VAIO SB1A vs 13?? Macbook Pro 2011 (Hi-End)

I’m looking for powerful 13’’ laptop to replace my old PC. I’ll be using it for everyday life stuff and coding. I’m really concerned about overheating. As it is said on Apple’s forum, new 15’’ MBP overheats. What about 13’’ MBP? Will the VAIO SB1A heat too? As it is built on the same CPU, but in addition has GPU.

Another question is which keyboard is better? As I can see both have non-standard keyboards.

I have never tried Mac OS X, so I don’t know is it better or worse than Windows.

 

The Macbook Pro is only worth buying if you want OSX.

If you configure it the same as the SB and add a Windows licence you're looking at about 30% more cost, and you still don't get the discrete GPU.

I haven't tried the SB keyboard yet, but Sony & Apple are reputed to have the best chiclet-style keyboards.

 

actually that honor is from the lenovo.

and it appears that the keyboard travel in the SB is shallow, i dont know if its as bad as the low key travel in the HP.

And since cost per cost the SB is the better bang for the buck.

 

well apple did "borrow" the chiclet style keyboard from sony

 

Nonsense, the first one I had was on one of these!!

Personally I dislike them, but almost everything seems to come with them these days. If the keyboard is 70% as good as my SZ3 I'll be happy.

I haven't seen Lenovo mentioned in the same sentence as the Apple/Sony ones, but admittedly they have only started doing the chiclet keyboards more recently.

 

osx does not have maximize button, right click, and the taskbar is forever stuck to the top of the screen, not to mention the plethora of programs that dont work with osx

i'd pay extra just to not have to use osx

and you're in luck, usually laptops with osx surprisingly cost more than their windows counterparts

 

Only an idiot wants every window maximised & open full screen. If you hit the green icon, it will maximise the window to it's full size - but it won't draw the page to the entire desktop as that's just stupid. If you want to do that, then you can resize the window yourself.

 

Actually all those flaws are being fixed in the next OSX which is due in a few weeks. I still agree to only buy a MacBook if you truly like OSX..because if u put windows on a MacBook, it'll be far behind the competition

 

Why is putting Windows on a Mac "far behind the competition"? The hardware is pretty much the same as a lot of other Windows made computers... (not being a smartass, just wondering what makes you think that)

 

windows actually does not run as well on a MBP as on your typical wndows box. Apples windows drivers to be honest suck. The EFI tends to kill disk performance. also they tend heat up to absured levels running windows in many cases and fan controls tend to be more software based than from the BIOS/EFI and temps of 90c+ worry many of us.

 

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what he said. Plus the battery life is less than half when running windows. And if you look at benchmarks, they MBP while running windows actually scores Lowe than a similar speced windows notebook

 

^... and you get damn code 12 errors with expresscards which generally have issues with bootcamp drivers.

 

you also wind up with the insane repair bills for anything not covered under warranty. especially the "It dropped 3 feet and it cracked a connector" ....... im sorry sir that wil be $1250 for a new motherboard and chasis!!!

but to the OP neither the MBP or the Sony SB are concidered high end. if you want top notch cooling and reliability skip the consumer/prosumer models and look at the thinkpas X, T and W series, HP Elitebooks and their little cousins the pro books or Dell Latitudes or mobile workstations. a buniness class laptop is far more reliable and better built than either of the ones you listed by a few miles.

Best keyboard, Lenovo ( thinkpads ) and HP Elitebooks I find. the sony and Apple keyboards I find pretty ... average.

as for OSX vs windows .... both have advantages and disadvantages. heres my basic likes/dislikes

OSX doesnt get " traditional " viruses ... is succeptble to every other form of malware and hacking though. look up cansec west and charlie miller for a small example.

Windows can get viruses .... its true, so try to be careful I wont use the hooker analogy here

OSX I find is not near as nice for running multiple apps on the fly, the smple alt tab trick takes 5 steps in OSX

Windows can be customized out the wazoo, OSX not so much it treats us like idiots

OSX is a NIGHTMARE on corperate networks, most IT guys would have a lobotoy with a butterknife

Windows Crashes .... yup for me about half as much as OSX 10.6

OSX is easy to back up ..... true, but so is every other OS

Windows drivers can be a headache .... so very true

OSX Drivers can be a headache .... again true, try finding them for any legacy devices. Kernel panicks are no fun


and quite pssibly one that is a big decider for the OP and I ... OSX is no where near as good at running multiple screens as OSX .. I can run 6 screens flawless in 7, I have glitches with 3 in OSX

after unsing OSX as my personal primary OS for close to 9 years I now stick with win 7 for about 90% of my work.

