Recently I really want to get a new laptop. Not because my old one broke, however, the old one is just slow, noisy and heavy. So I was doing some research on it, then I saw this:
Why is it so expensive, you may ask. Well, it's partially due to the fact that it has not one, but *two* 256gb SSDs likely in RAID configuration (I wonder how they manage to pack two of these inside of a 13" laptop). And it's awesome dedicated graphic card. And it's processor. And it's long battery life. And... everything that is in it. And the whooping 4.7k dollars cost.
I wonder if anyone is actually willing to buy it, and what happens when this thing is turned on (does it instantly turn into an oven considering it's small size and the power of its hardware?). But on another thought, it's probably still an awesome laptop to have.
Since we are on laptops, does anyone know any other laptops that are equipped with an SSD (64 gb is more than sufficient for me) and does not cost an army and a leg (say below 1000 dollars)? Or should I just consider getting a laptop and an SSD separately? There are two reasons I don't want to buy them separately: 1. If I do that, then I will end up with an original HDD from the laptop which I have absolutely no use for; 2. The laptop's pre-packaged software (such as Windows 7) will not be on my separately-bought SSD.
The Sony VAIO z-series does have SSDs (which is how I discovered this 4.7k laptop... although there are cheaper variants), but it starts at 1800 dollars, which seems a bit too much for me for a laptop.
EDIT: there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding here (because it was originally intended as a blog). I don't want to buy a 4.7k laptop, nor do I intend to buy a gaming laptop. I got a gaming desktop which can run sc2 on 1080p ultra. What I am looking for is a work laptop with that is reasonably fast (this can be achieved by getting a reasonably OK processor and an SSD), *very low* fan noise, 13" screen (no netbooks; I don't trust those) and good mobility. I don't even care about the OS or sucky integrated graphic cards since I will be mostly using R, LaTeX, read pdf and email on ubuntu. I don't use photoshop, illustrator or anything like that sort, either.
Omg that laptop is so sexy. That thing must be hotter than the sun unless they have some crazy cooling system. I am taking donations so that I can purchase this laptop in order to further my gaming career.
On January 19 2011 05:10 darmousseh wrote: Omg that laptop is so sexy. That thing must be hotter than the sun unless they have some crazy cooling system. I am taking donations so that I can purchase this laptop in order to further my gaming career.
With a 13" screen I don't think it's suitable for gaming. This ultra-portable laptop is for work, man.
On January 19 2011 05:10 darmousseh wrote: Omg that laptop is so sexy. That thing must be hotter than the sun unless they have some crazy cooling system. I am taking donations so that I can purchase this laptop in order to further my gaming career.
With a 13" screen I don't think it's suitable for gaming. This ultra-portable laptop is for work, man.
4700 for a work computer? o.O
Just get like a $600 one and spend the rest on 3 high end gaming desktops!
Yeah, and once you put all those high performance in a tiny laptop you'll get 20 minutes of power and 6 months of life. (I've never seen a laptop live much over a year anyway) Seems like the best deal ever. Take 4000 off and you'll get a desktop that lives a few more years with a bigger screen and probably still more performance.
He only wants to spend 1000 bucks, which is perfectly reasonable for a low end work laptop with a SSD. Honestly the SSD is going to eat up a large portion of your budget here though.
The 2 SSD's are worth ~$1200 themselves and the screen is 1920x1080 which is nuts for a 13.1" screen (the macbook pro by comparison is 1280x800). Combine that with a 1GB dedicated graphics card and every bell and whistle possible for a laptop and $4.7k makes sense.
It seems like a laptop designed particularly well for programming 3d applications (or graphic intensive 2d applications), though some of the bells and whistles are excessive for that.
On January 19 2011 05:32 VonLego wrote: He only wants to spend 1000 bucks, which is perfectly reasonable for a low end work laptop with a SSD. Honestly the SSD is going to eat up a large portion of your budget here though.
The SSD's will be from 200-400$ for good ones. So work off that.
