Z12 Palmrest wear on Silver?

I'm pulling the trigger today on a Z12. I've heard about the palmrest wear issues...is that only on the black ones? Or silver also?

I prefer black but will order silver if that eliminates the issue. (without having to install protective films, etc)

 

I have no problem with my silver, but some others have complained.

 

Palmrest will be wear out when our hand is sweat..

 

I've read the owner's thread since the very beginning, and AFAIK, NO ONE with a Silver Z has reported a faded palmrest, it has only been the black/carbon fiber models that have experienced the fade, however, whether the silver will NEVER fade at all (or whether it just might fade a year later) is up for debate as the Z's only been out 6 months. I'd say go with your favorite color, and if you do choose the black/carbon fiber, either get a protective film, or you could order a new palmrest(If i remember correctly it was $93, enny02 posted a link to the part on Sony's parts site). <-- note: not everyone with a black/carbon fiber Z has reported fading, it depends on one's usage & prominence of sweaty palms

In any case, if you're choosing between black and silver, i'd advise u to go in store and look at the black vs silver. I've seen the black and i agree with a few people that said it looks like plastic, but i guess it's personal preference. But that's all aesthetics, the Z will blow your mind away whether it's carbon fiber, silver, metal shield, black and faded or non-faded palmrest.

 

sony decided to use cheap plastic to cut costs

 

^really? you know this? you think molding the cutout in the aluminum and molding a special plastic insert was cheaper than just using the slab of aluminum? Wake up, this piece and the whole notebook isn't about cost cutting.

 

If anything, the plastic is lighter than aluminum...

 

My silver Z is starting to show a bit of a dark spot on the palm rest. I'm a student and am on the machine quite frequently throughout the day.

 

where is the thread of applying some kind of protective solution?

 

You mean this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/478061-how-protective-film-application-z11.html

 

^ thank you

 

Are you guys saying that the silver/metal shield/mosaic models have aluminum palm rest, whereas the black/carbon fiber models use plastic? I ordered the carbon fiber, so if this is the case I think I'll cancel it and order the metal mozaic.

 

No, both palmrests are plastic, it just seems that the paint on the black/carbon fiber palmrest is more susceptible to wear. I'm sure that if you use both enough, you'll start to see the silver have a dull/polished spot where your palms usually rest.

 

Submit it for warranty replacement they will probably replace it.
I personally was going to cover the palmrest with best skin but I would rather the fade than the look of the clear plastic. Personally.

 

Isn't palmrest color fade considered "wear & tear" & thus it is not covered under warranty?

 

if your skin isn't oily, or sweaty you will be fine with the black

 

Can anyone confirm tear on the carbon palmrest on the Z12?
To me it seems pretty solid build.

My own experience is somewhat limited since I only got my Z12 14 days ago, but I messed up big time when receiving the laptop. I removed the stickers on the palmrest but there was some remaining glue which could not be removed with ordinary means...
So I made a brainfart; why don't I use some acetone... gently of course...? Hmmm big mistake!
The acetone started to draw some of the colour from the palmrest. Long story short. I had to wipe the hole palmrest surface with acetone in order to minimize the effect of colour difference. It kind of helped but I was not happy. So after some thinking I tried out a sponge with a hard surface normally used for doing the dishes. I moved the hard side of the sponge along the palmrest surface in straight lines. It left very small lines in the surface but these actualle fitted the keyboard carbon look. Afterwards I took a rubber and scrabed the surface. In the end I cleaned it carefully with water and soap. This procedure was done 3 times.
Now it looks quite OK again. About 95% of what it used to be. And I see no actual symptoms of wear to the palmrest.

So a conclusion could be that the carbon palmrest on the Z12 is actually of a pretty good build? But do any of you have any other experiences?

 

I can't say what will happen with the VPC-Z, but my experience with earlier Sony devices is that the silver paint will wear off, quicker than any other colour.
I have multiple Sony remotes, a PSP and a CLIE UX-50 (clamshell PDA) where the paint has worn off. For the UX-50, it's pretty darn bad -- all the edges and corners are now white.

For the old gen Z, which had a metal palm rest, the lacquer started peeling after a while.

The biggest problem, though, is the rubber feet which has come off absolutely all Sony products I've ever owned after the first (all metal) Walkman, back when Sony still built using screws instead of glue. And unless you buy spares while the device is still being supported, you won't be able to buy them later, as Sony abandons old models pretty quickly.

Sony products just aren't built to last, but to be replaced by more Sony products.

 

Not a very glowing endorsement, that's for sure.

I've gotta say, as a fairly experienced tech myself, I'm not entirely confident about making my first Sony purchase if indeed I do decide to choose a Vaio Z. It's just that not many (read: none) other machines feature such comparable specs in such a small package.

Why, oh why can't we get solid build quality without paint/screen scratching issues on a Vaio Z?

 

I don't think anyone has had a screen scratching issue with VPC-Z. I have no palmrest issues myself, I suppose if it acts up I'll get it replaced under warranty or just order the part and replace it? Or coat it with something??

 

Perhaps the whole keyboard/screen thing is overblown then. At least, I hope it is.

I do have to admit, the paint is really the only thing that truly concerns me at this point in terms of a prospective purchase. I was at one point concerned about the SSD longevity, but if my math is correct I think we can expect at least 20 years+ of use even under heavy use with a 512 GB RAID 0.

 

Your calculations might not be correct, unless you have factored in the major impact of RAID 0.

Never mind that Sony is worst in class at supporting old models -- while I still can buy all parts for a 6 year old Lenovo, I can't for a less than 2 year old VGN-Z. So if a drive breaks after 3 years, don't count on even being able to get it replaced.