 

No offense. I sincerely apologize if I do offend.

I would have to politely disagree with that statement based on my own experience. I've been running Windows on my MBP 24/7. Although it is true that the MBP has way poorer battery life & is hotter, but when compared to my VAIO Z690 with similar specs, IMHO, my MBP runs Windows 7 better than my VAIO Z690.

 

Speed im going to have to humbly again disagree, of course the MBP will run better than the Z690, the 690 was more or less designed for XP and ran Vista badly enough. that was one machine I think sony was sad they released for its glitches and performance issues.

I also have older latops that run 7 badly, but on the other hand have old elitebooks etc designed for XP that kick my 2010 MBP 15" all over the place runing 7 side by side


and no offence taken at all, input is always welcome.

 

Also the battery goes down to a maximum of 7 hours in windows. Battery's in mbp's are not large, osx is just very efficient.

 

Just a clarification: In fact, if you press Shift while clicking the "+" icon it would maximize "Windows style".

And on the topic: I have a MBP13 and a XPS M1530 right now, and even though I love the XPS I think that most of the Windows PCs lack quality and design in general against Macbooks, it's the sad true.... but I wouldn't buy a Mac to run Windows by any means because its pricier and it won't get the same level of support to run Windows than to run OSX never, that's a fact...

Instead of getting a MBP to run Windows you'll be a lot safer getting one of this Vaio SA or SB or waiting for the supposed soon to be announced Dell 14" slim that should compete with this new Sony S series.

 

That's a membrane keyboard, it doesn't even have real keys. Not even close to being the same.

Everyone knows that Radio Shack pioneered the chiclet keyboard!!!!!!!! They are the true innovators in high tech. If it was worth doing, Radio Shack did it first.

TRS-80 Color Computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Oh good grief now I I have an urge to dig out my trash-80 and tape drive to play some old BASIC-A games I did in .... 83

is this like arguing who had backlight keyboards first? Apple? HP? nope Panasonic Toughbooks in 1990

 

Dig out? You mean you don't have it out ready for use? How do you play Crush, Crumble and Chomp!?

 

oh i have to disagree, maximizing a window fully gets rid of the distracting stuff behind that window

anyway, nice to know that you can actually maximize fully on osx, didnt know that before, thanks

 

The Mac OSX is actually really convenient if you know all the tricks in it, Expose and the F12 dashboard key is really really useful.

Back to topic, The 2011 13" MBP gets quite hot if you try to game with it, and quite a few of the recently released Mac games don't work at all on it. The Intel HD3000 IGP is missing a few shader features.

I have an Apple keyboard for my desktop, I'd say if the keyboard on the VAIO SB is anything like the one on the Z, it will be better than the Apple keyboard.

Few key points I would consider for choosing a Mac or a Vaio:
- do you prefer Windows or OSX? (Snow Leopard only has OpenGL 2.1, Lion will get 3.2, Windows 7 is already 4.1)
- do you care about a long battery life? (Macs are almost guaranteed to have a better battery life)
- do you care about the built in speakers? The speakers on VAIO S/Z are trash.
- VAIO should have a better performance/dollar ratio than Macs.
- The glass trackpad on Macs are truly "magical"

 

OSX Lion has a fully maximize button

 

Get the Sony. It's way more powerful, Windows 7, more battery life, and manual switchable graphics.

 

battery life is not quite that simple. there have been numerous windows machines with comparable or superior battery life the last few years. right now we are looking at close to 12 on a 6 cell ( they advertise 15 ) on the lenovo x220/x220t and with the thin battery slice over 20. my 5 year old Toughbook CF-29 still gives me 14 hrs with media bay battery and a 1000 nit screen. ASUS UL series were never tough to get past 11 hours of usable time. even my 17" elitebook running hard gives me 3 hours as where the same software on my MBP 17" gives me 1.75

I will agree on the touchpad ... but im a freak and like the trackpoints. but alas windows drivers for the MBP touchpad still SUCK

 

ive tried and i still dont understand what is so wonderful about the MBP glass trackpad, it never seemed to register my "taps" as clicks, but i've only tried my friend's MBP, so maybe his settings are off

i feel as if the trackpad on my dell xps m1210 was the best i've ever tried, (the vaio z i have right now is bad in my opinion)

 

A lot of Mac users do not set their trackpads to recognize "tap as click." I have no clue why because I find it so much more convenient than actually physically clicking down. But it certainly is an option to tap to click on Mac. I must say the glass trackpad is far superior to any Synaptics/Alps trackpad out there. The Apple ones simply register multi touch gestures a lot better, I can never get my two finger scroll to scroll "just the right amount" on my Z but on a Mac it's as easy as using scrolling on an iPhone.

