Vaio VPC Z: ram, HDD, screen and powerconsumption

Hey folks,

I'm gooing to buy a Vaio Z next two or three weeks and there are still some questions open which, I hope so, you can answer easily.

1.) Is more Ram draining the battery? I don't know if it's worth to get the full 8GB, I'll be using that notebook for programming, so I thought that 80€ extra will be a good investment, but I don't like the idea of loosing battery-time.

2.) Same question for the HDD. I think I'll buy a 128GB SSD version and replace the DVD drive with a caddy. Is there any HD that is less hungry than the others? It doesn't has to be fast since its just for my MP3's and stuff like that. Do you think I will recognize that HDD on my battery life?

3.) Will the full HD screen safe energy or waste it? I actually don't really need it, but i read here its quality is better, is that true?

So a system with a second HD, 8Gigs of ram and an i5 520, what do you think is the battery life i can expect with the large battery?
More than 5 hours with WiFi on and 65% brightness?


Thanks for your time,
regards,
fuchstronaut

 

Depends on what you are doing but with the i5, 8gb ram, and STANDARD battery I get over 4 hours doing light browsing with screen about 65% and wifi on. I think with the extended battery you should see around 7 hours or so.

 

If you are programming, you shouldn't be concerned with RAM but more so with the CPU. Get the i7-620M, if you can find it that is... Script executions should theoretically be faster than with the i5 variants. Having more RAM is better if you do alot of, say, Photoshop (Lightroom) or Premiere (high-end video editing)

There should be a noticable difference between an SSD and HDD; the HDD is always spinning whereas in SSDs, there is no moving parts.

FullHD will consume a bit more power than the non-FullHD. As for quality, that differs from person to person (some like it, some don't); you'd be better off seeing the two variants side-by-side for the screen...

 

Thanks alot for your answers.
I won't take the i7 because, for what I am doing, the i5 is enough, 90% of my programming is perl, php, javascript and, i think in the next two years, i might spend some minutes coding java for my study.

Right now I am working on a VGN-TZ21 and an iMac which is more then powerful enough, and I don't want to sacrifice even 15 minutes for the additional power of the i7 (nor 200€ ;]).

I thought about getting the extra RAM since its "only" 80€ more and I wont have to throw away a 2GB-Ram or even both (since in germany the 4GB version is configured with 2x2GB).
So what do you think about the power consumption?

Do you think the additional HD will be a big deal ?

 

I wouldn't think, for programming, 8G of memory would come into the picture. Or the CPU too for that matter I understand this is getting religious, but anyway I think that a program that executes quickly, uses less memory, and is more efficient overall, is a better program. I don't think many of the machines out there in production environments have an i7: if a program needs an i7 to run well, that's not too good

What I would use the additional memory for is to run multiple VMs. If certain tools require certain environments (e.g. Linux), it may be less painful to run those environments within the VMs.

If you can stand the FHD, it will be very useful for programming. I would go for more screen estate over battery life.

 

Your programming environment is more of a consideration than the size of the programs you create. I am using my Z12 for development. Running Visual Studio 2010, IIS, SQL Server 2008, SQL Management Studio, Silverlight, Outlook, Skype, a browser, etc. etc. the memory goes fast. The tools for Perl/Php/Javascript are probably light-weight compared to what I am doing. Don't forget that 256MB is reserved for video/protected path DRM.

Agree that more memory is a requirement for VMs.

You could put another SSD in the caddy instead of an HDD; better performance and lower battery consumption. That will also reduce wear on the internal SSD. I have my source, database, etc. on an external SSD for that reason. Hope to get a caddy soon and put the external SSD in it.

Yes, more memory will reduce battery life. Can't say that I have any idea how much because I don't run on battery unless absolutely necessary. If you are worried about battery life, get the extended battery or another standard.

Also I can't comment on the FullHD display - have the 1600x900 myself. I personally wouldn't be able to work a whole day on the FullHD due to eyestrain - tried that before with a 17" Dell. I'm using a 28" LCD for my main screen. Yes, you run out of real estate faster with the lower res screen, but it is doable.

 

I don't own a Z but i upgraded my TT from 4GB to 8GB and didn't notice any decrease in battery life at all.

 

Not necessarily. In some cases, more memory will improve battery life. Unused RAM gets used for disk cache, and reduces disk usage, and a HD (or even SSD) uses far more power than RAM does.
Of course, you have to use apps that generate a reasonable amount of cache hits for this to have a good effect. Small databases is a good example.

It can also have a positive effect on battery life simply by allowing you to finish a job quicker, and thus turn off the machine quicker. But this depends on the apps being able to take advantage of more memory.

All in all, it depends on what you do. For my use, which is mostly compiling with gcc, RAM access time has more of an impact than more RAM, so I run with 4 GB of 5-5-5-15 clocked RAM. For Visual Studio compiling, the bottleneck is I/O, so getting a faster drive is far more useful than more or faster RAM. But for database or Photoshop work, more RAM (and running a 64-bit version) is always better.

 

Good point, thank you.