Wow, what an ignorant article. I own the previous version of this (Sony does iterate...this is the 4th iteration of the Z series), and I absolutely love it. I can't speak about the new version, but the version I have has a fantastic keyboard with much more key travel than an Air. I wouldn't be shocked if Sony messed up the keyboard and trackpad though. They have a certain talent for screwing up ergonomics in the name of looks.
But really, my main issue is that this article appears to be written by someone with an agenda and little actual knowledge. The laptop's name, for example is the Z14, not that long string which is the model number. Practically all laptops, even the Air, have those model numbers associated with the specific configuration. The box for my Air has it listed on the back, in fact.
"Wow, what an ignorant article... I can't speak about the new version, but the version I have has a fantastic keyboard with much more key travel than an Air. I wouldn't be shocked if Sony messed up the keyboard and trackpad though. They have a certain talent for screwing up ergonomics in the name of looks."
Make up your mind? It sounds like you just agreed with the central thrust of the article -- Sony had a great design and junked it to have something "new".
Sony does iterate...this is the 4th iteration of the Z series
I believe the author is delineating between "iterating" being small improvements to a relatively static product as opposed to "versioning" which are fairly significant changes between releases. Compare the 2008 MacBook Air 1 to the 2011 MacBook Air 4.
If you go to the sony store, and search for "Z14" you get a bunch of camera accessories, and no Z series laptops in the results. No laptop results on page 1 of a google search either. I have an old sony Vaio that I really liked, and I only know how to describe by its model number: VGN-S360. I think they could benefit from more coherent model names.
A letter (or two) followed by digits denoting the series iteration is Sony's standard naming convention. If you google "VAIO S360" or "VAIO Z12" you'll find exactly what you want. But, if you're not looking for your model year, you can google "VAIO S Series" or "VAIO Z Series" and get what you want.
I don't find it very hard, especially since the series names stay pretty consistent over a long time.
Oh, they could definitely do better with the model names. Happily, that doesn't affect the computer itself once you've bought it--if anything, it makes it more exclusive ;)
I also think they should break VAIO up into two brands, one for cheap computers and one for high-end ones. They could be like Toyota/Lexus.
they really did fug up the keyboard and trackpad. The 2 finger swipe to scroll like on macs barely works, you have to do it a few times to make it work. The keyboard, you can type well on it, but its not the most comfortable feeling and the space bar flat out sucks. I have to tap the SB pretty hard to have it register.
As I said elsewhere, scrolling with two fingers works perfectly for me, so it pretty much has to be a driver issue. In fact, I set the scrolling up to work in all directions, and it's sufficiently accurate and responsive to make scrolling sideways with the same gesture as normal scrolling completely practical.
totally is a driver issue
i use the linux driver and scrolling works like a charm
much better than on the previous Z on top of that. it works as well as the mac trackpad, except its smaller. but it really works very well otherwise.
When getting my new laptop, I spent some time looking at various "ultraportable" including the MacBook Air, some Toshiba (I forget what it was called) and the Z. I ultimately chose the Sony because it was, by a nice margin, the nicest computer of the lot.
The screen is really awesome, it's incredibly fast and I actually really like the touchpad. The keyboard is not great, but none of the options I physically touched--I never saw a physical Lenovo X1; that could be good--had particularly good keyboards. The Air's keyboard was not bad, but it had an annoying layout with small arrow keys and an odd ordering of meta keys along the bottom.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with this computer and would probably buy it again, although I would also consider looking at the X1. However, an X1 configured to similar specs as the Z costs about the same and I've heard both the screen--which is really awesome on the Z--and the batter life are worse on the Lenovo.
I was not looking for a "Windows PC"; I was looking for a light, fast laptop. I wouldn't use either Windows or Mac OS unless I really had to, so the operating system doesn't really matter to me.
The only unfixable annoyance I noticed on the Mac keyboard was the arrow keys; the rest could have been ameliorated by changing the keyboard layout a bit, I think (unless it's somehow codified in hardware).
I like it when the arrow keys are about as big as all of the other buttons. I find it very uncomfortable to use the extra-thin keys, particularly when playing games (which, thanks to Emacs, is where I use arrow keys most of all).
> It's loaded with junkware, because paying two grand for a laptop doesn't get you a system that hasn't been sold to someone else.
On this topic, does anyone know of any major manufacturers who dont do this with their consumer machines?