 

I have to disagree with that pov. Its quite annoying when some random window pops up while you are trying to get a job done and accidentally click on an empty space on the desktop. A full screen window helps the user stay focused on one application without being distracted every time u move your tablet pen.

 

Depends entirely on available screen resolution IMO.

If I'm working on a little laptop at 1280*800 or 1366*768 then I will usually work with everything maximised (unless I need to look at two separate windows at the same time for some specific reason).

At 1920*1200, the huge amounts of white space in, for example, my web browser become far more annoying than the desktop I can see behind it when it's not maximised.

 

really? at full HD on my FW i always have everything maxmized, except maybe msn, winamp and sometimes windows explorer, otherwise most things are maximized.

 

i always have my dpi adjusted for the resolution, so there's never any huge white spaces

 

i run my webpages side by side on my 2560x1600 basically 2 1280x1600 windows 1 page maxed on that is annoying. on my 14" envy i have the dpi set so 1600x900 maximized fills my screen

 

The scrolling in Mac is very intelligent, you don't actually need to have focus on the window to scroll.

For example, you have a web page open and word document open in focus. Just mouse over the web page and you can start scrolling, at the same time typing into the word document because its still in focus.

I also find the touchpad scrolling in Macs to be really smooth more so than a mouse wheel in windows, a multitouch scrolling registry on my Vaio Z.

 

the main thing about the Mac trackapads is that they have inertia scrolling..that's what gives it that "smooth" effect. I'm not sure if that will ever come to windows..

 

I wouldn't consider that to be the 'main' thing. Inertia might assist in providing a better overall effect and experience, but to me, it's the quality of material used for the trackpad, the size, responsiveness and touch that trumps the huge majority of other trackpads out there.

 

I've used PC trackpads that do the inertia thing, can't remember on what laptop (it wasn't mine); surely it's a pretty trivial thing to put into a driver, although I can't stand it myself.

Personally I really dislike the Apple trackpads - no right click, huge oversensitivity to the tap-to-click, hidden button (yay, style over function again!), and all that multi-touch stuff does my head in no end.

 

Just thought I would throw down some specs

Sony Vaio S
$969 base with i5-2410M and ATI 6470M (3dmark06 = 4336)
13.3" screen
1366x768
HD6630M GPU but you have to upgrade to i7-2620m = $1269
USB3
hdmi and no display port
Optical drive - swap out for hdd?
backlit keyboard
13" x 8.8" x 0.95"
3.8lbs - standard battery
5lbs - extended battery
Intel wireless display
~7 hours battery life at optimal settings

MBP 13"
$1199
13.3" screen
1280x800 - that extra 32 pixels is very important to some of us
Intel HD3000 GPU (3dmark06 = 4500+)
max 16gb ram
Thunderbolt!!
Optical drive that is easily swapped for second hdd
HD webcam
trackpad is yet to be matched
12.8" x 8.9" x 0.95"
4.5lbs (2.04kg)
small power brick
magsafe
8.5 hours battery as tested by laptopmag

Lenovo X220
$979 base, but not if you want USB3 etc
12.5" screen (option for IPS screen is good)
1366x768
Intel HD3000 GPU (3dmark06 = 3494)
max 8gb ram
Express card is nice - DIY Vidock
USB3 only available on i7-2620m model
No optical drive
fingerprint reader
3.6lbs with 6-cell battery
4.875lbs with external battery slice
12 "x 9.1" x 0.5-1.5"
Can do wimax/wwan
no backlit keyboards
external "sheet/slice" battery adds 1" thickness and 1.6lbs
8 hours battery as tested by laptopmag

 

what you mentioned above is also available on windows, but it's not enabled by default

and how can touchpad scrolling be smoother than a mouse wheel...? perhaps smooth scrolling isn't enabled

