glossy so you may not like the gloss if that bothers you) then the MacBook air. This machine is super light just like the Z3 It replaced. Has a nice sized trackpad that runs smooth (hated my z3 trackpad). Haven't really done much with the machine yet but initial impression is this is the machine for me. I've always been partial to Sony products for their style and build. I have recently been through so many Ultrabook and laptops, i finally found my new keeper. Just throwing so some feedback out there as a guy who uses many many mobile gadgets and laptops. I don't game on my laptops so I can't comment on that aspect for those wondering about the Haswell gpu. Hope this helps anyone on the fence or with similar needs.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

 

I'm sure I remember an article in The Economist on this topic recently. A lot of advanced products that are "made in China" are really just using "cheap" (though rapidly becoming more expensive) labour to assemble advanced components made elsewhere (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Ireland etc.) All the fab plants for the advanced chips in these laptops exist elsewhere - and it's one challenge that China will face in the coming years: attracting more high tech industries to allow wages to keep rising.

 

To get the "Made In Japan" label, only a certain percentage of the actual product needs to be sourced in Japan. I am not sure of their country standard, but to be called "Made In The USA" only 50% of the actual products makeup needs to be manufactured here.

Additionally, certainly as evidenced by the iPhone and iPad, some Chinese factories can produce product to an even higher standard than Japan, simply a matter of Sony working with those superior factories.

BJ

 

Why does sony remove the WWAN out off the new Pro?

 

To make it the Lightest 13" ultrabook?

 

A lot of WWAN modules are tied to a particular service provider. This makes them useless unless you use that service provider. People don't like that; they want the right to choose. Besides, laptop users travel all over the world. Better to use a USB dongle (unlocked). You can buy a local SIM in each country that you visit - that works out much cheaper too.

 

Here's another possibility:
https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1
at 1.7kg/3.8lbs, it's heavier than the Z but it comes with:
14" 1080p IPS matte screen, quad core i7 haswell, up to 16GB RAM, and great selection of ports. It's Ubuntu so no idea about windows drivers.

 

Very nice specs on that one.

 

Good question and the main issue I have with the Pro. Even the Duo 13 comes with WWAN.

That's only true for customer unfriendly markets. In Europe e.g. they come mostly unlocked.
Dongles and tethering are not convenient on the road. Replace touchscreen with WWAN in your requirements Intel - and we're talking ultrabook.

I started a discussion here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/706071-why-no-wwan-ultrabooks.html Please use the poll.

 

double post, see above

 

Europe and Middle Asia (Singapore, India, etc.) have the WWAN unlocked. USA, China, Hong Kong - locked.

 

How about Japan? Land of the free?

 

The Foxconn factories basically hire anyone they can get, with no particular skills required. Apple products aren't necessarily assembled to the highest standards, although they do spend a lot of money/energy on their QC. I've found my iPods and my old Macbook to be (in my subjective opinion) less precisely assembled than my Z (i.e. I occasionally had to tighten screws on the macbook and even replaced a hinge once). Anyways, I think most of us are interested in a "Made in Japan" product more based on our previous subjective experience than any concrete logical reason for spending more money. China has a bad reputation not because they are incapable of producing quality products but because generally operations are moved there to cut costs. If one was willing to pay as much to manufacture in China as in the US, Japan, Germany, etc. the quality would be the same, but then there would be no reason to make it in China. At the very least the costs would have to be less to counter the increased transportation/shipping costs. But, again, the Pro is a completely different machine than the Z and has a completely different target demographic, and cutting costs to be competitive and more widely affordable makes sense for this product.

Regarding what is required to say "Made in X" there are usually pretty strict regulations involved in that sort of thing. I know for watches if you want to use "Swiss" on the face of the watch there are lots of regulations (i.e., >50% of the monetary value of the parts contained in the movement must be made in Switzerland, and the movement must be both fully assembled and inspected in Switzerland just to say "Swiss Movement" on the face. "Swiss Made" is even more restrictive). I'm sure that most other countries and industries have similar rules regarding parts, assembly, inspection, etc.

 

This is awesome.... now just waiting for those Iris Pro 3D benchmarks. Anybody aware of any?

And yeah... I'll probably wait for someone else to be the windows installation guinea pig on this one

 

This is too unreal to believe... can it really be, Iris Pro is on par with an NVIDIA 745M? If so, it's too bad Sony didn't use it

Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200 - NotebookCheck.net Tech

No wonder NVIDIA stock is being shorted...

 

Does anyone know when or IF ever, we will see regular haswell VAIO notebooks ????????? So far we only have ultrabooks announced.

 

Oh, that magic word "Ultra" surfaced. Yeah...

 

avmaxfan
they are already there. Fit14E, Fit15E. 17" will follow soon...

 

In the US sonystyle.com store none of the VAIO Fits are showing up as haswell.... did I miss something?

 

PausaniasX,
upgrade is coming...