Sony's Solid State 2.4 Pound Laptop Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "Last week Sony finally launched its super slim, super sexy TZ series of laptops in the US. If you've been waiting to get your hands on one of these, check out this first review of the top drawer TZ12VN, complete with solid state hard disk. It's a lot of money, but it sure looks sweet!"

Comments

Flash Drives

[Eightyford]

Anyone know how long do these flash drives last?

Re:Flash Drives

[SatanicPuppy]

Anywhere between 100,000 and 5,000,000 write cycles, depending on the quality of the flash media.

This may or may not be a lot more than a conventional hard drive depending on abuse; in a perfect world, a conventional harddrive would last much longer, but in a laptop, with all the bouncing, the odds are closer to even.

Either way, I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on a laptop.

Re:Flash Drives

[JrOldPhart]

Probably as long or longer than the spinning disk flavor of mass storage.

Re:Flash Drives

[CastrTroy]

I think it would be nice if you could just throw 2+ gigs of RAM in one of these things, and disable the swap space, so as not to tax your harddrive. This is probably one of the major culprits for writing lots of data the the hard drive. If you get rid of that, you'd probably greatly increase the life of the drive. Also, with 2 Gigs of RAM, most people would have absolutely no need for swap space.

Re:Flash Drives

[mlts]

Are any companies selling flash hard disks in a 2.5" or even a 3.5" SATA or ATA form factor retail, or is it an OEM-only product? Other than IBM selling a 15.8 gig drive for around a grand, I've seen a few companies that I've never heard of before selling these, but that seems to be basically it.

Re:Flash Drives

[MindStalker]

From what I understand for flash based memory that the number of writes is sector based. Meaning you can write to each sector X number of time. A swap partition would probably be a good idea, with an understanding that once you've burned through that partition you need to look at other options, but this way your not risking the rest of your data.

Re:Flash Drives

[jollyreaper]

Anyone know how long do these flash drives last? Not long underwater. Don't ask.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically every modern flash device has wear leveling. As I understand it, this means that putting swap on a separate partition will do absolutely nothing to protect your data if the flash drive gets so worn that it starts to wear out.

Re:Flash Drives

[Chandon Seldon]

Other than IBM selling a 15.8 gig drive for around a grand, I've seen a few companies that I've never heard of before selling these, but that seems to be basically it.

Solid state disks are memory products, so it's the memory vendors that will be selling them. That means that companies like Transcend and Super Talent are the brands you should be expecting to see.

Re:Flash Drives

[Tuoqui]

Because as we all know 64k memory ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. They should just have a slot so you could stick in a 2GB micro-sd card as a sacrificial swap partition. Those things are getting so cheap that by the time you need a new one, it won't be that bad at all to buy another to slap in there.

Re:Flash Drives

[archen]

This may or may not be a lot more than a conventional hard drive depending on abuse; in a perfect world, a conventional harddrive would last much longer, but in a laptop, with all the bouncing, the odds are closer to even.

Except when flash wears out you simply can't WRITE to it anymore. You can read fine. Assuming that whatever you were doing last will cause the biggest problem (failure during your last write when the drive "fails"), you can easily just plug the drive in somewhere else and copy your data to your new drive. I'd say that with the durability factor that CF would certainly be the way to go.

Re:Flash Drives

[timeOday]

"I think it would be nice if you could just throw 2+ gigs of RAM in one of these things, and disable the swap space, so as not to tax your harddrive."

Absolutely you can.  I'm writing this on a system with no swap for the last year, running VMWare (with 750 megs of ram allocated to the guest), developing a large software app in NetBeans, running firefox (with about 20 tabs open), gimp, etc. etc...  Under linux it's as simple as not putting any swap entries in /etc/fstab.  Here's the output of "free" - Note the zeroes on the Swap line:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2074016    2010732      63284          0     117184    1473496
-/+ buffers/cache:     420052    1653964
Swap:            0          0          0

I agree with you, 2G is still a pretty ridiculous amount of RAM for 99% of applications.  Just because it's now cheap doesn't mean it's necessary.  1G is ample for mainstream applications.

Re:Flash Drives

[Fweeky]

Depends what drive it is; from what I've seen, even the cheaper ones are rated for *decades* of use, using the full write bandwidth of the drive.

This doesn't sound too unlikely given even a fairly modest 2 million cycles over 32G of wear-levelled storage makes for over 60PB of writes.

Re:Flash Drives

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Anywhere between 100,000 and 5,000,000 write cycles, depending on the quality of the flash media.

This may or may not be a lot more than a conventional hard drive depending on abuse; in a perfect world, a conventional harddrive would last much longer, but in a laptop, with all the bouncing, the odds are closer to even. No, it is pretty much many, many years longer than a spinning disk of equivalent size. In summary, at the absolute worst case of continuous streaming writes at maximum throughput it will take roughly 25 years to fail.

Another benefit that flash has over spinning disk is that almost all failure modes are at write time, so the hardware can detect the error and write to a spare flash cell without the user experiencing any problems. Error detection on rotating media is almost always at read-time, usually long after it is too late to recover from.

See here for the gory details.

Re:Flash Drives

[MindStalker]

Doesn't vista have the ability to use a flash drive for instant boot information?

Re:Flash Drives

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Not long underwater. Don't ask. Just about everyone I know has a story about how their USB flash drive went through the washing machine (and often the dryer too) because they forget it in their pocket. Universally the stories end with the drive working just fine once it has fully dried out.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'd say that even using a journalled filesystem on a flash device is detrimental to its lifetime, because every write operation is performed in the journal at first, and seconds later in the "real" filesystem. Can journalling in NTFS be disabled, or can one stick a cheap 1GB or less SD or CF card in the notebook (or a PC-Card or Expresscard adapter) and use that as a journalling device, so as not to wear out the $300 harddrive?

The wikipedia article is not very helpful, but it claims that Blocks or sectors on the media can be tracked in a LRU (least recently used) queue of some sort. However this should work if the flash device doesn't have lots of hidden spare sectors to cycle around or if it doesn't have some sort of understanding of the filesystem and can recycle free space is a bit of a mystery to me. Or do they operate under the assumption that even with a relatively small pool of spare sectors, write operations are at least somewhat spread across the medium, causing different physical sectors to be used for the write LRU?

We're currently deploying a few linux boxes as a kind of POS information terminal with 2G CF cards as their drive. We use ext2, but we prevent writes with a ramdisk and Unionfs. As far as i know, JFFS and YAFFS are not suitable for such "large" media, since both need to scan all nodes at mount time.

Re:Flash Drives

[GreenEnvy22]

I don't believe you'd really be risking your data anyway, I think that once it runs out of writes, the data is still accessible to read. Am I wrong?

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

It will last longer then the battery in the iPhone.

Re:Flash Drives

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd.html

Re:Flash Drives

[Billly Gates]

I threw mine out when it happened. I didn't want a short to fry my usb ports on my notebook. My wife told me to throw it. Oddly my cell phone went through the washer before and works fine. It was only 512 megs and $$$ because it was purchased in 2004. My crappy verbatim flash that replaced it holds 2 gigs and I can now put openoffice and ms office install with drivers on 1 drive. ITs sweet.

Re:Flash Drives

[Billly Gates]

I read a typical unix filesytem with lots of writes will kill it in a few days.

However the ssd firmwire implements a psuedo virtual filesystem that is hidden that spreads everything apart so writes to the same area of the disk happen less often.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I threw mine out when it happened. I didn't want a short to fry my usb ports on my notebook. My wife told me to throw it. Lol! Because wives are always the best people to ask for technical advice, right?
Yeah, I'm stereotyping, but its the stereotype that makes it funny.

Re:Flash Drives

[networkBoy]

Your failure will be to write or erase, thus you will not lose data, you will be unable to erase or write new data.
Possibly a security issue, but not a user issue as you still would have a "sector map" of bad blocks.

Also, as someone else noted a swap partition would be a waste of space. Big ram, no swap. I've run photoshop and premiere, both with no windows swap file, no issue in 2 gig of ram (on XP though so VistaMMV).
-nB

Re:Flash Drives

[adolf]

Anecdotes:

For the past few months, I have had Windows XP running from a 2-gigabyte compactflash card which is plugged into the IDE bus of a diskless machine.

The card is formatted NTFS, and the swapfile (which does get somewhat heavily used on this low-memory machine) lives there, too.

No problems yet. I don't expect any.

I've also got an old 386 laptop running an old version of Slackware from a 512M card. It works fine, with ext2 as a filesystem mounted rw and a modest swap partition.

Most recently, I added an SD card to my Linksys router. It has both an ext3 rw root and a swap partition, and also works just fine.

I'm just speculating here, but I don't think any of these systems will ever be having any problems with their flash storage wearing out. 512M * 1M write-cycles = more data than any of these machines will ever process, let alone attempt to store.

I'd further like to speculate that if you're using a ramdisk with unionfs, that none of the data which you're trying to prevent from being written to flash is very important anyway. And since it's not important, just fix the offending programs so that they don't bother writing it to disk in the first place.

You're treating the symptoms, not the problems.

Re:Flash Drives

[YrWrstNtmr]

I think it would be nice if you could just throw 2+ gigs of RAM in one of these things

As mentioned in the article, it comes with 2GB standard.
"Of course some of this improvement is no doubt due to the 2GB of memory installed..."

