My second Z has just arrived at my office. I am checking it for dead pixels….more in a little bit. If it’s good then I’m calling Sony today to return the other….or both (if this one also turns out bad).
More info coming soon.
[EDIT]
New Z. Dead pixel free! Yay!
A follow up to my last post…
I’m currently waiting the arrival of my 2nd VAIO Z which is scheduled for next week. In the meantime, I’m still using the current one so I can get some testing and reviewing done. Everything else is functional afterall so it would be a shame to not review it. Once I get confirmation that the other laptop has shipped then I’ll start the RMA process with this one. I’ll still be within the 30 days return policy although I will have to eat the cost of shipping it back since it’s not “technically” defective.
In terms of the 2nd VAIO Z, I didn’t end up getting the exact same model specifications. After some deep thought, I went against my original conservative configuration and opted for the Blu-Ray burner. My reasoning for this as that despite the price, I was writing this off for business anyways and while I won’t be watching a lot of Blu-Ray movies on this, I will be creating a lot content (including HD videos) and will need a quick way to burn the data. I know I could get an external (which I still plan to do) for less but it’s just more convenient to not have to bring extra stuff. Other than that, I didn’t upgrade anything else. Eventually, I’ll want a bigger HDD but the one I got in my configuration is double what my old laptop had and that should suffice for now.
In terms of my comprehensive review, I will start on it this weekend and possibly post it partially to help others who are considering buying one. I’ll then add the Blu-Ray component of the review after I receive that unit. I’m actually pretty fired up to do the review since this is the first piece of exciting technology I’ve had in a while and most of the reviews I’ve seen already aren’t that great due to lack of research and understanding of the product.
After four long years of waiting to upgrade my main laptop, I finally took the plunge after hearing about the announcement of the new Sony VAIO Summer 2008 line up. My Sony VAIO S170P, my trusty workhorse all these years, was starting to show it’s age and just not able to handle my new computing needs and the new HD lifestyle.
I was immediately intrigued by the Sony VAIO Z series, Sony’s new flagship ultraportable laptop. It’s a new model clearly influenced by some of the best design elements Sony has brought to the market over the last several years. There are clear influences from their venerable TR, X505, S, SZ, and TZ notebooks. It also brings all that and a breadth of new technologies and designs all in an amazingly light package.
So, I placed an order the day they were available (July 15, 2008) and then I endured a painful wait as the production was delayed by a shortage of parts. I finally received the notebook yesterday August 28, 2008 and was wildly excited to receive it since it was everything I hoped it to be.
Unfortunately, I’ll be returning it.
Why? It’s not that I don’t want it. On the contrary, I’m trying to convince myself to not send it back. The reason for returning it is simple.
IT HAS ONE STUCK PIXEL.
Of course, I called Sony Customer Care about this and gave me the generic “we can’t do anything about it unless it’s 8 pixels. it’s the industry standard” message. I understand they have a card the support people have to read when someone calls in about this.
So, let me begin my rant…
- The pixel is in clear view and now off to the side. You can’t miss it when there are darker colors on the screen. Horribly annoying while watching videos since it tends to shimmer. I plan on doing a lot of work on this thing so there’s no way I can ignore it. For my coding work, I use light-on-dark scheme so I’m going to see it all the time.
- I do understand about failure rates and how these things are normal occurences in the industy…BUT SO WHAT? This is arguably Sony’s flagship notebook and I dropped over $3K on it. I’m not ashamed to admit that I plan on showing it off to my local Starbutts and to my Mac-snob friends. I can only imagine them saying, “you spent how much? and it has a flaw like that?”
- Am I asking for special treatment? Heck yes I am. If I had purchased a value-line model I might be less angry since I believe “you get what you pay for”. It’s like buying a brand new luxury car and seeing a chip in the wind shield on the driver’s side…right in your line of view. It would drive you crazy and you would refuse to take the car unless you get it perfect off the lot.
- The more I think about it, the more I think Sony needs to rethink their policy on this kind of stuff. As a company, they’re taking a bashing from competitors such as Apple. Sony is no longer the first company you think of when you think about innovation, quality, technology leadership, and plain cool. If they want to rebuild their image then they really need a better marketing team and have products that stand up to their previously legendary standards. Are you listening Sir Howard Stringer? You can start by treating your customers better. Don’t just follow the industry standard. Define it.
So, what’s my plan of attack? I’m going to return it and order another one at the same time. Since it’s a long weekend, I’ll continue to play around with this thing and then possibly start the RMA process next week. I may put it off a week since I need to go out of town and they don’t have units in stock. After all, I have 30 days to return it hassle free.
Don’t get me wrong. My initial impression of this laptop is that it’s an amazing piece of technology. It’s wicked fast, the screen is phenomenal (save for the pixel), the keyboard feels great, and it’s worth of the Sony VAIO name. That’s why I’m willing to buy it again (and again) until I get one that’s perfect.
I’ve been hiding in my cave for a while now. The funny thing is that I have acquired a lot of new stuff to install but life and work sort of got into the way of me actually writing about what I’ve been up to. While I love my job, the last month has been kind of intense with me averaging nearly 50 hours a week. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t starting to burn me out but I’m working through it.
One of the things I’ve been playing around with over the last year is Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. I was a beta tester from day one and I absolutely loved the product. I re-purposed an old Athlon 64 system and build a little server which held about 1.5TB of storage. Over the months, I accumulated a lot of backed up data including a lot of multimedia type files.
When the product was finally launched last fall, I knew I would have to eventually purchase it; however, I was on the fence of building a custom system or going with HP’s Media Smart Server which I thought was really cool looking and well designed. Early this year, my beta version of the software timed out putting me in a bind. My systems were no longer being updated and accessing my existing data was difficult (the system times out after one hour). So, I had some added pressure to hurry up and get a new system up. Due to my increasing workload, I didn’t think I was going to have time to put together a new system and I was still really intrigued by the HP MSS which would likely be quicker to setup. With that in mind (and the discovery of an added discount), I took the plunge and purchased the HP MSS EX-470 which includes a 500GB HDD. There’s also a EX-475 version which comes with a 1TB drive but it’s not worth the dramatic price increase.
I bought this thing more than a month ago but didn’t have time to set it up and transfer data. That’s pretty sad.
This weekend, I finally unboxed it and started the painful transfer process. I’ve had to restart the old beta server numerous times just to get the data off and even with a gigabit network, terabytes of data takes forever to move. Once, I get everything transferred, I’ll give out some impressions on this thing and try to get back on track.
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