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    Sony Announces the VAIO S Series Notebook Line Discussion

    Discussion in 'Notebook News and Reviews' started by Amber Riippa, Mar 7, 2011.

  1. Amber Riippa

    Amber Riippa NotebookReview.com Contributor

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    Today Sony unveiled the 13.3-inch VAIO S Series laptop line, similar to the C Series line announced on Feb. 22, but there are key differences with these smaller-sized notebooks. Select models will have a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics card like the select VAIO C Series models, and will have a few similar built-in features.

    Read the full content of this Article: Sony Announces the VAIO S Series Notebook Line

    Related Articles:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 7, 2015
  2. temka-0622

    temka-0622 Notebook Guru

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    Thanx for info.
    Any Info on price??
    When will it be available in CHINA??
     
  3. cy007

    cy007 Notebook Deity

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    VPCSB18GG - Sonystyle.com.hk

    It'll be available in Hong Kong by the end of the month. Top-end model only comes with a Radeon HD 6470M 512MB apparently. Kinda hope that's only a typo, but for that price, I'm not entirely optmistic we'd see a 6630M anytime soon.
     
  4. notebookhelp

    notebookhelp Notebook Consultant

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  5. temon

    temon Notebook Consultant

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    its very over priced
     
  6. Dekabal

    Dekabal Notebook Evangelist

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    I think its pretty chinsy to offer up a "$50" graphics upgrade when you ahve to pay for a $200 i7 processor which most people don't need.
     
  7. lilydreamy

    lilydreamy Notebook Enthusiast

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    very nice looking notebook.. how would this compare to Samsung's 9 series?...
     
  8. temon

    temon Notebook Consultant

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    yes exactly why i have to pay extra 200 in processor i dont need if they can fix this i think the price would be good enough
     
  9. Soulsaber

    Soulsaber Notebook Evangelist

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    Hmm looks good... might be time to replace my ancient ASUS yay!
     
  10. merzbow

    merzbow Notebook Enthusiast

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    Is this going to have auto-switching between the integrated and AMD GPUs or a manual switch? I'm getting conflicting information on the web.
     
  11. TSE

    TSE Notebook Deity

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    It has a physical switch. I'm not sure AMD has a software built solution. I personally prefer a physical switch.
     
  12. merzbow

    merzbow Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well, I guess it depends how sturdy this switch is (rated for 10+ flips a day?) and if you need to reboot...? (A reboot is an instant deal-breaker.)
     
  13. MidnightSun

    MidnightSun Emodicon

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    Ever since Windows Vista, Sony's manual switching GPUs haven't required a reboot. If it's anything like the Vaio Z, it will have 3 modes in a triangular slide-switch: stamina, speed, and automatic.
     
  14. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Agreed, and I am not likely to pay an additional $200 for a processor that's barely better just so Sony will "allow" me to have the better GPU. They also require both the i7 and the 6630 for the privilege of paying them another exorbitant fee to upgrade to SSD RAID, which I wouldn't do anyways, since it's cheaper to upgrade that yourself, which also allows for individual selection of what drive is used, but still, it's ridiculous.

    According to their website, it does not require a reboot.

    The screen resolution is a disappointment as well, though not a deal breaker. The i7 requirement, however, is. The location of the mic/headphone jack is also pretty lousy, but again, not a major concern. If the reviews are good and they decide to let us choose the 6630 without selecting the i7, I'll likely get one. I have to say, though, that $1,570 for the i7, 6630, Blu-ray, and slice battery is a pretty good deal. Add another ~$300 to step up to 8GB of RAM and an SSD, and it'd be one fast laptop. Still, I'd rather pay $200 less and go with the i5, so I really hope they do the right thing and change that requirement.
     
  15. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Does anybody know if this laptop will:

    1) allow access to the CPU for upgrade to Ivy Bridge?
    2) be compatible with this miniPCIe SSD, while still allowing use of another hard drive and the optical drive?
     
  16. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well, color me unimpressed with Sony customer service (can't really say I'm surprised). I submitted a list of questions through their website, only to receive an automated response telling me they can't answer product request questions via email and I had to call their support number. Of course, if that's the case, I don't know why they don't say that on the help request page.

    So I called the number and got a nice, but not terribly helpful, girl on the other end (at least she sounded American). She couldn't help me with most of my questions, and told me she could transfer me to tech support once we were done. She did tell me the switch for the graphics is similar to on the Z model and the display will open up to probably around 165-170 degrees. She also said they don't know any more than what's on the website, so she couldn't tell me about any future plans, such as possibly offering a 1440x900 display or changing the limitation on ordering a 6630. She also couldn't tell me why they chose to do that, only offering that maybe due to it being a higher performance GPU it requires the higher performance CPU, to which I replied that would make no sense, and myself and others are under the impression it is simply to extort their customers of more money. Finally, she said the internal battery is depleted first, then the system starts drawing from the sheet battery. I really hope she's wrong about this, as it would be opposite of the sensible way to do it, and would be another major detractor of this laptop.