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

> No, it is pretty much many, many years longer than a spinning disk of equivalent size. In summary, at the absolute worst case of continuous streaming writes at maximum throughput it will take roughly 25 years to fail.

According to the article the worst case scenario is said to be continuously filling up the drive at max write speed. I don't believe that is the worst case scenario, because that isn't exactly hard on the wear leveler. The article doesn't seem to address the scenario where a small number of blocks are continuously written to. Are there any articles on this, with actual numbers of expected writes based on an actual (rather than ideal) wear leveler?

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just speculating here, but I don't think any of these systems will ever be having any problems with their flash storage wearing out. 512M * 1M write-cycles = more data than any of these machines will ever process, let alone attempt to store.

You assume that wear levelling works perfectly, or at least "resonably" for your application. While I don't doubt this for the slackware box (where you hopefully have the "noatime" option turned on), but I really believe you are underestimating the number of metadata updates that may occur on NTFS if e.g. file access times are updated in the directories at least whenever a file is opened or closed.

I'd further like to speculate that if you're using a ramdisk with unionfs, that none of the data which you're trying to prevent from being written to flash is very important anyway. And since it's not important, just fix the offending programs so that they don't bother writing it to disk in the first place.

Actually, I want the systems to return to their shipped state when rebooted. Log files would have been nice, but I actually prefer not to take any risks wrt the CF cards' lifetime. Not all of the applications are open source, even those that are a re hideously large and really not worth spending the time to "fix". Even X11 will need to write to ~/.Xauthority, and that's rather hard to avoid.

On another tangent: We've tried Kingston and Transcend CF cards, and only the latter support DMA, while only the former fo multi sector transfers. Obviously the Transcends make the system feel much snappier. Isn't swapping to CF rather painful due to the almost glacial write performance?

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on a laptop.

Ahh, but the difference between flash and a conventional HD is that the flash drive will fail on writes only. This should mean that flash drive failures are less catastrophic since you can still retrieve your data to transfer it to the replacement drive. Anyone who's had a traditional HD fail on them knows that this isn't usually the case with non-SSD storage.

Not that this means you should keep anything irreplaceable on a laptop...

Re:Flash Drives

[martin_henry]

Please hand in your geek card as soon as possible.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally a lot of electronics will be fine going through water as long as there is no power on at the time. It's (usually) not the water itself that ruins electronics, but the ionic compounds dissolved in the water that cause short circuits. As long as you allow wet devices to dry, they should work fine. I really would not recommend trying this, though.

Re:Flash Drives

[Mal-2]

I can confirm one more case of this. I had a 256 MB flash drive go through the wash and the dryer about a year and a half ago, and the cap came off at some point (wash or dry, I don't know). By the time I discovered it, it was quite dry and quite warm, but looked none the worse for wear. I tested it out and it had the same four photographs on it that I had loaded onto it that morning.

Fast forward to today, and I e-mailed my boss to ask if she ever intends to give it back. I put a couple of videos on it (total of about 80 MB) for her to take home two and a half weeks ago, and haven't seen it since. I don't particularly even care if she returns the same device. Any 256 MB -- or larger, I'm not picky ;) -- flash drive will do. I probably would not lend out anything larger than a 256. If the situation calls for anything larger, burn a CD and I don't care if it comes back.

My anecdotal evidence indicates that a flash drive is more likely to be permanently borrowed than it is to fail from environmental causes. It did come back the first two times, and it may yet come back this time, but I doubt I'll manage to burn it out without deliberately trying to do so.

Mal-2

Re:Flash Drives

[tedric]

Either way, I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on a laptop. Just on a laptop? When I wrote my thesis, my laptop hard drive crashed. Good thing I synchronized the data every evening, so I only lost one day of work - of course it has been one of the more busy days, so Murphy's law applied perfectly.

I have a little file server at home and everything important is at least stored in two places. Same with the work related stuff of my wife (she's a teacher).

If you don't want to run an extra "file server" (it's an old desktop with a few hard drives in it) buy one of these really affordable external USB hard drives.

Re:Flash Drives

[Andrew Kismet]

yeah, but from personal experience, Readyboost works with about 1 in 10 USB Flash devices. Finding a compatible one is a pain in the ass.

Re:Flash Drives

[tehcyder]

Either way, I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on a laptop.

I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on any single machine.

Re:Flash Drives

[donaldm]

Actually you are quite right it is not the water that causes the damage it is dissolved salts and sediment which will cause shorts. If you ever drop accidentally or otherwise any electronic equipment in water, if the device is active you can be fairly certain you have fried the electronics although this is not always the case providing you quickly switch off the power source and follow the next example. If the device is off then it is a very good idea to actually wash the device in distilled water before the original water dries (take the battery out first if it has one) and then let dry at least 24 hours in a warm dry environment, in most cases your equipment will work, although I would not recommend doing this very often.

Re:Flash Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

> See here for the gory details.

And see here for a rebuttal.

Re:Flash Drives

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And see here for a rebuttal. That guy makes the same error that he accuses the original article's author of, except in reverse.

Assuming his guess that a 64GB SSD will have a block size (smallest erasable unit) of 128KB he goes on to posit a worst case scenario of merely writing one byte to every 128KB-size block. But just as he accuses the article of ignoring flash SSD block sizes, his analysis ignores filesystem block-sizes which are the smallest writeable unit. You can't just write one byte and move on, you have to write an entire filesystem-block, just like you have to erase an entire flash-block.

If we assume a reasonable filesystem block-size of 16KB that brings the worst-case analysis up from ~7 hours to ~13 years at a full 80MB/s throughput. Even with only a 4KB filesystem block size, you are still looking at roughly 3 years absolute worst case.

Re:Flash Drives

[skidv]

Isn't this a feature of Vista? To pop your 2 or 4 gig drive into the usb2 port and tell it to use that drive as the swap drive?

Re:Flash Drives

[adolf]

Swapping to CF is faster than restarting programs after they die of RAM starvation. It also allows more RAM to be used for caching. (Yes, treating the symptoms again - it'd be better to fix the programs/OS to use less memory, or not load at all if they're so unneeded that they get swapped out to free RAM for cache. I'm violating my own logic.)

And it is fairly slow. For example, I was convinced, more than once, that the XP installation process had hung solid because it would sit for such a long time without any indication of progress.

I spent some time Googling the topic before comitting to buy the parts. What I found was a few people who were actually using flash for things like NTFS and swap, and a whole bunch of other people who swore that it would surely begin the apocolypse to ever attempt such a travesty, but nobody seemed to have built such a thing and subsequenly suffered a failure.

Time will tell how long it'll last. I admit to using best-case numbers; we'll see in a few years whether or not it matters. :)

Since we're talking about Vaio's here,

[Junior J. Junior III]

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to call them "flimsy state" devices, rather than "solid state"?

Re:Since we're talking about Vaio's here,

[Suspended_Reality]

Flimsy state? Not phallic enough. Solid state? Rock on.

Re:Since we're talking about Vaio's here,

[GreyPoopon]

Flimsy state? Not phallic enough.

Is flaccid state better?

Re:Since we're talking about Vaio's here,

[thanatos_x]

Just as long as you don't call them liquid state...

Re:Since we're talking about Vaio's here,

[JrOldPhart]

The guts of a conventional hard drive are what is flimsy.

$4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that shit.

Re:$4000?

[Nimsoft]

Sure, it's not exactly worth it yet unless you've got the money anyway or specifically require a small, lightweight machine with a Solid State drive, however this is still good news regardless.
This is progress and it means the cheaper SSD notebooks are just around the corner once this technology becomes mainstream.

Re:$4000?

[Ginger Unicorn]

The thing you have to realise about the UK is that electronics over here just take the dollar price and put a pound sign in front of it. That's right. We pay double for everything. Fuck that shit indeed.

So it would be more like $2000 on your side of the pond.

Re:$4000?

[morari]

$2,000 is still awfully expensive. I'd rather spend that on a top-of-the-line "gaming" laptop or even better would be some SUPER awesome desktop.

Re:$4000?

[empaler]

$2,000 is still awfully expensive. I'd rather spend that on a top-of-the-line "gaming" laptop or even better would be some SUPER awesome desktop. Then you are clearly not the target demographic :-)

Re:$4000?

[ForMeToPoopOn]

Amen!

According to TFA you spend that much for a solid state drive and save a whoooooping 0.04 KG in weight compared to a traditional hard drive - and you get much much smaller storage capacity. The weight difference is less then a feather!!!!!

Unless the solid state drive increase the battery life significantly, I see no sense at all in buying this kind of machines...

Re:$4000?

[electric joy boy]

This US version (sonystyle.com) looks awfully similar for $3300

Re:$4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to TFA you spend that much for a solid state drive and save a whoooooping 0.04 KG in weight compared to a traditional hard drive - and you get much much smaller storage capacity. The weight difference is less then a feather!!!!!

Unless the solid state drive increase the battery life significantly, I see no sense at all in buying this kind of machines...

Beyond better battery runtime (the review was very vague on how much), it seems the main advantages of the solid-state drive are speed (particularly on smaller files where access time is a killer) and better resistance to abuse. Hopefully they're also using L.E.D. backlighting for additional power savings and extended backlight life.