I have had really bad experiences of late with Dell, Toshiba and HP, to the point where they come with what is essentially malware built in. As one example, our latest dell purchase redirects search queries, puts a link to ebay on the desktop which comes back once deleted, and prevents you from adding an alternative search provider to IE.
Yes, Sony and Dell are especially notorious for shoveling garbage onto their laptops. The worst is the pseudo OS X-style dock they all put in there in a failed attempt to make it feel like a Mac. Terrible.
Lenovo isn't too bad. I recently bought a Lenovo laptop for running Windows7 and the only thing I recall having to disable at startup was a boot optimizer (which helpfully had a 'Dont run again' button on it)
HP laptops now provide a barebones restore feature. That is, if you don't mind restoring your system on day one, you can boot to the recovery partition and forego installing all of the extra software after restoring the operating system. I forget their term for this exactly, but it's a nice feature that appeared only recently in their line of laptops.
Cuteness aside, the out of the box experience with a mac is really good. Everything is polished and there are no nag screens when you first boot up. The first experience with a new Apple device seems carefully engineered to make the owner feel almost emotionally attached to it.
Contrast this to a lot of Windows laptops where your first boot requires running the gauntlet of nagware & cruft. The device itself might be just as capable (or more), but you've already either confused or annoyed the new user and reduced the likelihood of that immediate emotional attachment.
I know there are real business reasons why the cruft gets included, but I would argue that there are far more compelling reasons to leave it out.
The first experience with Linux, Ubuntu in particular, is also quite good. I think the reason for this is that, in most people's minds, Windows is the default; everything else has to stand out to even be considered while Windows just has to mostly work.
> On this topic, does anyone know of any major manufacturers who dont do this with their consumer machines?
The Windows install on a Thinkpad I bought a couple of months ago was pretty much crapware free - if I am not mistaken, the only third-party utilities that were installed on the system were ones from Lenovo, for controlling features like power saving, OSD, etc..
I am an owner of this new Vaio Z. The laptop itself is amazing: the battery life is excellent, good performance, high quality screen (1080p), extremely fast (raid 0 SSDs will do that).
The specs are amazing for this 2.5 lb laptop, but it still doesn't do justice to how disappointed I am with the keyboard. The travel distance is so minuscule, its uncomfortable to type on. You find yourself slapping keys but feeling like you didn't really press the key. The space bar sucks, you have to hit it pretty hard to make it register.
The trackpad is pretty small and awful, 2-finger gestures only works 50% of the time. I had to disable the fingerprint reader because it would activate everytime using the touchpad (you would always hit it by mistake).
Those are literally the only 2 things I dislike about this laptop, the keyboard and touchpad. I use a portable bluetooth mouse a lot (Razer Orochi) which does alleviate a lot of the touch pad issues, but the keyboard is god awful.
That said, the power media dock is a novel feature, external graphics, blu ray and all...I haven't used it once haha. I think that's because I have a nice custom built desktop, no reason to use the PMD.
EDIT: The keyboard is worse in my opinion in comparison to a macbook air which I owned for a year before I sold it.
I just wanted to add on top that, I tested out a Lenovo T420 edge...quite possibly one of the nicest keyboards I've ever typed on.
The touchpad and keyboard on my 2009 Macbook Pro are perhaps my favorite parts. I would have never believed that a touchpad could be as good, let alone better than a mouse! Resizing and scrolling with gestures is amazing.
The trackpad on MacBooks blow away any PC laptop I've ever used. I don't understand why PC manufacturers don't just source the same supplier as Apple unless a) it's actually a software driver issue, or b) Apple has a monopoly on the supplier/patent/part. I suspect it's a little of both, as the trackpad on my Dell hackintosh runs much better in OSX than Windows.
I have been hearing this (the apple touchpad being better than a mouse) for a few years now. I just got my first macbook pro today and I'm hating the touchpad (I prefer edge-scrolling and the tap-click on PC touchpads, although I've never loved any touchpad). Am I doing something wrong or does this just boil down to personal taste? I really don't understand how a touchpad could ever be preferable to a mouse (the mouse-wheel is a wonderful invention).
I think you just need time. Why edge scroll when you could use the entire mousing surface for scrolling? I don't know why tap-click is not on by default, but you can enable it. Also don't go changing the tracking speed or acceleration on your trackpad either. Give it some time if it feels odd. Its pretty much perfect.
You can enable tap-click on the Mac too. It's just not on by default. I find touchpad scrolling on the Mac to be far more precise and comfortable than side-scrolling. I'd say give it a week.
