sz vs. fz portability&video editing

i am looking to purchase a laptop soon that will hopefully last me most of the next four years for college. i have it narrowed down to the fz and sz, but cant decide. i love the portability of the sz, but for the price and a few features, the fz is hard to ignore, especially for video editing.

i use vegas and am sick of previews and renders with my 1.66ghz duo 1gb ram gateway and need something much faster. that would probably be either 2.2 or 2.4.

the biggest differences as i see it are:
fz- cheaper,even with all same options plus blu ray burner- useful for hd editing, hdmi, bigger screen for editing, much cheaper

sz- smaller and much to lug around to class, also better looking, dock useful for connecting 2nd monitor

price is not a huge deal, as i'm willing to pay the premium if need be, so the bigger deal is the features. its really size vs extra features- really it becomes difficult for me to justify paying the premium for the sz when i can get a laptop+bluray player for cheaper in the fz.


another question: how often does sony typically update the vaios? im not sure if i should wait until later this spring/summer for another update because i'm not sure of either the span of time between updates or the date of the last. is now a good time to buy if i could possibly wait?

thanks

 

As far as video editing power is concerned, there is not really that much difference between SZ and FZ. But FZ has bigger screen, 15.4" vs 13.3", which is a big plus for video editing purposes. Blu-Ray is also a big plus.

The only thing that I don't like about FZ is its weight. It's 5.9 pounds vs 4 pounds. The thickness is about the same. I would say if you don't mind carrying 5.9 pounds notebook, go with FZ. If portability is more important, go with SZ and make sure you have at least 2 GB RAM.

Sony does not update the driver and utilities very often. The latest XP video driver has never been updated since the release of the notebook in 2006. I am stuck with Forceware 84.91 while the last Forceware available is 169.x.

 

And you can get round that by simply downloading the latest driver from laptopvideo2go.com and also download the modified .inf file!

Then extract the driver files, and replace the original .inf file with the modified one you downloaded, then run the setup as normal....simple!!

 

I did just that but I have some complications. The Nvidia Control Panel doesn't work. It gave me error message. Screen is darker when booting up. I tried several different versions.