With life mostly a function of write cycles, it would seem best to have enough main memory to get by without routinely using swap space, and perhaps minimize disk-intensive uses like torrent-based p2p.

As with most reviews there isn't any mention of compatibility with Linux or (patched) OS X.
I'm curious if the built-in hot-zone and automatic defragmenting in OS X will be disabled or have other defaults supported for flash drives, and the same when running Vista if it has similar features.
I'd guess Apple will probably have OS X 10.5 out with those changes when they ship laptops with solid-state drives.

I also wonder if the drive in the Sony is actually using a PATA interface. Isn't SATA faster? I'm not sure how much it helps performance, but even the entry level MacBook is using SATA internally.
Of course for general responsiveness it's the access time for small files that's the bottleneck rather than the sustained throughput.

Even if I stick with my choice to never by Sony again after the rootkit fiasco, it is good to see an improved product from them as the competition spurs others along.

Re:$4000?

[bruunb]

I've got a Dell X1 weighing in on 1140 grams according to the specs... battery time is not something that is recommended but then I don't use it much outdoors anyways.

60 gig of (normal) hdd and 1280megs of ram for the small fee of about $3k almost 2 years ago... and it runs Gentoo and hasn't failed once... yet that is

Please excuse the drool

[LiquidCoooled]

Dear god that looks amazing.
The cylindrical battery in the hinge is inspired.

Maybe I should get out more.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[XSforMe]

If my memory serves me right, Compaq Armadas were the first laptops to place the battery there.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[CastrTroy]

Just from a quick glance at the article, I couldn't figure out how long the battery actually lasts. Just that it has improved over some other model. How many hours does this thing actually get? I am not going to spend a lot of money on a laptop, till I get one with reasonable battery life. Something over 8 hours would be really nice. Until then, $4000 for a laptop is just too much. Sorry if I'm expecting too much, but with all the advancements they've made in laptops in the past 10 years, they still haven't made one that has a longer lasting battery. That seems to be the one killer feature that is missing.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[Sczi]

My Armada had the battery in a floppy drive slot, and I could actually remove the floppy and add a 2nd battery. They did make armadas for quite a while, though, so maybe they had several designs?

Re:Please excuse the drool

[Dan Ost]

The article said battery life was somewhere around 7 hours.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[ls -la]

I'm not sure which came first, but I have a 10+ year old Sony Vaio laptop with a hinge-battery like that. From the wikipedia article, it looks like they were very close together.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[mobby_6kl]

My Armada M300 (which I still use) has a cylindrical battery which attaches to the rear of the laptop, covering the rear ports. When the lid is closed, it might, very remotely, look like (part) of the hinge. Here's the HP/Compaq page with an illustration, and a here's a photo with the docking station and the battery visible. It's also possible to replace either the floppy or the CDROM in the docking station with a battery, but I was never able to find one.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[Anonymous Coward]

The cylindrical hinge batteries of Vaios existed 10 years ago - not new.

Re:Please excuse the drool

[thc69]

Dear god that looks amazing.
The cylindrical battery in the hinge is inspired.

I had a laptop with a cylindrical battery placed similarly.

Actually, it took a series of cylindrical batteries. I can't remember if they were C cells or D cells.

Come to think of it, that laptop, which ran CP/M on a Z80 processor, also used solid state storage. Technology comes around again to the same thing, I guess.

One day in Biology class I noticed the room was quite hazy. I looked down and realized there was smoke emenating from my backpack. I opened it up and took the batteries out of the laptop. That was the end of that laptop. I wish I still had the remnants of that thing, it could be a nice conversation piece. To this day I prefer joe as my text editor because of its Wordstar-like commands.

but

[thatskinnyguy]

Will it run linux?

Re:but

[Chikenistheman]

If by run you mean boot, run, restart and use all the buttons then . . . No.

Re:but

[ucblockhead]

I run Ubuntu on an old VGN-S270P Vaio. I know someone who put in on a later SZ series Vaio, but had wireless card issues. (Otherwise it worked ok.)

Re:but

[Ant P.]

Parent post makes a completely legitimate question, whether or not it was intended that way.

Does Sony actively support running Linux on its hardware, or have they resigned themselves to being just an Apple clone with black plastic?

Re:but

[theshowmecanuck]

no... but it comes with a root kit pre-installed from sony

SSDs

[Nimsoft]

It's good we're finally starting to see SSDs starting to ship as an option in notebooks. Mechanical hard drives have served us well but I for one can't wait for the speed and reliability increases we're going to see in the future with Solid State.

How much time do you spend each day waiting for your drive to stop churning? The hard drive is certainly the weakest link in my system when it comes to performance!

Re:SSDs

[TubeSteak]

How much time do you spend each day waiting for your drive to stop churning? Install more RAM

The hard drive is certainly the weakest link in my system when it comes to performance! See above

Seriously, for most people, 512MB of RAM isn't enough on a laptop.
My computer savvy friends all have >1GB
My non-savvy ones sit around waiting for their HD to stop churning.

Re:SSDs

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Current SSD drives are a little faster than the 1.8" drives. 2.5" drives are still faster than SSD drives.

Maxing out the RAM helps too.

Re:SSDs

[Nimsoft]

I'm currently running at 2GB!

Sure, I could go to 4GB or higher (It'll take 16 but there's little chance of me being able to afford that for a long time!) however I don't think much more is going to be all that useful for me, most of the time when I glance down at the RAM meter approx 1GB is being used by applications and the remaining 1GB is cache.

I've got quad (Dual Dual-Core) Xeons, so there is no CPU bottleneck either.
The hard drive is still the weakest link in my system!

Re:SSDs

[Jeff DeMaagd]

More RAM generally doesn't help the initial boot and app start-up times. Your suggestion would help speed up app switching or starting up more apps than you can fit in your RAM.

BTW: I have a 1GB system and it's only using 380MB.

Re:SSDs

[empaler]

Actually, my laptop HD only stops churning when I turn off my torrent transfers. The ph4t p1p3 to the back bone instantly kills all interactivity on my compy if I don't remember to kill/limit my transfers.

Re:SSDs

[644bd346996]

What are you doing with that computer? It sounds like you have a pretty large working set, or a really stupid swapping policy. What operating system are you using, and are you sure that the disk thrashing you hear isn't just background defragging or something like that?

Re:SSDs

[Nimsoft]

It's a Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.4, don't get me wrong performance is good (Incredible for CPU intensive tasks) however I often do some pretty heavy multi-tasking, especially when engaged in some web development work needing a good set of CS3 apps running as well as a few browsers for testing...

I also make pretty heavy use of Virtual Machines for Windows/Linux installations... (It's particularly useful to boot the native Windows installation as a Virtual Machine, since I can choose to either stay in OS X or boot it natively when required)

Obviously my needs are fairly substantial, I wouldn't have purchased a workstation like the Mac Pro if they were not...
I still wouldn't mind better HDD performance though, it definitely is thrashing while the rest sits idle, seems like a waste.

£ or lb?

[Eudial]

Either this is a very cheap, or a very light laptop.

Re:£ or lb?

[Anonymous Coward]

accessories include a 10 lbs weight chained to it for better stability

Re:£ or lb?

[My name is Bucket]

Whether it weighs 2 pounds and costs 2000 pounds, or costs 2 pounds and weighs 2000 pounds, I think you'd be getting the same relative value for your money.

Re:£ or lb?

[Gojaroo]

At ~2000 pounds, its actually either really expensive or really heavy.

Re:£ or lb?

[pavon]

Wow, the cost per weight is almost 875 (unitless).

Light, not cheap

[benhocking]

The price is £1,786.38 or (£2,099.00 as reviewed).

Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Glancing through the description, I saw the prices quoted, and thought "heck....that's not too bad...".

Then, I noticed that the thing in front of the numbers wasn't a dollar sign...it was a pound sign. :(

(Just for reference, the current exchange rate is: 1.00 GBP = 2.05749 USD.)

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[PeterBrett]

Glancing through the description, I saw the prices quoted, and thought "heck....that's not too bad...".

Then, I noticed that the thing in front of the numbers wasn't a dollar sign...it was a pound sign. :(

(Just for reference, the current exchange rate is: 1.00 GBP = 2.05749 USD.)

Yes, but that's not the effective exchange rate, which we all know is 1.00 GBP = 1.00 USD.

Welcome to rip-off Britain. </bitter>

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[Red Flayer]

(Just for reference, the current exchange rate is: 1.00 GBP = 2.05749 USD.)

Hardware prices don't necessarily exchang along with the cash exchange rates.

For example (using another Sony product) the PS3 released at GBP 425 for the same unit that cost USD 599 in the US. Exchange was more along the lines of 1.9 at the time, but even so, the US-purchased machine was far cheaper after currency conversion.

I expect the US pricing for this laptop to be significantly under $4000 USD.

I know, everyone jokes about the 1.0000 exchange rates for electronics (and beer, FWIW) -- but they don't necessarily mention the wage exchange rate. As a percentage of income, the pricing on electronics is similar in the US and the UK.

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, everyone jokes about the 1.0000 exchange rates for electronics (and beer, FWIW) -- but they don't necessarily mention the wage exchange rate. As a percentage of income, the pricing on electronics is similar in the US and the UK.

