Thinking of Buying a Z

Hi everyone,

New to Sony, have just sent a Dell Studio XPS 1340 Back. It was awful. Poor quality, and run so hot it was silly.

So I am now looking at the Z, Need a 13" light, and powerful

Seems to fit the bill. I know there are horror stories, but it has to be better then the Dell.

Any thoughts of people that own a Z?

Cheers,
Will

 

I think that the series is going to be refreshed soon, as the GPU 9300M is kinda out of date.

 

Where u read that ? When (any idea) After WIN7 is officialy released ?

 

Interesting.

I must say I am not too bothered about GPU, I am not a gamer, I will be using it for email, program development, in VB and C++, also remote support, the the 3G etc, will be used a lot.

Appart from that

 

i think you will like the Z a lot then. i use it for the same purpose as you do. however, you must take note that VT is initially disabled at first with no way of enabling it. you will have to go through some bios register hacks in order to enable VT as well as all the other advanced bios configuration.

also, one thing that i have to complain about is that the bluetooth and wireless lan uses the same switch to turn on and off. so you'll have to turn on bluetooth if you simply just want to go online wireless or you'll have to turn on your wireless if you just want to use your BT mouse. this wastes a lot of battery power imo.

other than that, the keyboard is really nice. the screen is bright and the resolution is perfect for code development; so far i've used both MS visual studio .net and netbeans and the screen resolution (1366x768) is just right.

 

Thank you for the info, just what I was after. I am hoping to get work to pay for it, so the cost is not a big issue.

I may be stupid, but what is VT?

Cheers,
Will

 

Recent intel processors come with the Virtualization Technology (VT) that allows two or more OS'es to run simultaneously, one on top of the other. This technique is commonly known as virtual machines (VM).

However, all sony vaio laptops currently have that option disabled with no way of enabling it (the only exception is through a hack which is linked below). I dont believe that sony has mentioned anything about this when a new customer buys their vaio laptops. This has caused all the outrage among vaio owners because they feel cheated and that sony has deprived their customers from what is, and should be rightfully theirs.

Not until recently Sony has begin to loosen up on their policy of not enabling VT on sony vaio laptops. With the advent of Windows 7 which includes one functionality that allow applications to run in an XP mode. This feature, however, requires VT to be enabled on your processors. Sony vaio laptops will seriously be crippled if they continue to disable VT when windows 7 retails. As a result, sony has released a statement that they will slowly offer bios update that has the VT option for most vaio laptops, however, that does not include the Z series.

If you want to enable VT on your vaio Z, you will have to resort to hacking your bios register as per this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345282

 

People seem to think that VT is *required* for running virtual machines, this is wrong. You need VT to run 64-bit machines. VMware will run x86 machines with VT disabled. XP mode will require VT only because the software complains. I've been using VMware with virtual linux and servers running without any issue. I can now run x64 machines with VT enabled.

The hack to enable it is extremly easy with no reported problems.

As for the comment RE bluetooth and Wifi, you can use the smart network software to disable the radios, such as BT, Wifi and WWAN. This was the same for the TX Vaio's we previously had.

HTH.
Rico

 

Yes, I initially run a 32 bit Windows XP using Vmware with no problems when I bought the laptop, this is before I performed the hack. However, when I try to install a 64bit ubuntu server with Vmware, it complains which eventually led me to discover this trick played by Sony to disable all VT without the option of turning it back on.

Would you think it's fair that Intel, having spent so much money on creating this VT technology, and us customers, who buy sony laptops bearing in mind that VT is a given since the laptop comes with the latest intel processor, only to discover that it is disabled with no option of re-enabling it after we paid more the other guy who bought a dell with the same processor (no offense to dell owners)?

 

Except that many of us can't use SmartWi at all, because it can't handle IPv6 or network bridging. It's probably OK as long as you're only connected to a single IPv4 network at a time -- granted, that probably means most people, but far from all of us.

That's not an argument. A lot of things happen in three years, and I would like to see the new features implemented. Without changes, we would all be using clones of Osborne 1 and Kaypro.

 

Thanks everyone, all very interesting, good news is nothing has put me off the Z yet

 

More good news. I personally like my Z very much even though I'm a gamer. It runs the PS2 emulator at full speed.

 

Fantastic, was looking at the same spec as you have too

 

i've only been a mac owner for a week now but the mac experience has been a lot better than that with my sony vaio sz220. out of the box the mac was easy to use, contained no bloatware. no need for clean install, no need for tedious driver collecting and installing. out of the box for the vaio, i had plenty of bloatware and issues with clean install. that was a fking pain.

right before the purchase i went to sony style to check out the offerings. my budget was 1500. the 13" mbp had better specs than the similarly priced vaio. pair that with the os that isn't supposed to need as much maintenance as windows, and i felt like i had a better buy. of course with this last point only time will tell, but i'm also basing this off my friend's 4 year old mbp.