Me new puter - Sony Vaio Z

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

[honey lamb]

Please can I have a translation?

Please can I have a translation?

So Howard has a new computer that does spiffy things (that mere mortals like you and I don't comprehend HL) and cost a lot but I could be wrong.

But whatever features it has its spell checker is obviously faulty - 'Me new puter' indeed!

DragonLady will be along shortly to give him a spelling lesson!

The other response is

'oohhhhhh shiny'

Such a range of equipment! But can anyone tell me what I have to do in order to play video clips (taken on my Sony camera) on my ipad 2??? Do I have to download an app, I'd have though I could just play them - but no. Nor can I play pages on any sites where I try to view a 360 degree of something. What am I doing wrong or just not doing please???

Thanks Howard (noting the three developments all trail blazed by Apple) - still not enough to make me switch from a MacBook Air though .

[Decker]

Sounds like we have a candidate for the next pesudo desktop - but I'm old - how is legibility at that res? Oh sod it - show me next time we meet

Having just built a PC and put an SSD into it, I can fully support the view about what a difference it makes. For the luddites amongst us, an SSD simply replaces the clunky mechanical hard disk with memory chips - everything works orders of magnitude faster.

No moving parts/spinning parts/physical stuff moving around, just electronic stuff doing its thing at comparatively the speed of light. It's astonishing, like going from the slowest dial-up line to highspeed broadband in one step. Once you've tried an SSD its like turning left or right at the door....

Having just built a PC and put an SSD into it, I can fully support the view about what a difference it makes. For the luddites amongst us, an SSD simply replaces the clunky mechanical hard disk with memory chips - everything works orders of magnitude faster.

No moving parts/spinning parts/physical stuff moving around, just electronic stuff doing its thing at comparatively the speed of light. It's astonishing, like going from the slowest dial-up line to highspeed broadband in one step. Once you've tried an SSD its like turning left or right at the door....

(noting the three developments all trail blazed by Apple

I'm sure a few japanese companies might disagree with that.

(noting the three developments all trail blazed by Apple

I'm sure a few japanese companies might disagree with that.

Point taken, not 'developed' but 'applied' in a consumer sense then ... it takes productization and marketing to turn any invention into a good thing, loads of good inventions have failed ...

(noting the three developments all trail blazed by Apple

I'm sure a few japanese companies might disagree with that.

Point taken, not 'developed' but 'applied' in a consumer sense then ... it takes productization and marketing to turn any invention into a good thing, loads of good inventions have failed ...

Oh yes, there's no better for that.

Back to Howard's Sony. I'm impressed with the full HD on a 13 inch screen. Do you need good eyesight?

Back to Howard's Sony. I'm impressed with the full HD on a 13 inch screen. Do you need good eyesight?

I should think you look at it across the room and have a wireless keyboard and mouse too .

We bought an iMac 21.5" desktop the other week. So far we've found it super, and much prefer it to the windows laptop it replaced.

[Darren Wheeler]

But it's a Sony!!!

Sounds good, bet it will last a good while too.

I used to replace my computer every year to 18 months at the most. About 2 years ago I bought a new machine and almost got a Macbook Air. In the end went with a £800 Dell with an SSD drive. Still going strong and have updated it from Windows Vista to 7.

After the first year of use, was suitably happy with it to keep it and buy the Dell 3 year extended warranty for it which was offered for £130 - given the speed of the machine I think I'll be happy with it for 3 years, if it dies then they'll replace it.

Back to Howard's Sony. I'm impressed with the full HD on a 13 inch screen. Do you need good eyesight?

I am sure it's not going to be for everyone, 13" 1920x1080. Even with my old 15" 1920x1200 I had a reputation around the office, "how do you read that?"

Personally, even I'd say it's getting close to the limit of my comfort zone, but I am slightly miopic.

I do also have an Air that I use only for app development, and a Mac Mini that I use for music arranging, so I am definitely not anti Apple. It's simply that Apple do not currently offer the features I was after (1920x1080 in 15" or less), and the Vaio Z does just that. Running half a dozen VMs on a laptop this small at such a speed is mighty impressive (if you're a geek, that is).

Cheers, Howard