Income in the US is higher than in the UK, so as a percentage of income the difference is even bigger.

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[DigiShaman]

It's listed at £2,099.00, but that's after VAT. Before VAT it's £1,786.38 which should be it's MSRP price. That said after doing the before-VAT conversion, the US MSRP should be listed at $3,664.22 dollars. It's not 4 grand, but it's up there.

Yowza!

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[Usquebaugh]

So leave.

I did about ten years ago and have never regretted it. My younger brother is emigrating to Oz this coming Friday :-) I lived around Europe and eventually emigrated to California. I tried for the USSR but couldn't get a work permit.

The 1:1 effective exchange rate is great except I need to buy Sterling so the 1:2 rate applies :-(

The only things I miss in the UK are family, pubs and a decent curry. I travel back annually but ideally it should be twice as often.

The British public are completely to blame for the appalling condition the country is in. Leaving was made all the easier knowing that I'd be free of all the blind sheep bleating for even more state controls and handouts. How ironic, Blair gave them all what they wanted and now they bleat about the lack of freedom and choice.

California has it's problems, the main one is it being part of the US. But I have less taxation, more freedom and much better weather. Also, I feel a swing back to libertarian policies being close, the US public do not want what the democrats or republicans currently offer. Ron Paul in '08 :-)

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[Red Flayer]

Income in the US in USD is greater than income in the UK in GBP.

Income in the US in GBP is less than income in the UK in GBP.

Yes, electronics are slightly pricier in the UK as a portion of income, but not nearly as much as the exchange rate would imply, since the wage ratio (normalized for currency) is almost as large as the price ratio (also normalized).

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[mfm24]

I know, everyone jokes about the 1.0000 exchange rates for electronics (and beer, FWIW) -- but they don't necessarily mention the wage exchange rate. As a percentage of income, the pricing on electronics is similar in the US and the UK. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_inco me the median income was 58 PS3s a year for the UK and 77 PS3s a year for the US. The US numbers are a year newer, but that shouldn't make too much difference. They don't sound that similar.

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[Red Flayer]

77/58 == 1.33 (income in PS3s).
2.05/1.0 == 2.05 (cost of PS3s if only exchange rate is used).

I'd say that compared to 2:1, 4:3 is relatively similar.

Re:Just a little too spendy at the moment...

[MoonBuggy]

A poster lower down mentions the actual US MSRP as $3199, leaving an extra $465 to play with on the pre-tax prices (even more on post-tax, but I don't think even Slashdot can manage to blame Sony for the UK's VAT rate).

Yay.

Yummy slashvertisement!

[damn_registrars]

Someday I will be trusted to tag stories on my own... Until then, where the 'slashvertisement' tag for this story?

Re:Yummy slashvertisement!

[damn_registrars]

For that matter, isn't Sony on our list of evil companies (with others such as Microsoft) after the rootkits they placed on their audio CDs? Why are we running ads to bring business to them? What's next, an article singing the praises of Vista?

Re:Yummy slashvertisement!

[Anonymous Coward]

/. runs plenty of slashvertising for companies like Microsoft and Apple, who have done just as much "evil" stuff as Sony, so I see no reason why they should be treated any differently.

Re:Yummy slashvertisement!

[empaler]

For that matter, isn't Sony on our list of evil companies (with others such as Microsoft) after the rootkits they placed on their audio CDs? Why are we running ads to bring business to them? What's next, an article singing the praises of Vista? Not forgetting what those salad tossers did to Lik Sang. That really got them shitlisted in my book.

Still need swap space at 2gb

[Weaselmancer]

Also, with 2 Gigs of RAM, most people would have absolutely no need for swap space.

Not so sure about that. The article did mention it came pre-installed with Vista, FYI. And the reviewer said he uses Photoshop on it.

Super Sexy?!

[morari]

Last week Sony finally launched its super slim, super sexy TZ series of laptops in the US. Yes, super sexy! So much so that I instantly achieved an erection. Now let's not even get into why "slim" and "sexy" seem so interchangeable and how that reflects upon our shallow, media-fed images of the ideal beauty.

Re:Super Sexy?!

[abigor]

Give it a rest, fatso.

Re:Super Sexy?!

[heinousjay]

I'm with you, I like a computer with curves and jiggly bits.

Re:Super Sexy?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bha, I like my women like I like my pipes: Slim and able to give good output from good input. This is probably why I'm single most of the time, that good output stipulation is a pain to find.

(posting anon because bad Unix jokes are just terrible)

Re:Super Sexy?!

[Hillgiant]

Erm... Are you sure the problem is not with the "good input" bit?

Re:Super Sexy?!

[kevorkian]

sys 64738

Re:No "print" version?

[Xybre]

Seems like everyone has forgotten about Sony and it's affinity for screwing over it's customers with proprietary hardware, poor support, and malware. Am I the only one who refuses to buy anything made by Sony, including entertainment devices, computers, music and movies?

light and cheap alternatives

[lumierang]

As for light and cheap laptop i have to point out the Asus EEEhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee. 2lb, 7inch LCD, 900 MHz Pentium M , 512 MB DDR2-400, 4 or 8 GB flash Solid state drive, Starting at $200, perfect for portable needs

Re: wireless issues

[andrewd18]

The two greatest resources I've found for finding Linux wireless card drivers are:

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.ph p?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,list /

Between those two, I've never had a problem finding drivers. Maybe you could point your friend in that direction.

Re: wireless issues

[ucblockhead]

I think he gave up and used an old Thinkpad he had lying around.

umpaloopa edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

is the guy in this pic 'manhands' from seinfeld, or could this laptop use a quarter as a rotating table?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/images/article/inlin e/4985-IMG6435s.jpg

design . . .

[ElephanTS]

I'm not an Apple fanboi (honest!) but this new Sony looks very similar to the black MacBook - the keyboard etc - but slightly less elegant and less tidy looking. I think it shows how good the Apple industrial design is now when companies like Sony really can't come close on the aesthetic factor. I'm sure it's a really good machine but dropping that kind of money on a portable has got to be foolish in my experience.

Re:design . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

The design is based of the old TX ultraportable laptop (which had the same weight, but this has more processing power) and actually Sony had the keyboard first, but nice try.

Re:design . . .

[Xybre]

I know, this is Slashdot and no one RTFA, but the article did state that Vaio had a lot of those features first, and Apple later copied them. Is this really a surprise?

Additionally, the specs for this laptop, what with the solid state drive, the led backlighting, and the carbon fiber construction, Apple has nothing that compares, their machines are different, but they'd be at least as expensive if they used all these features, and I'm sure more.

Keep in mind I'm typing this from an iMac and I have a boycott going for Sony. ;)

Re:design . . .

[ArcadeX]

TFA mentioned specific models / features sony put out before mac, stating most people / fanboys would think it was a copy.

Re:design . . .

[ElephanTS]

fair enough - I only looked at the pictures in a bit of a hurry. I'm a typical /. poster yada blah. Apple have started with LED backlighting too though (3 months ago?) and any lapper could be retrofitted with, say, the Samsung 32Gb SSD that's available now with the 64Gb following later on in the year. I do think, purely aesthetically, the lines of the Sony aren't as good but of course it's about more than design principles.

Re:design . . .

[ElephanTS]

Oh FFS! I wasn't trolling just putting forward my impression of the design unsupported by reading the article. I hate the -1 modding that goes on here sometimes.

Re:design . . .

[JacksBrokenCode]

Well, if you put forth an incorrect opinion because you didn't educate yourself prior to posting, why shouldn't you deserve a -1 mod?

Re:design . . .

[ElephanTS]

Well, if that's the case then 90% of posts should be modded -1 troll. After all /. is infamous for people not RTFA'ing.

Anyway, my opinion is not incorrect - it was my opinion about the design of the thing. I still stand by it. Why did you think I was incorrect?

Re:design . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment of the design being similar to Apple is a valid one and a fair opinion. The problem was you suggested that Apple design was being copied and implied directly how great Apples design was by the fact that someone else attempted to copy it. You may consider that an opinion but others consider it a false statement.

I like the design --> opinion
Sony liked the design and copied it --> false statement or in your mind an opinion

To put yet another way..
In your opinion, Sony copied the design. That is not an opinion of the actual "design" at all, just a baseless statement which I guess all opinions are based on. Opinion defined as a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty. Your personal belief that Sony copied the design was proven wrong.

Re:design . . .

[JacksBrokenCode]

I think 90% of the posts on here should be modded "-1 Jackass" these days but that's another topic...

I misinterpreted your post. I thought you had been trying to imply that Sony was attempting to mimic the Apple design with the Vaio TZ series. Having had a TX (same design as the TZ) for almost a year before Apple launched their smaller Macbooks, it would have been impossible for Sony to be copying the Mac style.

Re:design . . .

[ElephanTS]

good of you to say so. I didn't quite express myself properly on the first post and didn't mean to imply anyone was copying anyone. I do think that Sony's machine isn't quite as sleek as the Mac portables - I particularly think the hinge looks a little awkard (in design terms compared to how Apple hide theirs) - and it interests me as a design problem. However very difficult to talk about these things on here, I rushed the post and certain hair trigger mods did the rest.

Cheers - E

Re:design . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Just last month, actually (month and a half ago now). I'm using one of the first-gen no-longer-Powerbooks with that feature.