    After she transferred me to tech support, and I went through a bunch of menus, my call was answered by a guy, again an actual English-speaking person. However, after I explained that I didn't own a Sony laptop but was actually calling with questions about the new Vaio S, he asked me what problems I was having with my laptop... :( ...I asked him if he'd heard anything I just said, and he rudely responded asking if I'd heard anything he just said. Anyways, after speaking with him for a few minutes, getting nowhere, I came to the conclusion, confirmed by him, that Sony provides no means for customers to get more than the most basic help. I had him transfer me to a different tech support, which resulted in a busy signal.

    So a pretty mediocre experience, to say the least. I'm not sure how they expect prospective buyers to learn about the product they're considering purchasing, and apparently don't care if they are able to. I'm thinking a new Sony laptop may not be in my future after all.
     
  17. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    Just as a note, their RAID 0 SSD is, I believe, a proprietary format that stuffs 2 SSD drives in a single 2.5" hard drive bay, so no, you actually probably won't be able to upgrade to that yourself, although you could certainly put in a regular 256 GB SSD or some other SSD in there. It just won't be a RAID drive.
     
  18. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I realize that, but for most people, RAID 0 SSD is overkill. It also doubles the risk of failure, and my point was that maybe somebody wants the extra hard drive speed but not necessarily the extra CPU and/or GPU speed, but in order to get it they automatically have to pay $250 extra. Based purely off capacity (256GB), the drive option alone is actually a decent deal for those that do need it. However, when you consider it's really costing you $800 if you don't already intend to upgrade the other components, it's costing you twice what that same capacity would cost to upgrade yourself.

    Furthermore, I can find no mention of what drives they use, what the rated (or actual) speeds of those drives are, or any benchmarks on them. So for all the consumer knows, Sony is using cheap, relatively slow SSDs that, in RAID, perform only slightly better, or even worse, than a single high-performance drive, not to mention the quality and longevity might be subpar. This wouldn't surprise me given the price, either. And as I mentioned before, good luck finding out from Sony what they use. The only way to know would be for an owner of one to open it up and look, possibly voiding the warranty, depending on how it's packaged.

    I would be much more interested in an option to have them install an Intel miniPCIe SSD, which is one of the major draws for me to the Lenovo X220 at this time.

    Edit: Can anyone point me to a comparison between the 6470 and the 6630? Unless things have changed in recent times, ATI cards don't necessarily get better just because the 2nd number is higher. Sometimes, they are actually worse performers, because if the last two numbers are lower, as is the case with the 6630, they're more of a value card.
     
  19. Karamazovmm

    Karamazovmm Overthinking? Always!

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    probably samsung or toshiba drives, If I remember correctly those were the ones used in the Z series.

    you will only know that when someone actually do a decent review.

    So would I, but you cant always win, and there is the lenovo thinkpad edge e420s, that packs the same config as the vaio S, but it comes in a 14'' format, but guess what the mini PCIe SSD is there for you to pick, today was supposed to be the launch of this new notebook.

    It is expected that it performs on the same level as the 5650 (aka 6550), I dont think that its a reasonable expectation, I do think that it should perform at least on the same level as the 5700 (aka 6570), due to the 80 more shadders, and sure as hell hope that this is at least true, if not it wont be an upgrade for me at all, since I have a 4670m GDDR3 equipped, not the crap that dell and acer put in their laptops.

    PS: Sony customer support according to the people at the sony lounge is terrible, at least in the US.
     
  20. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    In this particular instance, RAID 0 doesn't really double the risk of failure per se, both as it's internal to the drive, and because even single SSDs are (essentially) in RAID internally. My point was just that you wouldn't really be able to upgrade to the drive that Sony uses was all.

    As Mr_MM says, they're probably Samsung or Toshiba, those being the 2 major OEM SSD makers, and the ones most likely to supply SSDs in "odd" formats (Toshiba makes the soldered in SSD for Apple's Macbook Air, for example). As I recall, they've always been decent performers, although you might want to try asking in the Sony subforum for more detailed responses. Sony has also always been very big on proprietary hardware, so I'm not terribly surprised they're not pushing a mSATA slot.

    And unfortunately, I can't help out with the graphics cards.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 29, 2015
  21. merzbow

    merzbow Notebook Enthusiast

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    Sony has removed the ability to customize this laptop from their website. I guess they're backtracking on the release date...
     
