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

Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by podperson on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:03PM (#3236961)

You can see from the photos in the linked review that the touchpad is NOT in "the regular spot" but offset to the right. I imagine this is fine for right-handers. (The review also complains it is small. Can't comment, haven't used one. The author is probably addicted to the giant touchpads Apple is putting out these days.)

What Macbook are you finding louder than the Vaio? I have a 2010 MBP and I can't ever recall hearing its fan, even under heavy load.

The central point of the article -- that Sony occasionally stumbles on great design and then randomly iterates away from it for no good reason is telling. Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one, while Sony hardly even manages to release a single generation of MP3 players with common connectors.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by duskwuff on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @12:48AM (#3237200)

> Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one

Nitpick: They did not. The original iPod only had a 6-pin FireWire connector for data and power; the dock connector was only added on the third-generation iPod, which was the first to use USB.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by mcantelon on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:18PM (#3237004)

>Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one

Conversely, Apple has gone through a plethora of different types of video connectors over the years.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by sirn on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @05:18AM (#3237737)

The protocol is different but the connector looks almost identical though. You can even plug in Mini DisplayPort into Thunderbolt and it works.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by __david__ on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @05:35AM (#3237766)

No, he's talking about ADC and the myriad different laptop display ports they used before they started using Mini DisplayPort and now Thunderbolt.

http://www.luckydragon.net/2009/03/apple-vga-adapter-cheatsh...

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by sjs on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @02:01AM (#3237346)

My 2010 15" MacBook Pro w/ i7 @ 2.66 GHz and 1680x1050 has a loud fan. The fan spins up when I have an external display plugged in. It spins up when Time Machine runs. It spins up when Flash is running in a browser.

I find it really annoying and for that reason alone I will avoid the hottest CPU + GPU model in the future until Apple finds a way to reduce the volume.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by podperson on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @11:00AM (#3238637)

Mine is the same (maxed out everything). So I guess I just got lucky or something (maybe some fans are noisier than others).

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by zobzu on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:17PM (#3237001)

well, don't trust pictures. the touchpad if of course centered. on all models.

i have a MBP1, MBP 13 mid2011 and a MBA mid2011, the MBP is louder than the vaio on average (that is I can hear the fans). The vaio is dead silent til I compile stuff on all CPUs, then fans are loud, although not as loud as the MBP 15.

The article took the Z21 as target to make an example of "what not to do", not a MP3 player. If it did, maybe i'd agree with it. But, it did not. And unfortunately for him, the Z21 is actually awesome.

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by wazoox on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @07:14AM (#3237970)

Compare with the Toshiba: http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/ultrabooks-for-everyone...

The touchpad is noticeably NOT centered, but placed so to be under both your thumbs with your fingers on the home row. The Macbook has a way bigger touchpad, but it's aligned to the left of the spacebar, not to the right. I'm quite sure that for a smaller touchpad, Toshiba got it right and Sony got it wrong (particularly for left handed people).

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by zobzu on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @07:01AM (#3237929)

MBP1=MBP15 lol

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Re:What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem by tikhonj on Monday November 14, 2011 @11:08PM (#3236974)

Looking at my laptop, the touchpad is exactly centered. I don't know if this is standard or not, but it's perfectly comfortable. I'm right handed, but I sometimes use my left hand to scroll around if I'm sitting in an odd position, and that's been fine too.

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