I also have a Z. The keyboard isn't great, but I got used to it. The only real problem I have with it is the shift key. On the other hand, it got the arrow keys right--they're actually full-sized unlike the mini ones that other manufacturers (Apple included) seem to like. I've spent hours programming on the keyboard and it's been fine.
The fans are loud, but only if you use a significant amount of CPU, which I almost never do. If some errant process cough flash cough is taking up too much, I can hear it and deal with it (this alleviates the annoyance a bit).
The trackpad, on the other hand, is brilliant. Using multiple fingers works every time (on Linux, anyhow) and it's actually pleasant to use. I think that all your issues with it would be resolved with Linux; the bloatware is also gone. I've played around with Mac trackpads, and like this one more.
I'm using Fedora 15 with KDE, which is running wonderfully. I had to upgrade one package to get KDE to play well, but I think that's fixed in Fedora 16 which is current.
I have not had any issues with the space bar--my only problem has been with the left shift key.
I have to add that the only gestures I've actually used are multiple finger scrolling, pressing with multiple fingers and circular scrolling (which is pretty cool). I don't have zooming--it tends to annoy me more often than not, so I don't know if that works well (or at all) on Linux.
> but companies like Sony make good designs then abandon
> them intentionally because they're blind to their own
> good design choices.
I see this pattern a lot. Situations where people trade away their strengths by trying to mimic what's glamourous.
Here's one - look at the way that OS desktops compromise strengths in order to be more like OSX. Microsoft was so focussed on making Windows feel more like aqua that they compromised things where they were strong - like the way you could get around with hotkeys, or set up items in the old start menu to be launched by two keypresses. The gnome team had what was to me the best desktop environment out there and have traded it away in their quest to be the poor-man's Aqua. (Give me window switching - I hate application swiching. In what situation would I want all of my terminals to come to the foreground in front of the web browser I'm copying commands from??)
Power supplies. I've got a copier paper box full of Sony power supplies. Every product they make has to have a different battery, plug, voltage, wattage, whatever so you MUST buy a new one if break/lose it, at a princely sum comparable to the price of the device.
Sony has 90% great, like awesome, design - then screws up the remaining 10% with either "meh, screw the user" or "hey, dig into his wallet" wrecking the rest. I've had two of their ultraportables, and try as I might to love them there's just one neurotic breakdown after another; my next is a MacBook Air.
Vaio X has a standard DC barrel pot, ive powered it on anything from junk-heap printer wall-warts to 20-cent car-adaptors to lab bench-supplies without hassles.
other things it has over the air are half the weight owing to carbon fiber vs aluminum and a smaller battery owing to an Atom CPU (a feature - can tell which code is slow), and a full array of hardware ports and slots, a matte-screen with almost 0 reflected light readable in direct sun, a fan that is off most of the time, and GPS/3G. gma500 is main problem, but Alan Cox's driver is getting OK enough to use
The Vaio X has been discontinued. The nearest equivalent to the MBA 13" I'm contemplating is the Vaio Z, at a cost of nearly $1000 more.
Apple products have always been derided as "under-speced and over-priced", yet customers keep voting with their wallets to the contrary. Knowing first-hand how those Vaios tend to blow their superior specs in the oddest ways, I'll take the Air.
I loved the x-series, and recently got a new x201. The screen is phenomonally bad. The viewing angle is so poor that if I'm watching a movie on it, there is nowhere I can position it so that I don't get funny colouration on the blacks. Until then, I'd had a dream run with this series. Check your screen quality before getting an x-series...
You should look at the screen on the Z--it is much better than any screen I've seen on any laptop. For reference, I got the cheaper 1600x900 screen; it is exactly the same resolution as my old, cheap 17" laptop.
I can comfortably edit two documents side-by-side in Emacs, on a 13" screen! It really is perfect--anything less would be really annoying now.
I think the quotes are there because "ultraportable" is a nebulous marketing term rather than because the X1 is difficult to lug around (which, assuredly, it isn't).
Sony does iterate...the article is just ignorant. It used three different laptop lines to prove that Sony doesn't iterate. Walkman, Discman, PS controller and even the Z series laptop this talks about all were extensively iterated products. Now whether all iterations were good is another matter entirely...
From the article I get the impression that there were large jumps between each version of the Z series - is that incorrect? Because, to me, iteration means small amounts of refinement to a product. The examples you give, especially the PlayStation controller, are excellent examples of small refinements to an existing product.