American price = 3199

[ArcadeX]

Sony's MSRP on the website is 3199, no extended warranty, etc. I was more impressed by the carbon fiber body than the SSD, can always just buy the SSD and throw it in any laptop. Now all i need to do is find a way to get a contract job with that plus wages as my fee.

Re:American price = 3199

[Anonymous Coward]

I was more impressed by the carbon fiber body than the SSD

The sexiness of "carbon fiber" is a marketing ploy. Carbon fiber composites are little different than silica fiber composites (ie fiberglass). Nothing more than a carbon cloth embedded in polyester.

Re:American price = 3199

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not a ploy, they stated carbon fiber body, which it is. No trickery or monkey business there. It is exactly what they said it was. Is carbon fiber what everyone thinks it is or should be? No idea.

Wear leveling and redundancy

[vlad_petric]

... are the two main ways to fight the finite write cycles.

Wear leveling essentially distributes writes to a frequently-accessed logical sector to multiple physical sectors. Without it, cheap flash cards would barely survive ~10K pictures (they use the FAT filesystem, btw). Redundancy - it simply means that there are more physical sectors than logical ones, to transparently replace dead sectors.

Tiny Laptops

[pant]

This looks like a cool machine. I wish I could get a more reasonable priced one though. I'd kill for a dayplanner sized laptop, but $4000 us is too much. I don't even care if it doesn't have an integrated cd/dvd drive, but a tiny comp would be great for email/reference/basic web browsing for internet searches. Kind of like a pda on superstrength steroids. I don't need a tiny laptop for truly intense application like gaming or compiling a kernel. The solid state drive would only sweeten the deal. Alas, tiny laptops are always too expensive.

Re:Tiny Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got the perfect laptop for you then, the Asus Eee PC 701: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
Features include:

• 4,8, or 16 GB solid state flash drive. (no hard disk!)
• 900 MHz Pentium M CPU, which is fine for web browsing and email.
• 512 DDR2-400 RAM
• 7" LCD display (there's also a 10" version)
• NO DVD or CDROM drive, but does include SD card reader and USB ports for external drives / extra flash storage.
• 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 ethernet, 56K modem.
• built-in WebCam and mic
• Runs Linux (Xandros, but no doubt you could install your own distro)
• Weighs only 2 lbs!
• Only $199!
• Should be available end of August.

I'm getting one of these as soon as they're available. The only downside that I can find of the 7" version is that the screen resolution is rumored to be 800×480 pixels, which may be too small for viewing some websites. The 10" version is rumored to be 1280×768 pixels, which is just right for me. That one should cost only $299. I'm not sure if the 10" version will be available at the same time or come out later.

Answer me this

[spun]

This is a tech site. Techies are interested in new technology. New technology is sold, not given away. Is Slashdot simply not supposed to mention any new technology? What is the difference between a "Slashvertisement" and an interesting story about new technology?

Re:Answer me this

[damn_registrars]

New technology should be something that can be implemented, not just something that is sold. Sony didn't do anything new with this laptop - they just combined a bunch of technology that is already on the market and sold it. Now if they had made a unique hard drive for the system, and then shown how with that unique hard drive the system that could otherwise only do A,B,C can now do A,B,C,D, and E, then that would be new technology. I'd expect that other, lesser known, companies have already implemented this, and just didn't have as good of a PR machine behind it.

Re:Answer me this

[spun]

Well, that's fair. But I do like hearing about new gadgets as well. Even crap from Sony. Perhaps we could have a category for gadgets, and anyone who doesn't want to see slashvertisements can just choose not to show that category on the home page.

I mean, people here whine as if Slashdot has turned into the "Popular Science" of the Internet. Sure, I don't want to see blurbs written by PR flaks, like this one obviously was. But I still want to see cool new hardware.

Buttons on the Front?

[DingerX]

Uhh... my sources tell me that a laptop with projecting front buttons is asking for them to break. EVidently, the most common injury to a laptop is a hard landing. Since we tend to carry them with a thin side pointing down, they land there. And buttons break.

Or so I'm told. I always break my laptops through heat death, which cooks connections and fries batteries, resulting in cancer of the motherboard before the third birthday. So my questions are: A) how hot does it get? and B) how long does it last on a (fresh) battery?

Re:No "print" version?

[Anonymous Coward]

No,
I am like you, not only that but I think they also are screwing you on price.
But I wouldn't buy one from Sony anyway, better check it for root kit right from the factory. >(

Knowing Sony...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a 2.4lb laptop that feels like a 2.4£ laptop!

But

[Mad Dog Manley]

Will it blend?

DRM

[Aleksej]

The real question is: does it play .ogg? -- By which I mean Vorbis, FLAC, Theora, and any other Ogg and non-ogg non-DRM free formats.

Sony

[Qfour20]

Rootkit pre-installed for your convenience.

-q

Swap is good

[SanityInAnarchy]

Swap means that stuff that genuinely is NEVER used can be swapped out and forgotten about. That means more space for a disk cache or a write buffer, which, in turn, means fewer writes to the disk.

Re:Swap is good

[CastrTroy]

But if you're running windows, even doing stuff like minimizing a window can cause it to get swapped to disk. Having an OS that does unnecessary swapping it probably worse than not swapping at all. I think that if you're running simple Email + Word Processing + Web, that you'd probably be better off without a swap file. Even with the disc cache and write buffer, you shouldn't get anywhere close to 2 GB. If you're doing something more advanced like using Photoshop, or running VS.Net, then maybe this option isn't right for you. However, I think that many people would benefit more from not having a swap file, and lots of memory than they would from having a swap file. Even on standard laptops with spinning drives, for which writing to the swap file means decreased battery life.

Re:Swap is good

[KDR_11k]

I think he was pointing out the difference between swapping and paging. Windows uses paging, swapping pretty much means the whole program is either in memory or not while paging means every block in the memory can be pushed to the disk independently.

Re:Swap is good

[SanityInAnarchy]

Completely missing the point.

Having an OS that does unnecessary swapping it probably worse than not swapping at all.

The point is, an OS is better equipped to figure out what's "unnecessary" than you are.

Let's take, for example, an applet I have in my system tray called KArm. It's a time logger -- lets me punch in and punch out to separate projects, so I can charge an hourly rate.

Right now, I'm not using it at all. Haven't used it for hours. Not likely to for hours. So the ideal thing to do would be to close it and open it again later, but it's handy to have there, and I bet it takes more time to start it than to pull it out of swap.

So, let's say it can swap out, oh, 10 megs. I now have 10 megs more for disk cache and a write buffer. All that has to do is save me 20 megs of disk IO -- an easy task, if I'm doing enough IO for Linux to want to swap stuff out in the first place -- and it's worth it. Worth it in performance, disk wear, and decreased battery life.

In short, writing to the swap file is no worse than writing to a disk, unless, like you say, you're on Windows and Windows feels like swapping things stupidly.

Re:Swap is good

[rikkus-x]

The point is, an OS is better equipped to figure out what's "unnecessary" than you are.

When I want to use a program which I opened ten minutes ago but now find it's been swapped, I'm annoyed because it's slowing me down. The OS feels a great deal faster with swap turned off. Same with Windows, which seems to employ similar tactics.

Re:Swap is good

[SanityInAnarchy]

When I want to use a program which I opened ten minutes ago but now find it's been swapped, I'm annoyed because it's slowing me down.

And when I want to use a program which I opened ten minutes ago, but now find that a large chunk of the code (libraries, etc) has expired from the disk cache, it slows me down as much as if it had been swapped.

The OS feels a great deal faster when you have enough RAM. Also, swap can be used for other things -- software suspend (hibernate), for example.

Re:Swap is good

[rikkus-x]

And when I want to use a program which I opened ten minutes ago, but now find that a large chunk of the code (libraries, etc) has expired from the disk cache, it slows me down as much as if it had been swapped.

Why would it matter if parts of the code are no longer in the disk cache? They're in RAM! There's not much point keeping stuff in cache when it's part of a running process!

Re:Swap is good

[SanityInAnarchy]

Probably right.

I guess I was thinking of the case of an mmap'd file, but I guess processes don't function as mmaps of their executables. (Might be kind of cool if they did, though.)

Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[MoxFulder]

Why are flash hard drives SO EXPENSIVE? It's $300 for a 16gb 2.5" IDE drive on Newegg!!!

On the other hand, a 16gb CompactFlash card is only $140 . And the CompactFlash interface is electrically identical to IDE/PATA, so you can use a $5 mechanical adapter to connect a CompactFlash card to your notebook's hard drive bay.

What am I missing here???

• I can make my own 16gb solid-state IDE disk for only $150 (and 32gb CF cards are coming out in a few months).
  
• Does the $300 Transcend solid-state disk include any additional caching features or other speed-up? (the web site doesn't say: http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp ?ModNo=164&SpNo=3&LangNo=0)
  
• Are the 32gb disks anything more than just a little RAID0 chip with two 16gb CF cards attached?
  

Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe I can start selling cheapo 16gb solid state drives on eBay for $180 and make a killing :)

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[Anonymous Coward]

make sure your cf-ide adapter supports dma transfers.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[MoxFulder]

make sure your cf-ide adapter supports dma transfers. The CF-IDE adapter is simply a passive mechanical adapter... nothing more than a connector between the pins of the CF card and the pins of the IDE header.