On January 19 2011 05:32 VonLego wrote: He only wants to spend 1000 bucks, which is perfectly reasonable for a low end work laptop with a SSD. Honestly the SSD is going to eat up a large portion of your budget here though.
The SSD's will be from 200-400$ for good ones. So work off that.
I am pretty sure OCZ Vortex 2 is about $150 for 64gb. It's not that expensive.
On January 19 2011 05:32 VonLego wrote: He only wants to spend 1000 bucks, which is perfectly reasonable for a low end work laptop with a SSD. Honestly the SSD is going to eat up a large portion of your budget here though.
I know I kind of have a fetish for SSDs. I think it's the best way to reduce noise (which I loathe) and make the computer faster without consuming more voltage. The concerns are, as I said, what to do with the laptop's original HDD once I replaced with SSD, and how to get the original HDD's prepackaged software (including the OS) onto the SSD.
On January 19 2011 05:31 HwangjaeTerran wrote: Yeah, and once you put all those high performance in a tiny laptop you'll get 20 minutes of power and 6 months of life. (I've never seen a laptop live much over a year anyway) Seems like the best deal ever. Take 4000 off and you'll get a desktop that lives a few more years with a bigger screen and probably still more performance.
Looking at the specs, it says 6 hours of battery life on maximum brightness, or 9 hours on a special battery. Which is a lot.
wtf, the 330M isn't even a top-level card, it's worse than a mobile 4650 and that processor isn't even a quadcore, it's more like an i5 than an i7 lol.
aside from finding one of them big company having a low price model with an SSD (which i highly doubt, they'll put a good old sata drive on most 600$ laptops) you can look at custom laptop makers which you can configure to add an SSD and whatever else you see fit, taking their lowest model there, i was able to get a laptop with an i3 and a SSD for 850$... http://www.pro-star.com
I dont actually know this company just did a google search, im sure there are others as well.
On January 19 2011 05:31 HwangjaeTerran wrote: Yeah, and once you put all those high performance in a tiny laptop you'll get 20 minutes of power and 6 months of life. (I've never seen a laptop live much over a year anyway) Seems like the best deal ever. Take 4000 off and you'll get a desktop that lives a few more years with a bigger screen and probably still more performance.
If you even take a glance at the specs it's got more battery than most laptops on the market.
And for $700 you won't get 2 SSDs, 8GB RAM and an i7.
And if all your laptops don't make it to a year of life, you're doing something wrong.
Last year I bought a laptop with i7 processor and 330m graphics for about 3k, but was dissapointed with the gaming performance. I guess the SSD will make it incredibly fast for loading, but I suggest choosing another graphics card if you want to run sc2 at high or ultra.
On January 19 2011 05:10 darmousseh wrote: Omg that laptop is so sexy. That thing must be hotter than the sun unless they have some crazy cooling system. I am taking donations so that I can purchase this laptop in order to further my gaming career.
With a 13" screen I don't think it's suitable for gaming. This ultra-portable laptop is for work, man.
On January 19 2011 05:25 Scorcher2k wrote: Why the hell would they put those components into a laptop with a 13" screen...
Thats what i said. So much power and then i saw the 13" and i died a little inside. What a waste. Screen should be at minimum 15.6" but 17" would be perfect
330 is really a disappointment for the price. If it had like 2 ati m5870's or somthing that would be awesome! but other than that your are just paying for the SSD's, just get a laptop with ssd+HDD
On January 19 2011 05:25 Scorcher2k wrote: Why the hell would they put those components into a laptop with a 13" screen...
Thats what i said. So much power and then i saw the 13" and i died a little inside. What a waste. Screen should be at minimum 15.6" but 17" would be perfect
Not to mention it might actually be cheaper with 17 inch since the the components wouldnt need to be so tight. the 12 hour batery life is often measured idle. If you start running powerfull programs it'll drop rapetly
I think you'd either have to have a screw loose or a lot of money to waste to buy that thing. It's cool... but I seriously can't understand buying it over a good desktop that's better and costs less.