As a owner of a Z21 I can tell much of what is said in the article is just, simply wrong and misinformed.
The author most likely didn't even touch a Z21.
DISCLAIMER: I am using Linux full time on this laptop. Some people have issues with the fingerprint or trackpad on Windows - theses are software issues which aren't present on Linux.
Fan: they're not loud. It's quieter than my MacBook. In fact, I can't hear it in a quiet room.
It's only loud when running full speed; which is rare enough. And that's not louder than the Mac.
Trackpad: it's in.. the regular spot.
Software: it's loaded with Sony stuff mostly. You can remove or reinstall if you dislike it.
Key travel: yes, it's shorter. No I don't see the issue with it, after having used it for quite a long while now. I switch to longer key travel keyboards and back to the Z21 without noticing.
The rest is just "look, my iMac design didn't change in 4 years it's awesome, changing design sucks!".
Now... let's see what the Z21 has and the others.. just plain don't.
SSD: Hello raid0 SATA3 SSDs. Have you ever reached more than 500mbyte/s read/write? Heck, sometimes its going near the 1000mbyte/s sequential. Copying stuff, reading has never been faster. Non-raid0 desktop computer with the fastest SSDs are just way slower. Won't even mention Macs with their subpar SSDs.
Screen: Hello 1920x1080 anti-glare screen. How the hell are others not all anti-glare by default ?
CPU: Hello regular voltage i7 2620M. The air CPU suddenly look.. you know.. just not in the same range.
Heat: what heat? It's extremely well extracted on the side and the rest of the system is at room temperature. Even under extreme load. A problem Apple didn't really solve by the way.
Connectivity: USB? check. USB3? check. VGA out for those conferences? Check. HDMI out /w audio? Check. Audio jack, ethernet, sdcard, lightpeak? check check check check. Tell me when the mac book air doesn't need a bunch of adapters to do more than USB.
higher power USB for charging? Heck, check again.
Weight? Lighter than the Macbook air says enough.
Battery life? Extensible well above 10H via a laptop-wide sheet. Smart. Paris-New York, no need to charge. Of course, the standard battery isn't a let down either at ~5H real time use. (they're both rated 7h and 14h max as far as I can remember, but don't quote me on that)
Now with all that, what more could there be?
Oh wait.. I mentioned a lightpeak port didn't I.. so yeah, a 600gr+ device can be added to the desk while you're not on the move.. bundling a very decent ATI graphic card, a bluray drive, and more ports. You can drive 4 screens at the same time, although its convenient only up to 3. (oh noes.)
Oh and, does it run linux properly? yep.
So it's an expensive device, but considered all the above, it's pretty decent I guess.
Finally, the actual bad, and yes, there is some bad:
- speaker: they work, but god they're bad. they're terrible. Not a big deal, but still, at this price... the jack is very good tho.
- lightpeak will probably not take off, that said, its mostly used for the side device only and serves as USB port, so who cares.
- way the laptop sits on the desk you may sometimes find positions where its not sitting properly, if your "desk" is not flat
The whole point of the review was as a lead into the part about the keyboard changes. All the posts arguing about how the Z21 is awesome are missing the point of the article.
The article mention every single bad point of the review of the Z21 as a basement of how Apple is awesome for not changing design over the years.
Besides not being true; the basement; is totally flawed. (regardless of being more technical than pure design)
Thus everyone criticizes that base. Makes sense to me. No base, no article.
Its not about apple not changing, it's about apple knowing when not to change. Sony can make a good product, but when they do it doesn't influence future products. New products don't learn from either the failures or the successes of past designs.
Whether whatever laptop you like is good or not is irrelevant to the authors point, just as it is irrelevant to the products that follow it.
Don't know about Z, but when I got a simpler Vaio for my wife, I spent 4 (FOUR) hours removing and uninstalling all the preloaded crap. Symantec alone required 2 reboots and defiantly tried to scare the shit out of me until its last breath. This is as annoying as it is insulting. The laptop is simply not usable out of the box. That's not even considering that 4 hours is over $500 worth of my time, which is - I am inclined to think - a bit too f#cking much for a $1200 laptop.
However, the problem is not with the hardware, or the software. It's the fact that Sony sells products, while Apple sells experience. That's the difference.
i didnt get any non-Sony stuff but again it was a EU order.
Still I always install from my own CDs.. and run Linux mostly.
