While it is deemed acceptable to connect a subwoofer to your stereo, and external battery or speaker to your phone or a giant external monitor to your laptop, putting normally essential – and internal – laptop components in external boxes is kind of taboo.
It harks back to the dark days of the 90s, when carrying a laptop meant carrying a black nylon bag containing a heavy Dell notebook, an external DVD burner, a few spare batteries and a power-brick the size of a modern netbook. The whole lot weighed as much as a fair-sized toddler, and was just as annoying.
But now Sony is re-treading that historic route, thanks to the wonders of Thunderbolt (which Sony still calls Light Peak). The new Vaio Z packs the usual high-end internals – 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, a 1600 x 900 13-inch screen and Intel's HD Graphics 3000 – but for those who need a little graphics push, there is the Power Media Dock with a AMD Radeon 6650M GPU graphics card (1GB RAM). The box is also home to an optical drive and an array of extra ports (USB, USB 3.0, VGA, HDMI).
I tease about the external box, but it actually seems like a great idea. You get a slim (16.65mm) and light (1.2kg) notebook with a seven-hour battery life to carry with you, but when you get to your desk you need only to plug in the power and Light Peak cables and you have instantly expanded it into a fast desktop system.
This kind of setup could replace desktop PCs for most people.
The Vaio Z is available in various configurations, depending on things like CPU and Blu-Ray players, and starts at £2,700 ($4,310) in the UK Sony Store.
Ultimate performance and design: ultra-mobile new VAIO Z Series from Sony weighs under 1.2kg [Press Release Sony Europe]
See Also:
