What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem

Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by ghc on Monday November 14, 2011 @09:33PM (#3236716)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by Steko on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:04PM (#3236817)

"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".

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by untog on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:06PM (#3236824)

No, he didn't say that they did. Just that he wouldn't have been surprised if they had.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by Steko on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:27PM (#3236868)

He didn't say they did because he isn't familiar with the new deisgn but he agreed it's' exactly the sort of thing they might do.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by mikeryan on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:40PM (#3236899)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by NoPiece on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:08PM (#3236829)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by ghc on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:02PM (#3236958)

My apologies. The model is the Z21, not Z14.

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by tikhonj on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:13PM (#3236841)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by bonesinger on Monday November 14, 2011 @09:48PM (#3236758)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by tikhonj on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:09PM (#3236831)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by zobzu on Monday November 14, 2011 @10:45PM (#3236914)

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.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by notatoad on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @02:17AM (#3237381)

Being the fourth model in the z series does not make it the fourth iteration of the z series.

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