 

^what can't you buy for your vgn-z?

 

I tried calling Sony to buy a docking station and privacy screen, but was told that since it was discontinued, they couldn't help me, even if ordered as more expensive parts instead of retail add-ons.
They still had batteries, but wouldn't say for how long.

(And I have bad experience with batteries and Sony -- when my UX-50 needed a new battery, Sony couldn't help -- after just 3 years, I was supposed to toss it. Thank goodness I found a 3rd party supplier.)

 

Docks, privacy screen etc. are accessories, not parts. I think you "may" be able to get those from the parts group though.

I think is crummy that Sony accessories are so hard to get ahold of after EOL, but it is different (less significant) than not being able to get a replacement part, though.

 

Sony plains sucks maintenance wise. Period. Even with brand-new Z, they won't get off their asses to order parts in a week.

 

i have the vaio z but my wife have the Toshiba r700 almost the same as the z very light too with i7 620 and ssd

 

Hey arth,

Do these same calculations apply to SSDs though? I was under the impression that, in general, the MTBF could be trusted much more (especially in laptops) when applied to SSDs, primarily because of their significantly more durable nature (and lack of moving parts).

I really am ignorant on this subject; please enlighten me.

 

All of which were taken into consideration by the manufacturers when computing the MTBF.

How to calculate the failure rate of individual drives and striped drives doesn't change because of the drive type. It should be equally valid for any kind of drive (and even other technologies using similar methods, like RAM).
SSDs have, perhaps, a less flat bell curve for failure rates than HDDs (due to the finite number of write cycles on an SSD), but that doesn't change the validity of the calculation as an average. You get fewer drives that die the first year, but then you also get far fewer drives that last to twice the MTBF. In the long run, the mean evens this out, so if your drive set has a average calculated risk of failure of 50% per year, it may be lower for the first year, but that means it's going to be higher later.

Also, keep in mind that the life span that you hear about in media tends to be the life span for single SLC NAND chips, and most consumer SSD drives (including all the Z drives) are MLC, which typically has an order of magnitude(!) shorter life span.
And this "life span" also tend to be the number of write cycles extrapolated into time, without taking into account all the other ways chips and drives can fail. In which case it's not comparable to the MTBF.

Yes, SSDs are relatively stable. But they fail too. And even more so when you stripe four of them. Not that it's more than anecdotal evidence, but I've seen more reports here on this forum about failed SSDs in Zs than I have of failed HDDs in Zs. And I have a stack of bad SSDs at work (as well as a stack of bad HDDs). SSDs fail too. All hardware fails, so when data are important, you want to avoid amplifying the failure rate with technologies like striping when not strictly needed.

 

I suppose I just am not as acquainted with the typical expected failure rate for an MLC SSD as I probably ought to be. I wonder where I might be able to find some trustworthy data on the failure rate of such items, just for future reference?

Also, in case I haven't already said so, thanks for your insightful input.


EDIT:

So I did see an article at StorageSearch.com (the same source to which I linked earlier) which was referenced on Wikipedia's Solid State Memory article page which explores the problems with MLC SSD memory applications at the enterprise level. However, the calculations there are based on worst-case "rogue data recording" applications which write always at the highest possible writing rate (estimated by the author to be 80MB/sec) constantly. The final worst-case guess was then 6 months.

But I think I may be looking at this incorrectly, because in yet another article, the same author argues (seemingly) that arranging SSDs in a RAID-0 configuration actually increases their expected life--simply because the same cells are written to less frequently when additional capacity is made available for storage.

Sort of like this rough calculation:

50GB/day written to array* ÷
512GB total capacity x
365 days per year x
5 years
---------------------------------
178 rewrites per year

*I have assumed, based on most of the research performed, that we write 50GB/day, which is considered "heavy use" of the drive. Fewer than a couple percentage points of people I think actually write this much data per day.

So even if we take the "worst-case" scenario of 1,000 rewrites per cell, doesn't that still leave us a healthy 5+ years of actual life?

I may be completely out of my league here, as I realize that adding storage space when dealing with RAID-0 calculations is usually the completely wrong approach. However, I'm just going by that same author when doing these calculations (see this article):

Wow, sorry for the verbose reply. I hope I am not 100% wrong here in this approach. As I said, I am definitely not an expert within the realm of SSDs.

-Steve

 

Guys, sorry for interrupting an interesting discussion. Going back to the original subject

Tried to contact SONY Denmark regarding a price for a palmrest sparepart but no success. Instead I tried to apply some protective film. The product was a "no name" but nevertheless it fitted the purpose.
You can see the result here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6767603-post81.html

But I must admit... I am disappointed with SONY support. That is a strange way to conduct business. Why not sell the spareparts consumers want? Why restrict it?

I think I will settle with this result and let it be a leason learned.
And then again... a palmrest with some discolourment/scratches it is not the end of the world. I can change the protecive film when it wears down - the important thing here is... The laptop runs rock solid!!

 

I forgot who posted it, but it could be beaups. I believe he did post a link where you can purchase the plastic palmrest from the official sony replacement parts website. The price was around 94 dollars. However, I think your results look great, I really can't tell where the 'wear' (har har) on the palmrest. Good job.

 

Wow jakmor, you got the fit of the film really close! How exactly did you do it?

 

Haha Jakmor, no, my apologies for hijacking this thread with my otherwise off-topic discussion

-Steve

 

Yhchoong, there is no exact recipe. It took a lot of time to measure and cutting the film, not speaking about the actual fitting on the palmrest. I tried to copy the work today but with a worse result. So what is the leason learned... If it ain't broken, don't fix it!!

Steve, no problem at all. It was an interesting discussion