OK, OK, I know Vaio sometimes evokes tales of woe. But riddle me this. I do plenty of CAD, software development and regularly run four or five VMWare guests to test out enterprise configurations. I don't like big lappies. Development and CAD almost dictates high resolution, 1920x1080 minimum.
The Sony Vaio Z is the _only_ lappy to offer 1920x1080 resolution in such a small 13" form factor. You need to hit at least 15" for other manufacturers, and mostly a back breaking 17" for everyone else, including current geek sweetheart Apple's offerings. (Oh, I have an iPhone 3 & 4, iPad 2 and a Macbook air btw before anyone accuses me of dissing Apple!)
So with that in mind about a couple of months ago I thought long and hard about the Sony Vaio Z. This is as serious as an Apple Macbook Pro when it comes to opening your wallet. My last lappy was a Dell D820 15" 4GB 500GB+320GB 1920x1200 T7200, and it's 4.5 years old. It cost £1.7k. I sweated about that. It still works, but it takes forever to boot up, run VMs, and I now know it is very heavy...
This Vaio Z is fully loaded - 8GB RAM, i7 CPU, 1920x1080 (13"), WWAN, 512GB SSD, external Blu Ray rewriter/GPU, alleged 7 hour battery, 14 with the "slate" underneath. With the software, hold your breath... over £3k plus VAT. No wonder I thought long and hard.
So what do I think after a few weeks' work on it? Love it. Boot time has to be seen to be believed. VMs also boot in seconds. And I have been able to downsize my Tumi!
There have now been three real tech step changes in the past ten years that have made a serious impact rather than a small incremental change. One was switching from CRT to LCDs on the desk. Second was switching from hard disk to flash on MP3 players. Third was switching from hard disk to SSD on laptops. To be honest, I doubt you will be able to buy a laptop in five years with a hard disk.
SSD is the future, without doubt.
Cheers, Howard
The Sony Vaio Z is the _only_ lappy to offer 1920x1080 resolution in such a small 13" form factor. You need to hit at least 15" for other manufacturers, and mostly a back breaking 17" for everyone else, including current geek sweetheart Apple's offerings. (Oh, I have an iPhone 3 & 4, iPad 2 and a Macbook air btw before anyone accuses me of dissing Apple!)
So with that in mind about a couple of months ago I thought long and hard about the Sony Vaio Z. This is as serious as an Apple Macbook Pro when it comes to opening your wallet. My last lappy was a Dell D820 15" 4GB 500GB+320GB 1920x1200 T7200, and it's 4.5 years old. It cost £1.7k. I sweated about that. It still works, but it takes forever to boot up, run VMs, and I now know it is very heavy...
This Vaio Z is fully loaded - 8GB RAM, i7 CPU, 1920x1080 (13"), WWAN, 512GB SSD, external Blu Ray rewriter/GPU, alleged 7 hour battery, 14 with the "slate" underneath. With the software, hold your breath... over £3k plus VAT. No wonder I thought long and hard.
So what do I think after a few weeks' work on it? Love it. Boot time has to be seen to be believed. VMs also boot in seconds. And I have been able to downsize my Tumi!
There have now been three real tech step changes in the past ten years that have made a serious impact rather than a small incremental change. One was switching from CRT to LCDs on the desk. Second was switching from hard disk to flash on MP3 players. Third was switching from hard disk to SSD on laptops. To be honest, I doubt you will be able to buy a laptop in five years with a hard disk.
SSD is the future, without doubt.
Cheers, Howard