What do you guys think of the Z11 redesign?

The new Z design is sexy and beautiful. The design look like a mini verion of sony vaio AW/FW series with green light beside. I love it.

Recently, I went sony store to touch this new Z series. It doesnt look solid, the palm rest(plastic), bottom too plastic. Screen is too thin to blend.

Overall, still sexy design.

 

ok so i pulled the z out of the bag and stared at the bottom and thought about design not design, and was moved to remove the 2 completely unnecessary stickers - the 'hot on your lap' one and a weird little one by the battery lock saying '1 SNT'

then i looked at vogelbung's avatar and stared hard at the carrot and decided i was bugged by the bright silver HDMI port and the copper of the HSF peeking out thru the black grill. then the fact that the battery and surrounding plastic is gray (grey) instead of black (black) started to bug me. then i remembered that the glossy-carbon had a nice black vaio logo instead of silver like the premiere carbon that i got. then i noticed there were several different grill sizes and shapes on the bottom and i wondered why they couldn't all be the same size/orientation and the one under the optical drive doesn't have the same nice black metal underneath with the circular holes like the rest of the vents on the bottom do. of course that's cause the black metal's for emi-shielding and they don't need it on that one vent because the drive's casing is sufficient, but it would have looked less jarring than a single vent with silver peeking out....

i do see that the industrial design is a bit of a hodge-podge, now that i look closely. But that is less true with the laptop open and while using it, than when its closed and upside-down, in part because of the designer's stated intent to use an overhanging 'plate' which covers the ports. i'm trying not to look at the bottom now, but i know its there.

stupid carrot

 

@bryan1988: I just use tape.

@wilbertsj: bwahahaha

 

@wilbertsj. Classic. Thanks for the smile. "then i looked at vogelbung's avatar and stared hard at the carrot and decided i was bugged by the bright silver HDMI port"

 

Heh, what's funny is that it was a Socratic question posed to illicit from Vogelbung a more elaborate exposition of his claims. The response, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired.

 

What can I say. I'm a concise guy.

I suppose I'd be interested to see where Sony design goes from here. As I said, everyone else is catching up in terms of compacting machines - ironically, I think Netbooks taught a lot of the less-than-tier-1 companies all sorts of lessons about shoehorning, and they can only get more aggressive in terms of churning out better-specced, more portable machines for less. And Sony's 'style', such as it is, isn't hard to emulate in toto because it lacks involved design thought.

I see something approaching apologists in terms of the 'don't care about what I don't see' or 'I love the style as it is' but the problem as some others have pointed out is this sort of clash between 'styled & at least a bit considered' vs 'hey, let's just cram it in and hope for the best' approach going on in the same machine. The existence of the two clashes indicates what I mentioned about the lack of attention to detail. Yes, Sony Marketing loves to churn out these 'designer' interviews about how a piece of floating leaf dropping into the calm waters of their favourite onsen inspired them or some other such BS, but the fact is that a great deal of VAIO designers at least at Sony seem to have at best workmanlike talent in terms of design. They can make champion geek toys for sure, but the world is moving on.

 

A piece of writing is concise. A person is brusque.

You are still harking on this lack of attention to detail point. I wonder where you are getting that from?

Perhaps you don't like the double plate design concept. But that is a divergence of aesthetic preferences, and does not imply a lack of attention to detail on Sony's part.

Perhaps you are okay with the double plate design concept and the resulting tapered and recessed bottom casing. But you don't like the way ports jut out from the recessed casing. Well, there's another way to put ports on tapered edges:

It needs not be said which solution is more functional. Perhaps you have a better solution? In which case I'd be very interested in hearing about it. If there is no better solution then we have to admit the possibility that Sony paid every attention to detail and what they come up with is the best execution of their design concept that still met certain standards of utility.

Finally, perhaps you are mostly concerned about Sony's lack of care in concealing screws and eliminating stickers. That I agree with. Does your whole polemic against Sony's design ethic and aptitude come down to their lack of attention w.r.t. stickers and screws?

 

All right, I'm a concise and brusque* guy. Happy?