  22. Crotia

    Crotia Notebook Consultant

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    Does anyone know if reviewers are able to get their hands on the laptop early? Or is it going to be available to them later march as well?
     
  23. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    It depends on the manufacturer. Some manufacturers ship out "review" copies to various review sites, and in those cases, if the review copy is shipped out before the regular availability date, then yes, the reviewers can get their hands on the laptop early. Otherwise, it depends on when the reviewer receives their review copy (or when they buy one themselves to review, but in that case it's obviously available for sale already).
     
  24. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I wonder what that means for those that already pre-ordered.

    Even if that's the case, which it very well may be, Sony's is a RAID when others are not (which is what makes it special), so that would simply mean they're RAIDing a RAID, which still is going to double risk of failure. Unless I am missing something entirely.

    According to this other Vaio S thread, there is suspicion that Sony may be underlocking the 6630. I don't have the time right now to read it through to see if a conclusion has been reached on that assumption, but it will be interesting to see.

    And that's good to know about the support. Doesn't surprise me, but it certainly makes me a lot less likely to buy one of their products.
     
  25. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    Mostly it has to do with the way SSDs fail versus how HDDs fail, as well as how they're built. A HDD is built where data is placed directly on a platter, and read back from said platter, largely sequentially. However, a SSD has several blocks of flash, and data you write to a SSD is automatically broken down into multiple parts (much like RAID 0) and then distributed among those blocks of flash, which is a large part of why they can achieve such high speeds. This is also done because as data is written and deleted, it gets moved among those various blocks of flash, to manage wear. As well, a physical medium failure on a SSD almost never keeps you from reading from it; it just keeps you from writing to it.

    Thus, a HDD failure is usually a physical, hardware failure, where the motor fails, or there's something wrong with the platter, or some other physical fault. SSD failures are almost never physical; what's been failing with SSDs is typically the controller. So, as to the first point, a SSD is more "reliable" than a HDD in that if a controller fails in either, they're both failed, while the HDD can also fail physically (this is somewhat countered by the fact that HDD controllers are more mature than SSD controllers).

    As for the RAID question, this becomes a question of how Sony has implemented the "RAID". If it's a RAID controller on top of 2 other sub-controllers, then yes, failure rates will probably be somewhat comparable to a pair of RAIDed HDDs, although I feel it'll still probably be lower. If, on the other hand, Sony did the "smart" thing, and has just one controller, and is calling them in "RAID" to emphasize that they have double the "usual" channels, then failure rate is comparable instead to a "regular" SSD, since it's reduced to just a single controller failure, as opposed to 3 controllers possibly failing.
     
  26. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    But still, if one of the banks, or channels, fails, it will cause a total failure, as each acts basically as a separate "drive" under a "RAID 0" type arrangement. So the more there are, the higher the risk of failure. At least that's how it seems, though possibly it doesn't work out that way with the internal design. But as you said, it certainly would increase the risk if they use another controller on top of the "original" one, or basically adding another branch to the tree that could break, and we don't know if that's how it is or not.

    Also, I've always perceived SSD's and flash memory to be more or less the same tech, just in different packages with different architectures. I may be way off, but if that's the case, then it doesn't make sense that an SSD failure would still allow you to read the data, since usually when a flash drive fails the data is irrecoverable.
     
  27. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

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    I don't want to delve too much further into this, as we're getting into the realm of more generalized hardware than anything specific to the VAIO S, but even when a flash drive fails, it's usually a controller failure, and not a failure in the physical NAND. Thus, if you could somehow replace the controller, and provide the new controller with the map of the contents that the old controller had, you would be able to reaccess your data... of course, this usually isn't possible.

    Think of it this way. Your data is like a tray of colored eggs, arranged in some sort of pattern. In a HDD failure, some of those eggs physically go missing, or the tray breaks, so some of the eggs fall out (this represents physical damage on the data side, such as to the platter). In a SSD failure, what happens is that the person you have telling you what color eggs are where (the controller) suddenly goes color-blind; all the eggs are still there, and still the right colors, but you can't tell which is where or what anymore. Using this example, you can see how if the controller fails, both a HDD and SSD suffer total failure; you can't tell where or what your data is anymore. However, the fact that a HDD is more likely to also suffer physical failure (actual damage to the egg tray) makes them slightly less reliable in that respect (countered, as previously mentioned, by the fact that flash controllers are not as mature as HDD controllers, and thus are a little bit more likely to go "color-blind", as it were).
     
  28. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, and I agree, I don't want to derail the thread too much either. It does make sense then, with the NAND being a low failure risk, that as long as they use one controller and add more channels to "raid" it, that it wouldn't really increase the risk of failure much. Still, and to get back on topic, the question remains as to if this is the approach Sony took, or if they added another controller, increasing the risk. So that would be something interesting to determine.
     