I actually have and use that laptop (well an older model). It's very light (because it has carbon fibre on the lid and magnesium on the inside) and performance is okay (the equivalent of a £600 laptop. This was built for doing long hours of work; with or without a power source (excellent battery). Gaming wise it is average and should not be brought for gaming at all. Stick to something with a bigger screen and more power (processor and graphical).
However would I recommend anyone buy this laptop? Nope. Not unless you have the money to throw at it (especially with the rise of netbooks, this laptop is not value for money).
1k$ for a hex core, 800$ for 512 SSD, 200$ for 1000 watt power supply, 300$ for a 24" wide screen LCD monitor, 250$ for radeon HD 6870, 100$ for 2x 4GB ram, 150$ for 1 tb sata.
Everything in there is expensive Windows ultimate a 13 inch 1920x1080 screen super expensive 2x 256 ssd's very expensive Intel® Core™ i7 - 640M expensive
You're paying for portability over power. sure you can get better performance for that price, but can you lug it around like it's nothing. 13" and 3 lbs.
The screen and the ssd's alone would retail like 2k, considering i've been around business that are willing to spend 2k just on a monitor i suppose this would fit into the high end business man who needs power but more importantly the ability to lug it around everywhere.
lol, I can tell you from personal experience that no Vaio (or Sony product at all, for that matter, besides the PS3) is worth paying any amount of money for. Everything made by Sony is poor quality and breaks easily, and you need to pay enormous fees to get it fixed even if it's under warranty. Can't even imagine paying $4.7k for one.
These $5k Toughbooks are pretty cool though. Supposedly they can withstand drops from 100 feet, and survive a full cycle through a residential dishwasher.
I find it crazy that it has a 60 second boot time when its using SSD. Any for people talking about "having to fit" 2 SSD in a laptop, have you ever seen the size of one? It's pretty small.
On January 19 2011 08:47 Disposition wrote: I find it crazy that it has a 60 second boot time when its using SSD. Any for people talking about "having to fit" 2 SSD in a laptop, have you ever seen the size of one? It's pretty small.
BIOS i bet if you turned of little things you could cut that to nearly half. SSD only makes it faster when it goes to load the os. I'm guessing all the little things like bluetooth ad's to the time to boot.
On January 19 2011 05:10 darmousseh wrote: Omg that laptop is so sexy. That thing must be hotter than the sun unless they have some crazy cooling system. I am taking donations so that I can purchase this laptop in order to further my gaming career.
With a 13" screen I don't think it's suitable for gaming. This ultra-portable laptop is for work, man.
My 13" laptop is quite suitable for gaming.
Do you use an external monitor as well? Just wondering
On January 19 2011 08:43 Cel.erity wrote: lol, I can tell you from personal experience that no Vaio (or Sony product at all, for that matter, besides the PS3) is worth paying any amount of money for. Everything made by Sony is poor quality and breaks easily, and you need to pay enormous fees to get it fixed even if it's under warranty. Can't even imagine paying $4.7k for one.
These $5k Toughbooks are pretty cool though. Supposedly they can withstand drops from 100 feet, and survive a full cycle through a residential dishwasher.
The reason I am paying attention to VAIO is that my girlfriend has one. I've used it before - it seems really good. Very quite, very fast, and very cool.
If you're not getting the laptop for gaming but just want portability and an SSD, you should look at the Macbook Air. It's not as powerful as the Vaio Z but it's more portable and has instant-on capability. Most likely will not play SC2, though.
WTF? I have a desktop with a single Intel SSD (and not 2 faster ones in RAID) and my boot time is under 20 seconds.
No kidding. I bought an SSD for the MacBook Pro I got for school (Not for games. I have a desktop for that) and it boots in 17 seconds. It may be a bit slower for Windows but not that much slower. Unless they just threw them in and didn't optimize boot time at all.
On January 19 2011 10:37 Enervate wrote: If you're not getting the laptop for gaming but just want portability and an SSD, you should look at the Macbook Air. It's not as powerful as the Vaio Z but it's more portable and has instant-on capability. Most likely will not play SC2, though.