*Though only if I feel exasperated enough to be

 

Vogelbung, reading through this thread, I kind of get the idea you don't actually know anything about design. The most you ever seem to do is point to something and say "bit of a self evident mess i'nt it?".

At least when I read posts like Chiralty's he tries to make a specific point that you can agree or disagree with.

One other thing. that dell bottom you keep going on about has nothing compelling about it other than lack of stickers and a fairly symmetrical set of cooling holes. My overall impression of that particular laptop bottom plate is ho-hum design.

Fwiw, I am about the opposite end of the spectrum from being a knowledgeable design guy (I am an engineer). So It's probably nearly impossible for me to look at things from a purely designer's perspective vs. utilitarian.

 

all of the talks and debate from Vogelbung is about the bottom design of the new Z, lol. if it does serve the purpose to dissipate the heat, i wouldn't mind. it useless to have the bottom design as clean like the macbook, but overheat and turning up the whole machine as a toaster.

 

omg that's a cat balancing a carrot on his head !

for a while, I thought it was the Travelocity gnome! I guess FHD on a 13" screen was a bad design

 

I LOL'd.

I've referred to several machines. It's not so much the merits of the look as such, but evidence that attention was paid in the design beyond pure functionality. With the VAIO's, they've occasionally forayed into design but in many cases engineering seems to take precedence in the end (and as I've been saying) when it doesn't have to be purely that way - especially, as I've pointed out, in regards to the future of VAIO's vs the rest - as it's ultimately not that difficult to duplicate once you have the engineering chops. Even engineering types should be able to get that

The reason for skirting Chirality's and probably one other guy's posts is that ultimately he's still arguing the functional end of the spectrum, and I've decided it's not worth trying to steer him around to the discussion about design. I also look at the posting patterns of people who post in that manner and decide whether they're a one-make / one-model enthusiast-fanatic-fanboi or not. You're welcome to do the same.

 

You can't talk about design in the abstract when there are engineering constraints that have to be faced too. If you are truly looking at purely design, then there is nothing else to talk about. Nobody is going to argue that the Z's bottom can't look better if all engineering considerations went out the window. They could make the entire thing to be no more than the slab of aluminum and it would look fantastic. No one is going to come around to talking about pure design because that would be silly, the problem is only interesting when we consider how they can design around these engineering constraints, and is trivial in a sense if such constraints didn't exist. If we disregarded the functional aspect, the conversation would be very different. Sure, they should ditch those headphone ports, make the bottom aluminum. Maybe slim it down half an inch, take out the vents and screw holes, flatten the bottom surface, it would look much better. But such conversation is quite meaningless.

 

I agree with you that it definitely doesn't look like Sony spent too much time working on the design (with all the extra meaning you have attempted to endow the word) of the bottom of the Z11xx. I might even agree that it is self-evidently so. Why are the stickers white? Probably because "that's the way we've always done that" - as sure a sign as any that design for design's sake it entirely absent. That, and the pasted-on battery compartment.

Then again...

...I also agree with Chiralty that when you're talking about a device as small as the Z attempting to cram that kind of functionality into such a tiny shell, it is equally self-evident (at least to engineering-types) that design is going to have to take a back seat to getting all that stuff just to work together. Any attempt to allow equal billing to design concept may result in "going back to the drawing board" to attempt to work the engineering around the design - which may or may not even be possible and is an incredibly expensive proposition even if it does work out.

I guess what I'm saying is that design concept is a thing of convenience - when the engineering can relax enough to have more than one way to do something...unlike the Z - TOTALLY unlike the Z. BTW, I'm not a Z "fan boy" (though I'm sure I sound like one sometimes), but I do appreciate the phenomenal engineering. In all honesty, I personally find the engineering itself to be way more beautiful than the best design concept.

 

lord have mercy, can you guys stop bolding "design'??? lol

 

Oh come on. I dont have any design qualifications, but even I understood what he meant looking at that picture. It was funny actually.

Maybe people are just used to poor - or no- design.

 

Omg, I couldn't agree more.

The prev-gen Z had such a nice palm rest in comparison.