However, you bring up a good point: if the CF card doesn't support DMA, it will be quite slow. The one I linked to apparently doesn't support DMA :-( Anyone know what the prices are like for 16gb CF cards that do support UDMA mode 4? An 8gb CF card supporting DMA costs $110... and it is made by Transcend. It sounds like they may be the leading maker of CF cards that support DMA.

Hopefully other manufacturers will catch up quick, since DMA capabilities don't depend on the raw NAND flash chips, only on the controller chip... so the cost to manufacture a CF card supporting DMA should barely increase.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[Anonymous Coward]

many of the cf-ide adapters do not have 2 pins connected on either end (I forget which pins they are, but I had to solder them in on a cheap adapter to get our transcends to work effectively. we ended up buying addonics adapters http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read er/ad44midecf.asp
because they support dma.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[MoxFulder]

Those look really cool! I love the dual adapter, which allows you to put two compactflash cards into one notebook IDE slot: one master and one slave. Add Linux a little bit of software RAID 0, and you've got twice the bandwidth and twice the storage. Brilliant.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[danbert8]

The flash disks have much higher transfer rates. That $140 CF card is only 40x. If you can live with slow transfer rates, go for it. You'll still get quicker access times than a hard drive. You win some, you lose some.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[MoxFulder]

That's what I was thinking. The $140 CF card is rated 40X or 6 MB/s transfer rate. But most 5400RPM 2.5" hard drives can barely do that in a sustained write, in my experience.

If you put two of those $140 CF cards in a striped RAID-0 with the dual-card Addonics adapter, you'll have a 32gb solid state disk, with a speed approaching 12 MB/s rate, for about $300 ($280 for the two CF cards, and $20 for the dual adapter).

Certainly cheaper than the 32gb solid-state disk for $430 from Transcend. And you can upgrade it piecewise as larger CF cards come out.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[llZENll]

The main difference are the write/read cycles the drives can take, SSDs have built in algorithms to evenly spread the writes out over the disk over time, which greatly increases the life of the disk, granted you could probably do this in software, but its another thing to deal with. Standard CF/SD memory can only take a few hundred thousand cycles, which as a system disk is gone in a very short time.

So a CF/SD SSD would work and be cheaper, but would probably not last very long, and be slower.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[MoxFulder]

The main difference are the write/read cycles the drives can take, SSDs have built in algorithms to evenly spread the writes out over the disk over time, which greatly increases the life of the disk, granted you could probably do this in software, but its another thing to deal with. Standard CF/SD memory can only take a few hundred thousand cycles, which as a system disk is gone in a very short time.

So a CF/SD SSD would work and be cheaper, but would probably not last very long, and be slower. As I see it, the ONLY high-performance way to do write levelling is in software: that is, flash devices should use different filesystem structures from hard disks. In hard disks, fragmentation is very bad, so data should be kept together on the disk. While in flash devices, fragmentation is not an issue, but wear and write granularity are important, so data should be kept in a sort of cyclic log structure.

The author of LogFS, a log-structured flash filesystem, has written a very convincing paper on this point: http://lazybastard.org/~joern/logfs1.pdf

Under Linux, I think the two-CF-cards-with-an-IDE-adapter drive would be really awesome. Linux has very high-performance software RAID support, and you can use a lot of excellent high-performance flash filesystems. Windows doesn't have good software RAID support or flash filesystem support though, so I guess Windoze users would prefer one of these SSDs that presents itself as a monolithic device with wear levelling in the firmware.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[Anonymous Coward]

When using a CF drive for an embedded product, I discovered that lots of Compact Flash media out there do not support DMA of any type, which limits throughput. Chances are the off-the-shelf CF at the local computer store will not support DMA modes. The biggest user of CompactFlash are digital cameras, which I think don't use the ATA interface, so the makers probably don't bother with the smaller market that wants fast ATA modes. So the market has fast cards with mediocre ATA interfaces that limit throughput when used in True-IDE mode.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[mollymoo]

Why are flash hard drives SO EXPENSIVE?

The fact that SSDs are faster has been mentioned, but the other major factor is the size of the market. The market for SSDs is tiny and new, with only a few manufacturers competing. The market for CF cards is vast and mature with zillions of manufacturers competing.

Re:Why are flash hard drives so expensive???

[hcdejong]

That $140 CF card is only 40x.

40x what? I hate these marketing 'performance figures'. Are they still basing these figures on CD-ROM speeds (1x = 150 kbyte/s)?
What's wrong with specifying the speed as 6 Mbyte/s instead?

Does it come with a rootkit preinstalled?

[ip_freely_2000]

It'll be a cold day in hell before I hand my money to Sony.

Re:Does it come with a rootkit preinstalled?

[kitecamguy]

Yes! And hopefully a full suite of DRM software!

Re: wireless issues

[MoxFulder]

The two greatest resources I've found for finding Linux wireless card drivers are:

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/ That site is awesome. Thanks for the link! I've been hoping for a searchable database of linux-friendly wireless cards for a while (even thought about making my own)!

flacid.

[twitter]

Is flaccid state better?

Ask MicroSoft for assurance and immoral support or consult with Dr. Stallman for a cure.

FTFA

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm not an Apple fanboi (honest!) but this new Sony looks very similar to the black MacBook - the keyboard etc ...

From TFA:

And once again let me make it clear that Sony has not copied the MacBook style of keyboard in fact the MacBook copied Sonys iconic VAIO X505, which preceded it by a couple of years.

Re:No "print" version?

[Xybre]

They're totally screwing you every chance they get.

I was more putting the question out there into the blue nowhere rather than disagreeing with your comment. ;)

A Few Days or Essentially Forever

[arrianus]

Flash media will typically have about 100,000 read/write cycles before failing. It's sometimes advertised as millions, but practically, no one makes media that goes over 300k, and no one makes media that goes under maybe 10k. Used naively (e.g. CompactFlash in an IDE-to-CF adapter as your / partition), the time to failure is on the order of days. Log files, file access times, and bits like that get written over and over and over, with some files being touched every few seconds. You've got 86,400 seconds in a day, which is in the same ballpark as flash endurance. I've seen drives fail this way.

Used properly, however, a SSD will last forever. Typically, the drive will include load spreading somewhere in the chain. The algorithms are a bit more clever than what I'm about to describe, but naively, if you've written the same location more than a few times, you move that data to a different location. This are often implemented in the drive's firmware, but may also be implemented in the file system (Linux comes with a few flash file systems that do this -- indeed, OLPC uses one of them). Used this way, the solid state drive will last for many decades of continuous use before failing, and will eventually fail for the same mechanisms as any other old IC. A 40GB drive, written at 100Mbps, will take about an hour to overwrite completely. With an endurance of 100,000 cycles, you get a bit over 10 years of continuous write at that speed before you run into endurance limits. With normal write frequencies, that means it'll last essentially forever.

Data is stored as charge on a conductor surrounded by insulator, but the insulator isn't perfect, and eventually, electrons do drift on and off. As a result, data stored in flash has a lifetime on the order of 10 years if it doesn't get refreshed. Of course, refreshing it is trivial (read out data, write it back).

Of course, with a Sony laptop, the major question isn't drive lifetime, but how long until the hinges or latches break. Sony laptops typically frequently have mechanical failures within a few months of purchase. Sony skims on quality quite a bit, these days, and is mostly running on reputation for quality acquired many years ago. That, combined with shooting for the lowest possible weight (and skimming on construction quality to save weight too) makes for pretty flimsy laptops.

Re:A Few Days or Essentially Forever

[Billly Gates]

Interesting post.

But for those stuck on Windows which are 95% of users I wonder if NTFS really is an issue in causing unreliability. Non unix filesystems clump everything close. I know you mentioned that ssds use a psuedo filesystem spread apart that hides it in firmware from the os but I wonder what happens if the drive gets full. Also this seems complicated and strange to hide such a virtual filesystem.

Re:A Few Days or Essentially Forever

[evilbessie]

I don't like Sony machines, they don't come with XP drivers, they still sell a $1450 ($3000) core solo machine with only 1GB RAM w/ Vista, which runs like an absolute dog. So yes they are small and cute but for anyone who wants to do actual work and not just look at the prettiness all day long think about something else, the new 2510p from HP is out in a month or two (if not already) and looks fantastic for half the price you get twice the speed and it's small and I think cute so clearly something to wait for.

Re:A Few Days or Essentially Forever

[mrchaotica]

Log files, file access times, and bits like that get written over and over and over, with some files being touched every few seconds.

I wonder how much good Linux's "Laptop Mode" would do, with or without the flash wear-leveling...

Re:A Few Days or Essentially Forever

[ansible]

All CF cards (and SD and everything else flash-based) now implement wear-leveling inside.

The only time you're going to quickly wear out flash memory by doing something naive is to mount a raw flash memory device using MTD and then using a filesystem like FAT or ext2 right on top of it. But it is just as easy to use JFFS2, so you wouldn't do that, right?

$200.

[twitter]

$200 laptops are here. It's small, light and has more horsepower than the five year old PIII I'm using. With GNU/Linux, you don't need a portable super computer.

AAA+++++!!! FAST, CLEAR COMMENT, MOD INSIGHTFUL!!!