That's actually a fantastic idea. Although I am somewhat skeptical of Apple's build quality.
On January 19 2011 05:32 Logo wrote: The 2 SSD's are worth ~$1200 themselves and the screen is 1920x1080 which is nuts for a 13.1" screen (the macbook pro by comparison is 1280x800). Combine that with a 1GB dedicated graphics card and every bell and whistle possible for a laptop and $4.7k makes sense.
It seems like a laptop designed particularly well for programming 3d applications (or graphic intensive 2d applications), though some of the bells and whistles are excessive for that.
Yeah. ALso would be great for LANS if you wanted to lug a monitor...
As other people have said, get a 600 dollar work laptop and a 1-1.5k gaming desktop. Personally, I'd suggest the asus ul30 series. It's older than the newer laptops, but it works just as great, a lot cheaper, still has most of the new trinkets, and it lasts 10 hours straight on the lowest settings, 6hours on highest. It's 11 and 7, respectively, with the 8cell battery.
It's not even that good... You could get a similar Dell for maybe half the price. I'm confused. I was expecting like 12 GB of RAM, and like a octo core processor.
We have a Vaio Z outfitted just like that at my workplace, that we use for travel -- it's quite nice, and stays cool too. It's impressive that they can pack so much into a laptop that weighs all of three pounds.
Am I the only one that noticed IT HAS A FUCKING BIOMETRIC SYSTEM AS SECURITY?! And my laptop comes just a tad short for specs compared to the laptop the OP was talking about, and I got mine for about $800...
On January 19 2011 15:21 TypeFake wrote: Am I the only one that noticed IT HAS A FUCKING BIOMETRIC SYSTEM AS SECURITY?! And my laptop comes just a tad short for specs compared to the laptop the OP was talking about, and I got mine for about $800...
-_- Lot's of laptops have fingerprint scanners. My brother's has one, he bought his Toshiba in... 2007. They're pretty easy too fool too, which would make me weary with my 4700 dollar laptop.
... I'd rather buy a 1000 dollar laptop (which is still pretty top-notch) and wait the extra 5 seconds of booting time. Oh, and have an entire year of wings and beer.
On January 19 2011 15:21 TypeFake wrote: Am I the only one that noticed IT HAS A FUCKING BIOMETRIC SYSTEM AS SECURITY?! And my laptop comes just a tad short for specs compared to the laptop the OP was talking about, and I got mine for about $800...
I am pretty sure that thing only allows you to scan your fingerprint as an alternative way to logging into your Windows 7 account.
This may fool some of the general public, but I think everyone on the TL Tech Support knows that HDDs are easily replaced.
On January 19 2011 15:21 TypeFake wrote: Am I the only one that noticed IT HAS A FUCKING BIOMETRIC SYSTEM AS SECURITY?! And my laptop comes just a tad short for specs compared to the laptop the OP was talking about, and I got mine for about $800...
I am pretty sure that thing only allows you to scan your fingerprint as an alternative way to logging into your Windows 7 account.
This may fool some of the general public, but I think everyone on the TL Tech Support knows that HDDs are easily replaced.
My 2 year old notebook has a fingerprint sensor, too. It allows to secure the BIOS as well as Windows (and i guess Linux) with it, but i never use it. Makes it really problematic if i lend it to the boyfriend of my ex when he visits her or when someone visits me for a 2-person lan and doesn't want to bring his PC.
My notebook is actually quite usable for gaming, though after 2 years it's getting a little old. For 1300 Euro i got a GeForce 9600, dual-core, 640GB HDD (no SSD), 4 GB RAM and 17" widescreen display, it even has a useable keyboard as opposed to most notebooks (especially the 13" type). Only disadvantage is that it weights a ton and gets quite hot.
I would never buy a notebook - no matter how much power it has - with a small display, it's neither fun for work nor playing games. I especially hate most notebook keyboards of those small notebooks and i don't want to carry an external keyboard around all the time.
this seems really expensive 0.0 i have an alienware m15x laptop, gtx 260m card, i7 720qm quad at 1.7, turbos to 3.2, the one they have is a dual core) and 6gb ram and it cost less then half. the only thing semi-unique about this is the fact it has 2 ssd drives... but i dont see how that in any way justifies the insane cost.