  29. FMruss

    FMruss Notebook Evangelist

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    It is indeed pricier than other similar counter parts - Sony is a good brand but for $300 more or so?
     
  30. ticklz

    ticklz Newbie

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    this laptop with the battery pack should be amazing the only thing that may compare is the Asus U36jc and is it worth the 2 month wait
     
  31. Karamazovmm

    Karamazovmm Overthinking? Always!

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    which similar counterparts do you know of?
     
  32. temon

    temon Notebook Consultant

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    may be acer 3820TG
     
  33. Karamazovmm

    Karamazovmm Overthinking? Always!

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    SB equipped. and with amd gpu, I need linux support
     
  34. ggcvnjhg

    ggcvnjhg Notebook Evangelist

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    Pretty major differences with the SA though.

    This offers a high res screen in a 13" frame and a vastly more robust video card option. Wholly unique.

    To be honest, the Asus is yet another same old, same old 13.3" laptop. To be fair if those two things aren't important, no WAY would I pay ~1500 bucks for a low res screen and a gimped card. I can get that performance @ half the price. This is coming from a Z owner too btw...
     
  35. NomisR

    NomisR Notebook Consultant

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    Not really, considering it has discrete graphics, Optical drive, which none of the competitors has especially at under 4lbs. it's a great deal. There's really no laptop that's as powerful and lightweight as the Sony S (currently) and Z.

    Most of the competitors you're refering to are either heavier, lacks optical drive, or lacks discrete graphics (or the graphics is significantly less powerful)
     
  36. fo-fo-fo-fo

    fo-fo-fo-fo Newbie

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    Just bought a sony vaio s for 3300rm (i5 model) in malaysia.
    So far :
    - performance is amazing on this thing
    - super thin, super light
    - screen is superb and anti-glare
    - backlit keyboard is nice, but is subject to a little flex (fussy reviewers will complain)
    - battery life is amazing (around 6 hours)
    - the touchpad is perfect : two buttons, huge surface, very responsive
    - The design of the laptop is very discrete
    - It runs cool
     
  37. ticklz

    ticklz Newbie

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    think the extra battey pack is worth it to double the battery life?
     
  38. Dimitar

    Dimitar Newbie

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    I am having second thought buying the new s vaio after the fukushima incident. Has anyone measured the level of radiation from this laptop with a geiger counter? The cargo travels two weeks but still ...
    Thanks a lot.
     
  39. Karamazovmm

    Karamazovmm Overthinking? Always!

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    There were reports that also due to the accident some terrorists were also affected, making them glow in the dark!!!

    Now jokes aside, the laptop is made in china.
     
  40. Generic User #2

    Generic User #2 Notebook Deity

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    if your laptop was built with uranium, it'd be a hell of alot mor expensive ;)
     
  41. Karamazovmm

    Karamazovmm Overthinking? Always!

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    and dangerous, he could have pierce tank armor with it!
     
  42. Generic User #2

    Generic User #2 Notebook Deity

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    he's going to have to once iran goes after him.

    lol
     
  43. nutral

    nutral Notebook Consultant

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    The extra batterypack adds something in weight and size but it will double your life. Still though i haven't really needed it, except if im running full brightness and just burn through the battery faster, i can play games longer and heavy software. With those things the extra battery is a must and carries me at least 4 hours on almost everything. 12 hours is doable with web browsing.

    I got a energy use of 5,7w on idle, so in idle i could get 18 hours.
     
  44. vertigo_2_20

    vertigo_2_20 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Can you confirm what Sony said as far as it drawing power from the internal first then turning to the secondary battery after depleting it? I doubt at this point I'm going to even bother with this laptop, but I'm curious if the service rep I spoke with was wrong about that or if it really is set up that way.
     
  45. nutral

    nutral Notebook Consultant

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    Nope, thats wrong. It depletes the external first then the internal.says so on the manual too.
     
  46. sPeedMagicinFo

    sPeedMagicinFo Notebook Enthusiast

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    Did anyone check the customization options for the hard drives? The SSD is now $300 MORE!!! It used to be a $550 upgrade from the base 320gb mechanical drive. But now its $830 to upgrade. Holy !!
     
  47. Joadster

    Joadster Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yeah, Sony must have been selling too many units and wanted to slow things down. :no: I want the new S but only with an i5 and a reasonably priced/sized SSD. In this era of mass customization, it's difficult to understand Sony.
     
  48. sPeedMagicinFo

    sPeedMagicinFo Notebook Enthusiast

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    That's pretty stupid considering I can get current generation 256gb SSDs for $200 less. I would assume they would want more sales...