Why do they always take photos of Laptops from behind?? surely most people who buy them will spend more time looking at the front of the laptop, than the back??
Sony outs 1080p skinny laptops
More updated Vaio laptops from Sony, this time the Z series - the latter the original Ultrabook, introduced before the MacBook Air and long before Intel coined the term. Sony Vaio Z Of course, World+Dog is making slimline notebooks now, so the new Z's 17mm thickness and 1.2kg weight are not the leading edge laptop specs they …
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 11:20 GMT Dave 126
Photos?
Probably computer-generated renders. No need to check for finger-prints or dust, no need to hire a photographer for the day, no need to maintain spotless white backdrops, perfect reflections on the logo...
Product variations (keyboard, but more commonly case colours) are easily generated, too.
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 11:39 GMT Dave 126
If El Reg was in the habit of linking to the source material...
you would probably find a wealth of images from different angles. Sony do seem to release models with matte screens, though.
Re the touch pad being left of screen centre, I find my arm swivels at the elbow, neatly taking my right hand from the keyboard to the touch pad. Even information displayed on screen usually has bias to the left (look at The Register, for example; only adverts live on the right, Windows Explorer displays lists of files with the file name on the left, many applications have their toolbars on the left...)
It's the lack of a middle button that drives me towards a mouse, though.
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 11:26 GMT Victor Ludorum
Re: Screen resolution
Sony have been doing these Z-series with 13 inch Full HD for a while, I guess these are just Ivy Bridge with a little bit of a cosmetic update?
I really want one of these, they are what I hoped an Ultrabook would actually be - sub 1.3Kg, skinny, full HD. Unfortunately I can't justify the price at the moment...
Maybe the old Zs will start appearing on the tat bazaar and I can get one a bit cheaper...
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 12:29 GMT Fuzz
Re: Screen resolution
If you go and look at the Sony store, you can configure one of these latops. The standard screen is 1600x900, the 1080p is an optional extra.
However the cost of the 1080p screen is only £40 and this is on a price list where doubling the size of your SSD from 128 to 256 (would be about £100-150 in the shops) will cost you £410. So this just shows how stupid the whole 1366x768 screen issue is.
I am very tempted to order one of these, it's exactly what I want, shame about the cost.
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 12:29 GMT Captain Save-a-ho
Re: Full HD 1920x1080 on a 13inch screen
I appreciate it and haven't seen the kit up close yet. It's not a matter of font or icon size. It's a matter of screen real estate, which is always in short supply. About bloody well time that someone start making 1920x1080 more common place on laptop screens, although it's regretable that the kit is stuck with a Sony label.
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 12:25 GMT Wile E. Veteran
Looks like....
Laptops are following the lead of fondleslabs and becoming primarily Media Consumption Devices instead of portable power tools for the creation and maintenance of knowledge, commerce and other societal goods for the benefit of the many instead of the few.
Why do I keep having visions of the old Max Headroom dystopia with TYs everywhere and instant polling (aka behavioral tracking) providing feedback to the corporate masters who really run the world through sham, bought-and-paid-for governments?
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 14:44 GMT Chris D Rogers
What about Retina
Sony and every notebook manufacturer are well behind the curve - if it does not sport a 'RETINA' display as proclaimed by the 'Lord' Jesus Jobs, then evidently its a pile of crud.
And why are they making laptops smaller - I want a 60in laptop with a 4K retina display - Apple rumour sites even suggest Apple iPad's may support up to a 10K resolution by next week - obviously there is no actual use for this super enhanced retina display, codenamed the iTV Retina Display 10K, but thats not the point - being ahead of the pack is all that counts.
Moles in Taiwan, Korea and China suggest the new designed battery pack to support this mighty beast weighs in at just under one metric ton, but suggest Apple will sell it with a small motor vehicle for ease of use and mobility - we're reliably informed that the ARM-based APU will be called the AX10,000 - it sports 200 cores and enhanced graphics capabilities in the form of a AMD6970 unit sporting 256K of VRAM - uses can upgrade to 2G of DDR5 VRAM for an additional US$10,000 upgrade option.
Apple shares closed at US$1 million a share valuing the company at 1,000 Trillion - Sony shares have collapsed on this news and the one time electronics and media giant is now trading at Y10, valuing the business at US$0.99
Blu-Ray anyone?
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Wednesday 16th May 2012 22:52 GMT Fuzz
Re: Typical Reg
If you go to the Sony website you can order one. No idea how many ports it's got although I know it definitely has at least hdmi and 1 each usb 2 and 3. There is an add on dock with an optical drive and some sort of AMD graphics. I'm guessing this connects over thunderbolt so there must be one of those onboard too.
Standard display is 1600x900 the 1080p screen is an extra £40.
Standard disk is a 128GB SSD (listed as 3rd generation I'm guessing one of the newer sandforce based drives) 256GB is £410 512GB is £1100!!!!!
Standard RAM is 4GB you can opt for 8GB for an extra £110 but only if you also get a 256GB SSD
The 3G option is 14Mbps for £110
backlit keyboard is an extra £25
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Saturday 19th May 2012 19:42 GMT Nick De Plume
Lovely machine, shame about the drivers.
If it were running OSX you wouldn't be able to change the size of system fonts and title bars. Thankfully it's running Windows, you you don't have to go blind trying to read the small type - if your vision is not 20:20.
I learned this the hard way when I attempted to resize the fonts on the MB Air I had bought for mom , I could accomplish this only through some hacking.
But - as was mentioned earlier- the driver support on Sony laptops is Bad. Very little updates, and won't work fully-functional with the OEM drivers. As usual, Sony - brilliant hardware, lousy software support.