Also I'm supposing that the cheaper the laptop.. the more crapware you might get. So there is no "too much for a $1" laptop, at least that's not the way economics work. Even if that sucks.
Also I'd like if I was paid over $100 per hour like you. Heck I'd be hella rich :) $800-$1000 per day!
Wasn't there a post on here last week on how you have to hunt down drivers if you do a Windows upgrade or clean install? The last VAIO I used took me 4 hours to nuke, clean install, then hunt down the drivers. (And some didn't even exist on the Sony site since they only listed 32-bit drivers).
You can see from the photos in the linked review that the touchpad is NOT in "the regular spot" but offset to the right. I imagine this is fine for right-handers. (The review also complains it is small. Can't comment, haven't used one. The author is probably addicted to the giant touchpads Apple is putting out these days.)
What Macbook are you finding louder than the Vaio? I have a 2010 MBP and I can't ever recall hearing its fan, even under heavy load.
The central point of the article -- that Sony occasionally stumbles on great design and then randomly iterates away from it for no good reason is telling. Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one, while Sony hardly even manages to release a single generation of MP3 players with common connectors.
> Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one
Nitpick: They did not. The original iPod only had a 6-pin FireWire connector for data and power; the dock connector was only added on the third-generation iPod, which was the first to use USB.
My 2010 15" MacBook Pro w/ i7 @ 2.66 GHz and 1680x1050 has a loud fan. The fan spins up when I have an external display plugged in. It spins up when Time Machine runs. It spins up when Flash is running in a browser.
I find it really annoying and for that reason alone I will avoid the hottest CPU + GPU model in the future until Apple finds a way to reduce the volume.
well, don't trust pictures. the touchpad if of course centered. on all models.
i have a MBP1, MBP 13 mid2011 and a MBA mid2011, the MBP is louder than the vaio on average (that is I can hear the fans).
The vaio is dead silent til I compile stuff on all CPUs, then fans are loud, although not as loud as the MBP 15.
The article took the Z21 as target to make an example of "what not to do", not a MP3 player. If it did, maybe i'd agree with it. But, it did not. And unfortunately for him, the Z21 is actually awesome.
The touchpad is noticeably NOT centered, but placed so to be under both your thumbs with your fingers on the home row. The Macbook has a way bigger touchpad, but it's aligned to the left of the spacebar, not to the right. I'm quite sure that for a smaller touchpad, Toshiba got it right and Sony got it wrong (particularly for left handed people).
Looking at my laptop, the touchpad is exactly centered. I don't know if this is standard or not, but it's perfectly comfortable. I'm right handed, but I sometimes use my left hand to scroll around if I'm sitting in an odd position, and that's been fine too.
I run I/O-intensive DB tests very often myself, and I usually use RAM-disks to speed those up a lot to allow for faster coding/testing-cycles. Obvious tip perhaps, but I thought I'd share it =o)
I gotta also mention that I have an AZERTY keyboard.
The AZERTY keyboard is a standard mapping.
The QWERTY Keyboard has a slightly odd mapping for the shift key indeed. Likewise, US laptops might have slightly more crapware /w Windows that I had (?)
I've been considering buying one myself. I had a quick question that I haven't been able to find the answer to: Can you boot from and SD card? I know it's not a high demand feature... but it's important for me.
i just checked (yay im so nice! ;p)
and .. you can't, at least not with the stock bios. I haven't tried hacking it to enable the advanced menus yet.
ssd boot, network boot and external boot only, which is short for "usb boot".
did try to format a sdcard with a boot sector and linux on it just in case, no go
Has the grammar/writing at boingboing deteriorated or am I comparing everyone to Cory?
"The trackpad's in an odd spot."
"This hardly trenchant criticism, especially if you're used to island-style keys."
"so successful that you can walk a store and not see a machine that doesn't have one."
Is this really the level of writing that comes out of bb now?
The author lost me when I saw the image of the color mac. That device sucked. They should have chosen a new design for improved (and quieter) ventilation instead of sticking to the old design. That they reused the old design may have been right from a marketing perspective but it was a PITA from a user's perspective.
The only real problem i had with Z-series is that the keyboard is scratching the screen, if you carry the notebook in the backpack long enough. I just can't understand why Sony couldn't solve this simple problem.
But really, my main issue is that this article appears to be written by someone with an agenda and little actual knowledge. The laptop's name, for example is the Z14, not that long string which is the model number. Practically all laptops, even the Air, have those model numbers associated with the specific configuration. The box for my Air has it listed on the back, in fact.