New Sony Vaio Z speculation/news thread

[maven1975]

What do you mean? The new z´s gpu performance?

The laptopmag and engadget review show poor numbers. I hope its overclockable...

[TheProcessCo]

It felt pretty similar to the Z1 to me.

I must say, I'm apparently not as particular as many of the other users here.

IMHO some people will continue to want the idealistically best notion whether its obtainable or not. Not a bad thing.


FUNNY STORY

At the Sony Store in NYC a customer was asking about the Z2's graphics.

Rep: The ATI card is housed in the PMD.
Cust: OK what powers the laptop's graphics when the absence of the PMD?
Rep: Nobody knows, its a mystery of what's inside the machine because it's only a prototype.
Cust: So the intel chip powers the laptop's graphics then?
Rep: No that's the processor sir, you would need a graphics card for the screen.

I was nice enough to let the guy know about the HD3000.

[TheProcessCo]

Thank you for the benchmarks!

One other question about the following "cons" of the engadget review:

Trackpad can be frustrating to use


How do the people who had the chance to "test" the z in a store about that?
Is the fingerprint sensor also a problem?

IDK about the fingerprint sensor but the track-pad seemed pretty legit. Even better than expected since it has a textured surface, gives a nice tactile feedback to your input.

Then again I also don't usually use track-pads. I tend to stick to the little nubs on business notebooks or preferably a mouse.

[SirRobin]

The laptopmag and engadget review show poor numbers. I hope its overclockable...

Hm, i´ve seen the 3dmark and other benchmarks and i must say they are very good - what exactly do you mean?

[Brawn]

engadget review shows that z2's external gpu is 1.2845 times faster than the z1's dedicated gpu, measured by 3dmark06

you may have mistaken the internal gpu's score for the external gpu

[bjornb]

The engadget and laptopmag reviews seems to match (or be slightly higher than) the values in the notebookcheck ATI 6650 page:
AMD Radeon HD 6650M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

[Nyago123]

I see the CTO Z21 has discounts at Sony US today so I went ahead and ordered mine.

It seems like it's been a long journey since March but this thread definitely kept things fun in the interim.

[chukwe]

What the fan noise on this Z series like?

My last ultraportable sony laptop I bought in 2006 was very, very noise and hot.

[Malgrave]

I for one was encouraged by the 3dmark06 scores for the integrated graphics. At about 4000, it should allow playing all but the most recent games, even without the PMD. Certainly most games pre 2008 or so should play fine. And 8k with the PMD was better than I was expecting.

[Brawn]

the z/ps3 deal is up:

Back to School VAIO PC Upgrades + PS3

and very good discount for z available right now