Sony's Flash-Based Notebook Reviewed

Lucas123 writes "Computerworld's Rich Ericson reviewed Sony's first all flash-based laptop, which carries a whopping $3,200 price tag. Ericson says the laptop runs incredibly fast, with an average data transfer rate of 33.6MB/sec and great battery life. But, the laptop is also limited to certain uses. While lending itself to travel, the small capacity of its hard drive doesn't make it a real competitor for a main PC workhorse. 'While there's a lot to like [about the VAIO TZ191N notebook], there's only very limited uses for which I'd recommend this system. The best features — its size and the flash drive — are also its biggest limitations.'"

Call me old fashioned...

[JamesRose]

But I love this idea, I really dislike the currenty "portables" with 17" screens, its just like, not at all actually portable, I mean, I'm really surprised that the laptop industry has gone towards bigger laptops, rather than smaller (but that must be what people want right). I really like the idea of an ultra fast PC which is nice and small to use on the go, and the hard drive is PLENTY as long as you have a good sync program on your main PC and sync regularly, and lets face it, someone spending $3200 on a laptop probably will. But of course, $3200 for a "fast" laptop isnt ever a good investment, because the current progression (and the progression for quite a long time) has been too fast to warrant spending that much on what will very quickly become obselete. The main point is, this is an early adopter machine- very nice, but wont be the best by any stretch of the imaginiation.

32GB is good space for business

[kbob88]

32GB is really a lot of space, especially for business users. Today we don't think it's enough, because we've all loaded our computers up with games, music, and video. But for business users who only use the laptop for storing business documents, it should be more than enough space.

My (old) laptop has 30GB of HDD, and that was plenty of room for 10+ years of business documents, plus numerous programming environments and databases. It only became limiting when I put 13GB of music on it.

For business-oriented 'road warriors' who value speed and battery life over games and media, this is probably a good choice. Especially if they can get their company to fork over the big $$ for it.

That said, I'd wait a year until the price comes down significantly and the space doubles or triples.

Schlock Resistant

[ackthpt]

I'd consider one if it were built for shock resistance. Too many allegedly rugged laptops/tablets are still limited to screens which break or flimsy plastic construction which breaks structurally with normal use.

Flash drive sounds like just the ticket, though.

WTF? Sony for $3k, Asus for $350?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Why would I spend $3,200 on a Sony Saddled with Vista, when I can get an Asus EeePC [asus.com] for $350 running Linux?

What could POSSIBLY be worth that much more money that a more conventional machine couldn't handle at a fraction of the price? so you get a little extra battery time. Woopty freakin' doo.

It's not like it has some giamungus drive for video editing, or the Special Magic Powers of the MacOS. I don't get who they think they're selling to.

I'm willing to say "I don't get it", but seriously - I don't see a market for this thing. When it's $1200, I suppose, but not $3200.

Now, the Asus is another story...

:-)

RS

Re:Space issues

[nine-times]

I think for geeks (and most other people, too), it'll mostly mean that it can't be your main system. If anything, geeks should be able to deal with the idea of syncing to remote servers, working in remote sessions, and things like that more easily than most people.

Re:Space issues

[heinousjay]

Real geeks use whatever they want. Geeks with no self esteem try to make cliques.

Re:Servers not Laptops?

[king-manic]

I have to wonder if there isn't more of a market for Flash disk systems in servers rather than laptops.

As flash drives get bigger, shouldn't they present an ideal storage for databases with their extremely fast random reads? The drives can be small, have low power consumption and price is less of an issue in the server market.

What's holding the take up of these drives in the server market? Is it just that they are untested? Is availability of large flash chips still a problem? Does flash still suffer from burnout after x writes and if so isn't that an issue for these laptops?

Basically because "read" is fast but "write" is slow and limited in the number of times you can write. So the average lifespan of a normal flashdisk is a couple years of use as a data transfer/storage medium or about a day as a swap disk. The technology progresses but that is a limiting factor thus far. So you can boot in 30s but writing 900 meg webserver log files may take some time.

Re:Call me old fashioned...

[calebt3]

I'm really surprised that the laptop industry has gone towards bigger laptops, rather than smaller (but that must be what people want right)

I think it is because of the n00b's perception that bigger=more powerful, like how Walmart's Green PC is in a full-sized case when it doesn't need to be.

Re:Hrm...

[timeOday]

Actually low-latency access is exactly what most desktop users really need: quick bootup and fast loading of apps. 0.3 ms is just fantastic. Heck, laptop users have been hailing the advantages of 7200 over 4200 RPM drives for years, compared to this, they're both slow as molasses.

As for servers, you're right... flash seems poised to blow away expensive 15K RPM drives, whose access time is an order of magnitude slower(!) But that doesn't mean all other computers won't benefit, too.

Re:Call me old fashioned...

[vux984]

I'm really surprised that the laptop industry has gone towards bigger laptops, rather than smaller

You can get a device with a screen from 2" to 17" with stops at 3", 4", 5", 8", 12", 13", 15" in form factors ranging from PDA to Tablet to Laptop -- I don't really think the industry has let us down that badly.

Re:Call me old fashioned...

[guruevi]

Laptops are more and more becoming desktop replacements that you can take on your lap sitting down in your couch or status symbols to people that think bigger is better. Give a 19" laptop with 10 minutes battery and many people would still buy it although there are desktops that both outperform those systems and take less space although less known to the public.

Re:Pricey

[XaXXon]

And you have an "unlimited use" pc?

Portability is a feature.

Re:Servers not Laptops?

[hrvatska]

It might be great for applications that are more read than write intensive. I'm currently working with a mid-size company whose LDAP servers are read from frequently, but not updated that often. A flash disk might be a good candidate in that situation.

Re:Space issues

[xSauronx]

for the pricetag youd think they could save some fucking space for you and just give you a restore DVD or two. its a huge premium for the end user to have to pay so they can save on some pressed optical media.

Re:32 Gigs

[PineGreen]

I don't give money to Sony, however, so I'll be waiting for an Apple variant.

You're right. Sony is evil because of their rootkit, but Apple is soo good, they don't have any DRM whatsoever:, they let you copy the downloaded iTunes to any player you like, back and fort from ipod, they also give you unlimited region changes on DVD player, no DRM whatsoever. It's just pure hippie!

Re:Servers not Laptops?

[mr_mischief]

Gee, I remember hoping for the day I could buy a hard drive for $1 a megabyte to move data around at 16MBps. Flash drives might be more expensive than traditional Winchester-style drives, but these days it's all relatively cheap. Give it a few years and you'll forget about spinning hard drives about as fast as we forgot about ESDI and MFM.

Oh, and get off o' my lawn, you damn kids.

Re:Servers not Laptops?

[StarkRG]

Yeah, most people forget that HDs have relatively short average lifespans. And that word "average" is important, it means that while one disk may survive 30 years in a high use database server, another may fail after one day in a very low use backup server. (Some die after an hour)

Flash memory's lifespan seems to be a little more consistent, thus predictable, thus you can have a replacement ready when it does.

Of course, the biggest factor is that a 1TB flash drive is going to be significantly more expensive than a 1TB HD. Put 30 of them in a RAID and factor in the cost of replacing them when they fail, it's still probably cheaper to go with fast TB drives, even factoring in their replacement cost.