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MBP vs VAIO Z

Fraaaa

Fraaaa

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 22, 2010
1,081
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London, UK
I'm reading a lot of people are comparing MBP to VAIO Z and also some others even with MBA.

So I checked some features and if I'm not wrong both comes with i7 and GT 330M(1GB for VAIO and 512MB for MBP).

Another hot topic is the VAIO as 6 Hrs battery life vs the 8 to 9 of the MBP.

One more thing is that the VAIO is dearer than the MBP.

Do you think one is better than the other, or one has some better feature but some worse, or they are more or less equivalent?
 
Geekbench benchmarks

Sony Viao I assume a Z : 2.67 i7, 8 gigs of RAM score: 4811

MBP 2.66 GHZ i7 4 gigs of RAM score: 6404

I don't know if this is the Z or not just the Z has a 2.67 i7
 
The Z is an impressive machine but it can't run OSX apps without being hacked. For me, at least, that ends the inquiry.
 
iSax1234 said:
Geekbench benchmarks

Sony Viao I assume a Z : 2.67 i7, 8 gigs of RAM score: 4811

MBP 2.66 GHZ i7 4 gigs of RAM score: 6404

I don't know if this is the Z or not just the Z has a 2.67 i7
Click to expand...

That's quite a substantial difference...are those really correct? If anything, you'd think it would be the other way around.
 
Those benchmarks don't really make sense. The top Sony Vaio Z should be on par with the top Macbook Pro.
 
The Sony Z is an inferior machine by far.

1) The 8GB ram makes virtually no difference (though it is a nice touch).
2) The 1GB video RAM vs the 512, again, makes *no* difference. This was discussed earlier today - the 330M is too weak to even fully utilize 512MB. Its a gimmick, nothing more. The speed of the card (clock rate) is what really matters, and in the sony it is clocked relatively low if I remember correctly. I don't know how fast its clocked on the new MBP, yet.
3) The build quality, oh the horror!
4) OSX. Really, need I say more?
5) The battery life.
 
I think we can compare specs v. price all we want, and Apple will always lose...
the real questions are...
1) how important is OS X to you?
2) how important is apple design to you?

To me, it's all about OS X. The design is nice, but i loathe Windows. I much prefer Linux to Windows, but I think OS X is the nicest.
 
It says that the geekbench used on the Vaio is 32 bit. I can only assume that is the reason for the difference. Even though the Mac geekbench also says 32 bit, I don't think that's right since it would've shipped with Snow Leopard which is 64 bit.

The 64 bit test on the Vaio Z is the same as the MBP as shown here:
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/232392

maximus06 said:
The Sony Z is an inferior machine by far.
Click to expand...
Any objective proof of your claim?

1) The 8GB ram makes virtually no difference (though it is a nice touch).
Click to expand...
This statement is ludicrous. How can more ram not make a difference? More ram = more programs opened for multitasking and more memory for programs to use.

2) The 1GB video RAM vs the 512, again, makes *no* difference. This was discussed earlier today - the 330M is too weak to even fully utilize 512MB. Its a gimmick, nothing more. The speed of the card (clock rate) is what really matters, and in the sony it is clocked relatively low if I remember correctly. I don't know how fast its clocked on the new MBP, yet.
Click to expand...
Proof that the Vaio Z is clocked low? You don't even know what the MBP is clocked at so why even bring this up? Apple are notorious for underclocking the GPU. People in glass houses and all that.
3) The build quality, oh the horror!
Click to expand...
Again, do you have any proof to back up your claims or are you just spouting nonsense? The Z employs carbon fiber and aluminum. It's definitely not a poorly designed laptop made from cheap plastic.

Take a look at all of these QA tests Sony does on the Z: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVDp8DZuSKY

Care to try that drop test on your MBP for us to see? Or the pressure test? Impact test?

4) OSX. Really, need I say more?
Click to expand...
You mean the operating system that can't play Blu-ray, HD Flash without choking, high bitrate HD without stuttering (unless using VLC, which says a lot about Apple's programmers and how junky Quicktime is), has a joke of a file manager called Finder, et al? I won't even mention lack of gaming.

Want to know what's even funnier? Apple won't support hardware acceleration for h.264 on my early '08 MBP but Win 7 will. Nice to know that Apple dropped support that quick for a 2 year old computer.

5) The battery life.
Click to expand...
The Z can run 6 hours at max brightness. And if you run out of juice you can actually pop in a new battery. Run out of juice on the MBP and tough luck if you don't have an outlet.
 
The reason why I posted this is because beside Macs I don't know what there is around.

Last time I used a PC was in 2007. Ok I use college PCs(and they suck not just because they are PC but because they are cheap PCs) and I own a MacBook since 2008.

Anyway I wanted to know about how other machine perform since I'm not using them, is just good to know, and sometime reading specs isn't just enough.
 
Mad Mac said:
The Z can run 6 hours at max brightness. And if you run out of juice you can actually pop in a new battery. Run out of juice on the MBP and tough luck if you don't have an outlet.
Click to expand...

I know that the "6 hours at max brightness" comes from the website of US SonyStyle. However, I have more information about their testing of the battery life. The link below is the detail setting of the sony Z series battery test in Asia, which I believe is more or less the same as the test in US.

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/faq/366167

You can see the normal procedures are using the Stamina mode with max battery life, mute speakers, and even put the LCD color intensity to only 16 bit. I think the "6 hours at max brightness" is the result of same settings in the procedures except the brightness at 100%.

I am not sure if the "8-10 hours battery" of MBP comes from similar test. But I would say the "6 hours" from Vaio Z and the "10 hours" from MBP are really the maximum. In normal usage, it will be about 4 hours for Vaio Z and 7 hours for MBP.
 
Mad Mac said:
It says that the geekbench used on the Vaio is 32 bit. I can only assume that is the reason for the difference. Even though the Mac geekbench also says 32 bit, I don't think that's right since it would've shipped with Snow Leopard which is 64 bit.

The 64 bit test on the Vaio Z is the same as the MBP as shown here:
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/232392

Any objective proof of your claim?

This statement is ludicrous. How can more ram not make a difference? More ram = more programs opened for multitasking and more memory for programs to use.

Proof that the Vaio Z is clocked low? You don't even know what the MBP is clocked at so why even bring this up? Apple are notorious for underclocking the GPU. People in glass houses and all that.
Again, do you have any proof to back up your claims or are you just spouting nonsense? The Z employs carbon fiber and aluminum. It's definitely not a poorly designed laptop made from cheap plastic.

Take a look at all of these QA tests Sony does on the Z: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVDp8DZuSKY

Care to try that drop test on your MBP for us to see? Or the pressure test? Impact test?

You mean the operating system that can't play Blu-ray, HD Flash without choking, high bitrate HD without stuttering (unless using VLC, which says a lot about Apple's programmers and how junky Quicktime is), has a joke of a file manager called Finder, et al? I won't even mention lack of gaming.

Want to know what's even funnier? Apple won't support hardware acceleration for h.264 on my early '08 MBP but Win 7 will. Nice to know that Apple dropped support that quick for a 2 year old computer.

The Z can run 6 hours at max brightness. And if you run out of juice you can actually pop in a new battery. Run out of juice on the MBP and tough luck if you don't have an outlet.
Click to expand...

It's obvious you're no fan of OSX or Apple, so why waste your time here?
 
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