[thegnu]

bwahahahahaha

but, really, good point.

Will it run GNU/Linux? Yes.

[twitter]

One day, it will. You might wonder if it will ever run Vista well. My bet is on GNU/Linux.

In the mean time, you can keep the $3,800 price difference and get something like this, that weighs 2lbs and comes with gnu/linux installed.

What was that prediction about a $200 price point for PCs? Oh yeah, that's right - non free software won't be able to compete when the price point drops to $200. The world is looking better every day.

state of solid state hard-drive file systems?

[my_alias_was_already]

Though slightly off topic, this article prompts me to ask the following question:

With solid state disks (SSD) becoming ever more abundant, is there any utility to optimize file systems for the new hardware? By this I am driving at the point that many file systems presume they are witting with a traditional hard disk. They assume things like tracks, cylinders, and heads are down there somewhere. These assumptions are present in the structuring and subsequent optimization of the file system's source code.

Do current SSDs use the cylinders & heads metaphor in their hardware controller? Do they implement something new?

Presumably, people are all over this issue (or possibly not, this may be a non-issue). Who are these people, and where do I read about their work?

Re:state of solid state hard-drive file systems?

[xenocide2]

This is a question I ask undergraduate students in Operating Systems: how does replacing disk for a RAM disk affect disk scheduling algorithms? The short answer is: FIFO is fastest. It's fast to calculate, and seek times don't matter anymore. As a bonus, it's also fair. The same applies for CF disks.

To the extent that filesystems themselves organize in favor of shorter seek times, it's inconsequential. Calculating where to place 16 kilobytes is a drop in the bucked compared to the time to actually write those bytes. In Windows, FAT32 is commonly used. Unlike NTFS, it doesn't seem to reorganize on the fly, making it suitable for media that a user might pull out. In the past, there's been concerns about wear leveling. Unlike traditional RAM, flash seems to expire after so many write cycles. I know of one file system called jffs2 that addresses this, by attempting to keep writes level. Some people claim it's not nessecary with certain devices anymore, but I don't know how much I trust their simple analysis. I've been told that devices like CF or SD have built in wear leveling translation techniques, but I haven't read about or worked with these devices personally.

Re:state of solid state hard-drive file systems?

[Emetophobe]

The wikipedia entry on flash memory is good starting point (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory)

Here's a select quote:

Flash file systems

Because of the particular characteristics of flash memory, it is best used with specifically designed file systems which spread writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. The basic concept behind flash file systems is: When the flash store is to be updated, the file system will write a new copy of the changed data over to a fresh block, remap the file pointers, then erase the old block later when it has time. One of the earliest flash file systems was Microsoft's FFS2 (presumably preceded by FFS1), for use with MS-DOS in the early 1990s. Around 1994, the PCMCIA industry group approved the FTL (Flash Translation Layer) specification, which allowed a flash device to look like a FAT disk, but still have effective wear levelling. Other commercial systems such as FlashFX by Datalight were created to avoid patent concerns with FTL.

JFFS was the first flash-specific file system for Linux, but it was quickly superseded by JFFS2, originally developed for NOR flash. Then YAFFS was released in 2003, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too. In practice, these filesystems are only used for "Memory Technology Devices" ("MTD"), which are embedded flash memories which do not have a controller. Removable flash media, such as SD and CF cards and USB flash drives, have a controller (often built into the card) to perform wear-levelling and error correction, so use of JFFS2 or YAFFS does not add any benefit. These removable flash memory devices are often used with the old FAT filesystem for compatibility with cameras and other portable devices. Controllerless removable flash memory devices also exist; For example, SmartMedia is even electrically compatible with the Toshiba TC58 series of NAND flash chips.

More info on JFFS2 can be found here. I also recommend you take a look at this pdf, which was converted from a slideshow (so it's pretty light reading).

Re:state of solid state hard-drive file systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do current SSDs use the cylinders & heads metaphor in their hardware controller?" -

Yes, they do (sort of, they are treated as such by their 'formatting' method, an array/buffer area created on their RAM chips onboard, just like how a software-based Ramdrive does pretty much/for the most part), & they respond to typical disk utilities (defraggers, chkdsk, etc. on Win32, & fsck on *NIX etc. et al)...

(I have one I have been using system-to-system (cannabalizing it between my last systems & current ones) called a CENATEK "RocketDrive" (2gb here, but can take up to 4gb of PC-133 SDRAM & can be "spanned/striped" into a single LARGE 16gb unit)).

APK

P.S.=> There ARE better performing/newer units than my own, such as the GIGABYTE IRAM (this uses SATA 150 bus vs. mine using PCI 2.2 (150mb/sec. vs. 133mb/sec.), & the "DDR-Drive" which supposedly is due out sometime this year, & uses an even HARDER bus type to saturate (due to larger bandwidth than PCI 2.2 or even SATA 150 types noted above) in PCI-Express)... apk

Goodbye PCG-SRX99, Hello TZ12VN

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I don't have to write sony a letter saying how they "had" the best laptops around cause it looks like they do still! The feature I like is the computer-screen angle that is almost 180 degrees. Something Apple doesn't have... a subnotebook you can set on your leg (with the screen almost plush with the keyboard...like this _._ or |). I might just get a SS.HD for my SR series cause its still the sexiest laptop around, even compared to those new smaller ones! Good job sony! (I admit I've been bitchin about the psp and memory sticks but you guys still know how to design laptops better than anyone!!)

Re:Goodbye PCG-SRX99, Hello TZ12VN

[Billly Gates]

I am a little biased agaisnt Sony products.

My wife has a Vaio and its a piece of crap. It has cheap electrical components in it so a simple wireless usb mouse will cause the notebook to overheat. She has to use a cooling pad unless she uses nothing but the touchpad. Also it bluescreens alot mentioning the nv*.dll driver which is the video card. It may have defective video memory. Its slow and it comes with spyware and malware out of the box and the sound is quiet requiring external speakers. Also the mmc card reader only supports memory stick ram for digital cameras and nothing else. Not too bad since we have sony camera (that is subject to recall because its defective) but we can't upgrade to anything but a sony camera because the notebook reads nothing else.

I will pass on this one and would prefer the samsung one the author mentioned if I had money to burn. Or better yet wait until Linevo comes out with a newer thinkpad that supports that comes with ssd.

Re:Goodbye PCG-SRX99, Hello TZ12VN

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know they make external memory card readers, don't you? You can buy a Canon or Nikon if it pleases you, and still get the pictures into your POS Sony laptop.

Don't forget Sony's rootkit

[LorenzoV]

Before we get all gooey over Sony's new kit, let's not forget Sony's rootkit on audio CDs. What's actually worse than the rootkit itself is that Sony did not agree in the settlement they would not do it again. Then they buy legislation exempting themselves from lawsuits when they do do it again.

Sony is on my vendor blacklist for a long, long time because of this.

Sony????

[Anonymous Coward]

These sorry ass bastards put rootkits on music CDs for God's sake! Do you think a factory-installed hardware rootkit would be easy to find? How in the hell could anybody trust this company after a stunt like that?

After having my daughter unknowingly install Sony's rootkit, which caused me to spend time and money cleaning up the mess, you couldn't pay me to buy a Sony anything, let alone a PC. I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone else would either; at least, anyone who heard about the rootkits (let alone someone like me who was victimized by Sony with this shitware).

If you think this post was a flame, read what I blogged last year after I cleaned up the mess Sony's God damned evil shit made of my computer. THAT was a flame!

Die Sony DIE!!!

-mcgrew

Cheaper to upgrede your ultralight laptop to ssd

[Anonymous Coward]

Newegg sells 32 GB SSD drives for about $500 (both 1.8 inch and 2.5 inch models). I upgraded my Toshiba R200 and is as good as the the more expensive sony thing. I bought my R200 for $1300 over a year ago. A month ago I spent an extra $500 for a SSD drive + $30 for a tini external box, that is $1830. In addition I have a spare 60GB 1.8 inch drive which I put in a tiny external box from digitalinjtelligence.com. The only problem is that I have no room for Windows anymore, I only run linux.
A friend of mine put a 32GB SSD drive on a mac laptop.

Competition for OLPC?

[johnw]

Even with the current very weak dollar, 2.4 pounds sounds like a lot less than 100 dollars.

Re:Competition for OLPC?

[tehcyder]

Even with the current very weak dollar, 2.4 pounds sounds like a lot less than 100 dollars.

Just wait til next week...

Beautifull stickers

[qaz2]

I *am* an Apple fan, but I must say, the vaio really looks great. I just bet it would look even better running OS X :)

It's a shame though they always put those windows and Intel stickers near the keyboard; that really does not improve the looks at all.
Maybe they should try to remove those; that it runs Vista is obvious, and Intel could probably think up a small, classy sticker for those high-end notebooks. If at all necessary.

Re:Beautifull stickers

[Eunuchswear]

It's a sticker - it comes off.

Mine runs Debian. No stickers.

Sony is dead to me.

[HornWumpus]

Never one thin dime to Sony from me or anybody I'm advising on electronic or computer purchases.