 

Those specs are a little favored for a mbp. ill edit them

Sony Vaio S
$969 base with i5-2410M (2,3ghz-2,9ghz) and ATI 6470M (still better than the hd3000, has opengl support)
13.3" screen
1366x768 (color gamut still unknown, half matte)
HD6630M GPU but you have to upgrade to i7-2620m = $1269
2x usb 2.0, 1x usb 3.0
hdmi and vga
Optical drive (blu-ray available)
backlit keyboard
331,0mm x 224,5mm x 23,9mm
3.8lbs (1,75kg) - standard battery
5lbs (2,27kg - extended battery
Intel wireless display
~7 hours battery life at optimal settings (49Wh)
~14 hours battery life at optimal settings with extended battery (98Wh)
Docking station available

MBP 13"
$1199 base with i5-2410M (2,3ghz-2,9ghz)and Intel HD3000 GPU (On of the best integrated video chips, but still a integrated chip)
13.3" screen
1280x800 - (good color, very reflective)
Thunderbolt
2 usb ports, 1 firewire
Optical drive that is easily swapped for second hdd
325mm x 227mm x 24,1mm
HD webcam
Very good trackpad
4.5lbs (2.04kg)
small power brick
magsafe
8.5 hours battery as tested by laptopmag (63Wh)


If i configure a Sony Vaio S for around the same price the macbook is here (€1149) you can get a intel i5 2520 2,5ghz (turbo 3,2ghz), and a AMD 6630 for €1129 euro. If i leave the cpu to a 2410 i can get a sheet battery totaling 1199 euros.

Still boils down to if you like OSX or windows 7 more. Windows 7 -> sony vaio, OSX -> Macbook pro 13. If you want the cheaper one with around the same performance go for the sony.

btw, the macbook pro doesnt support up to 16gb, its 8gb. They have the same cpu so that couldnt even be possible.

 

The first reason for me to go with Vaio is that it is not an apple

Joking aside, the only thing I respect MBP for is the robust construction. But that was never a reason enough (especially compared to Vaio S which is very robust as well!) for me to go this way, considering the price and configuration difference.

And back to joking:

 

There is actually right clicks for Apple trackpads.

Go to System Settings -> Trackpad -> enable secondary click.

and there is a firmware update for Macs which enable more than 8GB ram, they go up to 16GB now.

 

What a firmware upgrade ? The cpu is exactly the same so if the mac can handle 16gb then the sony SB can aswell. Thing is, the cpu can only address 8gb of memory so.

edit: i think i misread it, the cpu can use ram up to 8gb per stick, so the sony can handle up to 16gb as well.

 

Same thing as OS update, OS patch, software update, although usually firmware update is used more with phones (at least in my experience). In any case, you're going to be VERY pressed to use 8GB much less 16GB of RAM

 

The sony should be able to use 12gb because one memory stick is soldered. The memory controller is still the same as the mbp

 

The last gen 13/15" MBP's overcame the heat issues in Windows. Going by reviews like the laptopmag this gen MBP's seem to run a bit hotter. Trackpad full functionality isn't quite there but it's still more than acceptable in Windows. I'm not a fan of the MBP trackpad but each to their own. I'm also not that big on multitouch either, just the basic options (tap, vertical and horizontal scroll) is enough for me.
May be go to an Apple store and try one out.

I've owned a few Macs and later went onto install Bootcamp. On battery i just used MacOSX. For me it was nice to be able to use both operating systems. However the specs were too limiting. If the specs fit and you have an interest in using MacOSX then it's worthy of consideration.

The SB has just been released and hasn't started shipping yet and there have been no indepth reviews. At this point no-one really knows how well the SB handles heat.

 

the heat is going to be a ''heated'' debate, specially due to the placement of the fan exhaust, which inevitably will suffer from some blocking due to the way the hinges were built.

I would seriously ignore the hatred towards apple, they are focused on niche of the market (inevitably jokes would follow on this), and as such their products are designed for that.

Basically weight your needs:

When do you need it?

For what purpose? (are you going to play, or are you going to do some excel work?

how many hours do you want to be away from the mains?

What is the weight that would be most beneficial to you? ( this is to be considered if the battery is important, the slice battery will add weight and bulk)

Are all your needs filled by OSX? or do you need to bootcamp? (performance is about the same, and according to anandtech, the drivers have improved)