Vaio Z = Work laptop ?

Hi,

I will be needing a new laptop and was thinking about the Z. I kept wondering if the screen is too small for doing some typing on MS office, and general work on the laptop.

Have any of you had any experiences with it? Did the screen hinder you a lot?

Thanks

 

The screen size is great. The resolution is what makes it great, most laptops these days are 1366x768 which is a resolution smaller than our 1600x900 so even if you bought a larger screen notebook you still would most likely have less real estate than the Z.
You will have no problem doing office work on your Z

 

I use the Z extensively for large Excel works and trading. The FHD screen and i7 is a god send

MS Office (try the latest 2010 version) works well with this little beauty.

 

My personal and professional opinion is that the Z11 is suited to just about any task you can dream up for it. I use mine (see signature) for EVERYTHING. It rocks at everything...and I "only" have the i5 540m processor with 4GB of RAM. The display is crystal clear and very sharp. I especially like it for viewing Word/Excel on one half of the screen (source document) and another Word/Excel document on the other half of the screen (destination document); it is great for working with side-by-side windows.

That said, it depends on your vision as to whether or not you'll have to adjust the display settings (DPI) to optimize the text size, but all of that is a pretty straight forward adjustment (for which instructions have been created elsewhere within the NotebookReview forum).

 

There are a few things that make it less than ideal as a business notebook. Whether those are serious enough to be an issue for you is something only you (or your employer) can decide.

(Note that everything on this list pertains to the US and European models -- the Asian market has more choices.)

- No option to get the Z without a camera. (Some companies expressly forbid cameras, especially for visitors.)
- Proprietary SSDs that an IT department can't service. Nor many other parts, for that matter.
- No true docking station, only a very basic port replicator. You can't hook up two monitors, for example. (Two monitors per user has become the standard where I work.) Nor a serial port, so you can't use it for things like a terminal. Nor PS/2 ports, so you can't hook it up to a non-USB KVM.
- Can't drive very high monitor resolutions (even with the port replicator).
- Lack of TPM module in the US model.

But, by all means, there's a lot of things going for it too, including the light weight and small footprint. And an acceptable battery life.

The chiclet keys, lack of mousestick and non-standard placement of some keys is a personal preference, so I won't hold that against (or for) the Z.

 

It depends a lot on what sort of work you're talking about. Screen being small may refer to it being just 13" which is an issue for some, but resolution-wise it's very good. Some folks like physically big screens and I understand why (less eye strain).

So if it's just Office stuff, and physically large screens are not necessary on-the-go, then the laptop is snappy enough to satisfy the user.

If it's say used for photography or some other graphic applications, then the screen isn't good enough (poor vertical viewing angles). So in this case an external screen is required. But I would imagine that high resolution is also necessary, which means that the Z isn't good at all for that line of work.

I don't think the laptop is targeted at the gamer community, although it can run games at decent speeds. I would say it's primarily meant for executive folks who travel.

 

It is dream machine for freelance developers, consultants on the move. Especial if you are using Microsoft tools for development (VS 2010 + Blend + SQL Server) that are more power hungry. It can also easily deal with virtual machines. Thanks to this machine I can work where ever I go.

Previously I owned Portege R600 and it was great machine but it didn't have enough power for work I do. Z is just what I need.

 

Can you please clarify?

What is its limit?

 

1900x1200 is max

 

as well as -- someone correct me if I'm wrong -- it not supporting portrait resolutions either, like most nVidia solutions do. (It could be disabled because switching wouldn't work, but still, it may be a concern for DTP work)

 

Assuming you mean 1920x1200.

Really? Is that the max via HDMI or VGA, or both?

So it can't even do 2560x1440 or something?

 

Sorry that's what I meant.

Not sure about VGA...I believe other's have reported that it doesn't go higher either.

2560x1440 is higher than 1920x1200...so that def will not work over hdmi or DVI (dock) due to the poor (single link) implementation Sony used.

Maybe there's a shot with VGA?

 

The max rated resolution out of the vga port is: 2048 x 1536
However, in that resolution I have only seen specialty monitors these days. They tend to be CRT and cost in the range of tens of thousands of dollars.

therefore, the max, inexpensive, mainstream, rectangular, monitor is 1920x1200

As an alternative you might consider the 2048x1152 monitors made by Samsung, Acer and such. They too would work and, depending on how you count pixels, could be considered as having MORE
(fewer horizontal lines, more vertical lines, and a teensy bit more total pixels)

 

I have been using my VGN-Z750D for about a year every day for work, consulting.

I am now running it in a dual boot, with Windows 7 on one side and booting to a VHD with Windows Server 2008 R2 + SQL Server 2008 R2 + Dynamics CRM 4.0 and SharePoint 2010.

I am also running a mail server, its a domain controller and hyper V without issue. I am using a log of memory and considering increasing it, I think most of the memory usage now is coming from SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server.

I work in Washington DC and frankly the hour and a half commute to work on the metro + ommuter bus is a breaze with such a powerful and light weight laptop. I can even work using my Mifi as well on my commuter bus due to its size. I had a dell M something that I burned the motherboard up in a week, it was a decent laptop but its size and weight was a pain to lug around.

I have the docking station with the privacy screen and a second monitor on my desk at work hooked to the docking station. It works great...

Check on the virtualization if necessary I had to use this forum to uncrack the native ability to not allow for virtualization.

 

For travelling purposes it provides sufficient screen size and resolution. However it's not for everyday work, as your eyes would get tired if staring for hours.

 

Thanks for all the replies.

I am looking at the baseline Z. I also will be using matlab and other mathematical simulation programs. Do you think the baseline Z could handle these programs?

Sniper_sung, you're referring to the screen resolution or simply the screen size?

Thanks again

 

i use matlab on the Z with i5 520m.
it does, and it's very fast.

 

I would say there are currently few notebook models that could serve as a better work computer than the VPC Z11 ones. The performance is excellent (which almost goes without saying) and the screen is really pleasant to my (not too young) eyes, even after prolonged uses.

 

I use mine almost exclusively for more than 10 hours a day (between work and home) and can tell you that the screen is the best display my eyes look at all day. I am slightly far-sighted, too.

 

I use mine everyday for 7-10 hours, no issues.

 

I have old eyes, (myopic with presbyopia), and the screen is excellent for long time use exactly because of the high resolution.
You just have to adjust the fonts, icons and widgets to be physically large enough. Once that's done, a 2 mm tall text on the Z is far more readable than a 2 mm tall text on a lower resolution display, and less tiresome.
Oh, and lower the ridiculously high default brightness -- there's no need for "white" on-screen to be ten times brighter than a white piece of paper held next to it.

 

I use it as main workstation computer.

Normally I connect it to an external screen, but the last week Ive been using it "by itself". No problems. If there is a problem, Ill just adjust the settings.... or myself.

This is a marvel of engineering!

 

Thanks again for the replies, they're really helpful.

I'm reading rumors of the Z being unreliable and thus, sony will be refreshing the Z11 instead of fixing the problem

could some one shed some light ?

Thanks,

 

The refresh seems to be almost identical to the current one, so no.
As for the "unreliable" Z, people here are modifying things and when stuff breaks or goes wrong its always the laptop or Windows that gets the blame.

One think that is an issue is the lack of frequently updated drivers, which can cause some issues /performance problems in games, video and flash.

So i would say no, BUT the graphics drivers need urgent attention.