Any News about Z3?

[Louche]

I'm expecting the PMD to stay around until Haswell. The Z was last designed on the tock, no reason to expact that to change particularly since the video improvement in IB won't be enough to offset the eGPU for photoshoppers and other who need that capability. I'll toss out a wild guess and predict that the IB PMD will be backward compatible if only because Sony may not be able to deliver much more video horsepower over the LP connection. Besides, the cost of redesigning and producing a new connection would probably be way more than they could hope it would be worth.

When Haswell arrives, there could be a redesigned PMDless Z -- if there's a Z at all.

[lovelaptops]

I have a bit of an off the wall prediction: the next Z will be sold in the US with a PMD-delete option - as it already is offered in Europe. It will probably only save around $200-$300, but I'll wager that as many as 50% of buyers would opt for the sans-PMD model. I predict that this move alone would increase the rate of sales of the product. I'd wager that a substantial % of PMDs are, a) gathering dust on desktops after being tired once or twice or, b) neatly packed in the original box, never even used. Nobody likes to think they paid extra money for an appendage that they don't use. I would add that things might be different if there was a blockbuster GPu in there, but I still question if high-zoot "executive" Z2 buyers bought these super sleek, super light, super fast notebooks to fiddle with a funky connector, a second power brick, an awkward shaped dock requiring a separate stand so they can play video games with mediocre frame rates and minimal eye candy - any more than they bought them to go through the same bother to watch a blu ray disk on their 13" screens.

I say make the IB version base model with 8GB of 1600 mhz RAM, 256GB SSD and sell it as a standalone for $2,000. Go to 16GB RAM and 512GB for $500 each, so $3,000 buys what high-buck "players" can really use. Contrary to myth, high income buyers are not fine with being overcharged or forced to buy something costly that they don't want just to get something even more costly that they do want; they are fine with paying a lot and getting a lot. By next round, $2,000 will be a lot to spend on an 8GB, 256GB notebook and $3,000 will be far more off-the-charts than it is today, but given the cost of the PMD, I would think Sony will make as much per unit in these configuration/price points as they do today offering far, far less for the $2,000 and $3,000 price points. An I'm sure there will be plenty of people (in the context of a low volume product) willing to push the scale towards $4,000 if you give them outrageously elegant finishes, custom leather, felt lined sleeves (like the one they sell in Europe and Japan for $200 now) with monograms and, maybe pay up for a PMD that someone over 25 would have any use for, though I'm inclined to agree with Louche that they can't justify the R&D and tooling for the "tock" upgrade cycle.

The good thing about making these kind of conjectures is they can't be proven right or wrong, for now.

[Louche]

*deleted to avoid additional trauma to anyone's delicate sensibilities*

[lovelaptops]

Thanks for the edits, mod

[Ung_Kung]

multitouchscreen + win 8 : )