NEWEEG: 32GB SSD 1.8/2.5 inch -$500

[Anonymous Coward]

Much cheaper than IBM. It is achtually cheaper to buy an ultralight laptop with a conventional hard disk, buy an SSD from NEWEGG and install it yourself. Saving money and in addition have a spare conventional drive (1.8 inch conventional drives are not cheap)

What about Microsoft, Dell, Apple and Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume these companies are also on your black list too, then for their various and sundry violations of the unwritten geek code?

Math can be a weighty issue

[xdancergirlx]

Not that it probably matters that much but if it weighs 1.15kg, it also weighs 2.54lbs, not 2.4 (at least on the planet earth).

WHAT THE FUCK MODS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call this flambait or off-topic, but how is it that you got modded +4 interesting for thanking a dude for posting something interesting, yet the dude who actually posted the information is still at +1 not rated?

Come on Mods, give karma where it is due.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you'd kill for less than $4000? Good to know. That could be useful.

Disagree with quote from article...

[Foolicious]

A solid state drive has no moving parts and is constructed entirely of flash memory chips, so no amount of bumping, bashing or general notebook abuse is going to affect your data I disagree with this. Bumping maybe. General notebook abuse yes. But bashing? My phone is a solid state appliance too and I'm not going to go around bashing it into or with anything.

Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[bflong]

This is an issue I have recent and intimate knowledge of.
XP will *NOT* install on a standard CF card. Even with a CF/IDE converter, Windows sees the CF card as a "Removable Device" and will not install to it. Windows also will only ever see one partition on a removable device. It's also broken when trying to format an existing partition during install, and it corrupts itself when trying to expand it's C: partition when installing from a sysprep'ed disk image. The only way I was able to get it installed was to create a sysprep image the exact size that the finished install will be and write it directly to the flash drive. It's kind of funny to double click on "My Computer" and see the C: drive show up as a removable device with a little removable type icon. This guys blog details the issues a bit more:

http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/12/windows-xp-em bedded-gotchas.html

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[MoxFulder]

This is an issue I have recent and intimate knowledge of.
XP will *NOT* install on a standard CF card. Even with a CF/IDE converter, Windows sees the CF card as a "Removable Device" and will not install to it. Windows also will only ever see one partition on a removable device. It's also broken when trying to format an existing partition during install, and it corrupts itself when trying to expand it's C: partition when installing from a sysprep'ed disk image. The only way I was able to get it installed was to create a sysprep image the exact size that the finished install will be and write it directly to the flash drive. It's kind of funny to double click on "My Computer" and see the C: drive show up as a removable device with a little removable type icon. This guys blog details the issues a bit more:

http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/12/windows-xp-em bedded-gotchas.html Good to know. Wow, Windows is even stupider than I remember it was...

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

At work we have win2K running on a shuttle pc using an addonics cf-ide adaptor
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read er/adidecf.asp
with a transcend 4GB cf card that had the win2k image ghosted from the disk drive
http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/ItemDetail.asp? ItemID=TS4GCF120

It can be done.

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[visdog]

It can be done: http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs/faq-bootcf.as p

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[bflong]

From that link:
A Transcend 2GB Industrial Compact Flash with UDMA Fixed Disk Mode feature was used to do a fresh install

Yeah, that would work. But the cf cards that are labeled "Industrial" are much more expensive then a standard CF card, and that kind of invalidates the point. The instructions further down talk about installing to a regular hard drive and then transferring the image to the CF card, which is exactly what I had to do.

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[russint]

Windows sees the CF card as a "Removable Device" and will not install to it.

XP sees both my SATA drives as "Removable devices", installed without a problem.

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[visdog]

I have been using transcend TS4GCF120 4G non industrial cards with no problems. Extremely fast and featuring 120X Ultra Speed, Transcend's new generation CF Cards feature high performance combined with huge memory capacity making our 120X Compact Flash Cards the perfect choice for your high-end digital equipment. Please Note: This card is programmed in DMA MODE by default. It is capable of automatically switching between Removable Mode for CF and Fixed-Disk Mode for IDE.

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[Miseph]

"Extremely fast and featuring 120X Ultra Speed, Transcend's new generation CF Cards feature high performance combined with huge memory capacity making our 120X Compact Flash Cards the perfect choice for your high-end digital equipment."

Emphasis mine. Please take your astroturfing elsewhere. I haven't had any problems with Transcend, but the fact that they apparently have paid shills on Slashdot has made me less likely to ever buy from them in the future.

Re:Windows is not compatible with CF hard drives

[visdog]

I just pasted something from their website in my message. I don't work for them. Moron.

it's obvious...

[pitu]

if my product made a real interesting story on its own I assure you I (at least) wouldn't go and
spend +$ on slashvertisments. Would not the techie community you speak of be eager to talk about it already?

so the obvious answer you knew:

"a slashvertissement" is paid for, not always interesting
  "a real interesting story" - is ... um ... interesting

Re:it's obvious...

[spun]

Well how do you know it was paid for? Everyone always assumes that any commercial product mentioned here must have been paid for.

Sigh. Remember when. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

I remember back in the day when laptops were first hitting the scene that one of the FIRST and most important elements the reviewer would discuss was the battery life.

It's still one of my primary concerns when thinking about portable computers. Why on earth does the reviewer not even mention this? --Especially when we're dealing with a computer with such a different type of technology design which he excitedly claims consumes much less power. Damn, that'd definitely be on my list of things to test, just out of sheer curiosity. Not discussing it is not simply an oversight, it's just plain strange.

Just some ball-park figures based on different types of use. (Doing nothing but word-processing for X straight hours. V.S. heavy graphics work. How many DVD's can you read/burn on a charge.)

This stuff matters, and it absolutely affects which machine I will buy. Is there some kind of moratorium on battery life comparisons in the portable computer review world, or is the reviewer just being thoughtless?

-FL

How long will the drive last? Longer than the goat

[michaelalanjones]

Longer than the goat that Sony slaughtered, just to promote God of War II game. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=451414&in_page_id=1770&c t=5 That was the last day that I would buy anything from Sony.

I'd like solid-state removable storage, please.

[Shag]

Instead of an optical drive spindle.

And I'd like the cost/GB to be in the same ballpark as CD-R or DVD-R media.

Re:I'd like solid-state removable storage, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

SD Card? USB Stick?

The DVD drive is still rather necessary with this thing, as you aren't going to cram a whole lot of video onto the 32GB SSD drive (what, with Vista eating up at least 1/3 of that), and an awful lot of software is still delivered on disc.

Re:Sigh. Remember when. . ?

[nic barajas]

Finally, the LED backlight improves battery life, another majorly important factor for an ultra-portable machine.

Subjectively, battery life proved to be slightly improved over the TZ11MN, which was quite impressive itself. You're probably looking at around seven hours battery life, depending on how bright you set the screen and whether you're using wireless.

Were we reading the same review?

Fuck you, Sony

[Werrismys]

No matter how good it is, I won't give any money to those wankers.

Sony?

[jandersen]

It's a lot of money, but it sure looks sweet

Aren't they the people who brought us the DRM rootkit, the music CDs that couldn't be played in a lot of CD players and the Sony-Ericsson P990i, possibly the worst telephone to hit the market in living memory? Can we be sure that this thing is not stuffed full of DRM crap?

Laptops with both drives?

[lonechicken]

Is there a company that's offering a model with both a solid state drive (for the OS and office apps), as well as a regular HDD (for data)? Sort of the best of both worlds in terms of fast access for most tasks, and enough room to store music (and pron:). Most brands have models that allow for two hard drives, but I haven't found one with one of each.

Sorry, I couldn't find a good enough search phrase to see if this topic has been mentioned in this thread...

Obviously, this Sony laptop is built for weight benefits too, but what if that's not as important? I'm more interested in the speed advantages and battery consumption, but don't want to lug around an external drive.

Re:Sigh. Remember when. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

Were we reading the same review?

Yes, and I clearly skimmed past the line while searching for the section devoted to battery life. He devoted a couple hundred words to the keyboard and to things like carbon fibers, but burried the highly subjecive and thus virtually useless battery life comment in the middle of a paragraph amongst a bunch of other left-over details on the last page of the review. Granted I was too tired to be reading last night with full awareness, but that doesn't change the general thrust of my comment.

The only comment I do remember seeing was the one relating to the screen using LED lighting improving battery life, which the author even said, "is another majorly important factor". Yes it is! I would like to see comparison tests, not half-baked one-liners and lame excuses about not having some battery testing software installed. How about running the machine for a couple of days under different conditions?

Like I said, there was a time when reviewers made the effort to include this information. But maybe I'm different. I actually spend a lot of time away from home-base with a portable, so battery life really counts. Maybe other people don't press their machines the way I do. We don't even know from the review what kind of battery technology the machine uses, or what kind of power adaptor it employs, or anything remotely practical with regard to its power system. He told us it had a green light and that it's cylindrical in shape. Gee thanks. A six-year old could have given me that information.

-FL

Not all CF cards...

[RedBear]

I remember reading something recently about why some CF cards show up as removable media and others show up as hard drives. It boils down to a firmware option on the card that tells the computer what type of device it is. So some cards do not show up as removable devices. You'd probably have better luck with some of the newer UDMA cards like the Sandisk Extreme IV, Kinston Ultimate 266x, or Lexar 300x ranges. I'm not sure about any of the slower cards but I'm sure all of these are UDMA, and are much more likely to have their firmware set to declare themselves as non-removable storage devices.