On January 19 2011 08:47 Disposition wrote: I find it crazy that it has a 60 second boot time when its using SSD. Any for people talking about "having to fit" 2 SSD in a laptop, have you ever seen the size of one? It's pretty small.
Nah it's just all the crap software every laptop manufacturer loads onto their default image that brings it up to this
i have the cheapest version of the sony vaio z($1800). it is what i play starcraft 2 on and it does get quite warm. around 90C GPU. its superlight and has a high quality screen 1600x900 and RAID SSDs are amazingly fast. its not for everyone but i suggest trying to get hands on one they are amazing :D
EDIT: also you can switch between 330m to the graphics on the i5 chip (integrated) and get around 4-5 hours battery life with little heat
On January 19 2011 17:37 motioncity wrote: i have the cheapest version of the sony vaio z($1800). it is what i play starcraft 2 on and it does get quite warm. around 90C GPU. its superlight and has a high quality screen 1600x900 and RAID SSDs are amazingly fast. its not for everyone but i suggest trying to get hands on one they are amazing :D
EDIT: also you can switch between 330m to the graphics on the i5 chip (integrated) and get around 4-5 hours battery life with little heat
On January 19 2011 08:43 Cel.erity wrote: lol, I can tell you from personal experience that no Vaio (or Sony product at all, for that matter, besides the PS3) is worth paying any amount of money for. Everything made by Sony is poor quality and breaks easily, and you need to pay enormous fees to get it fixed even if it's under warranty. Can't even imagine paying $4.7k for one.
These $5k Toughbooks are pretty cool though. Supposedly they can withstand drops from 100 feet, and survive a full cycle through a residential dishwasher.
The reason I am paying attention to VAIO is that my girlfriend has one. I've used it before - it seems really good. Very quite, very fast, and very cool.
Don't get me wrong, my Vaio is a great computer, but in less than 2 years it has failed on 3 separate parts, and the GPU has failed twice. I've had to pay ~$200 just for the repairs and it's still under warranty. Soon it won't be, and I'll be screwed. Also, they do run quite hot.
Is that the best laptop spec for it's price? Or is there a better spec laptop with a price like that? The coupon expires tonight so someone who knows about laptops please tell me.
an asus g73 has pretty much everything better than that 4700 laptop that's 13 inches... except for the SSDs... that's like the only thing it sucks it's also 17.3 inches and costs 1/3 to 1/4 price...
Is that the best laptop spec for it's price? Or is there a better spec laptop with a price like that? The coupon expires tonight so someone who knows about laptops please tell me.
Assert, before buying the vaio z i was looking at the previous version of that laptop. i think that for the price that is really good deal but the previous generation did have heat problems just like my laptop does now. i think if you can deal with high gpu temps that is a good laptop.
On January 20 2011 06:52 nalgene wrote: an asus g73 has pretty much everything better than that 4700 laptop that's 13 inches... except for the SSDs... that's like the only thing it sucks it's also 17.3 inches and costs 1/3 to 1/4 price...
someone here linked it once
The Asus G73 serves a completely different niche from the Vaio Z and the two can't even be compared. The Vaio Z is an ultraportable that happens to be extremely powerful. The Asus is a desktop replacement, the complete opposite of an ultraportable. I would never lug around a desktop replacement to all of my classes, and I don't know why any person with a desktop or who isn't a hardcore gamer [wannabe] would choose the Asus over a weaker but more portable (and a lot more stylish) alternative. I personally dislike laptops without metal finishes. The Asus also has terrible battery life, which can be a dealbreaker for a lot of people such as students.
People who buy the Vaio Z consider the 13 in screen to be a pro, not a con. The 17in is actually a huge con for the target market of the Vaio Z, which is business professionals seeking a premium ultraportable that is convenient to travel with as well as powerful enough to work from.
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