I love my Sony Vaio Z.  It’s a wonderful bit of kit – exactly the power/portability ratio I wanted.  It has enough grunt to play the odd game in “Speed” mode while giving 6 hours of battery life on wireless in stamina mode.  Not to mention to gorgeous 1600×900 LED screen and the built in 3G wireless.

I have one problem with it and it’s a failing of Sony’s decision making rather than any particular problem with the kit.  Sony disable the Intel Virtualization Technology in the Core 2 Duo on all their Vaio machines.  I’ve seen no valid rationale for this other than “We don’t support VT on the Vaio range.“  This is absurd since all the Core 2 Duo chips feature Intel Virtualization Technology and I can’t imagine how having it switched on would adversely affect Vista or XP (the two Operating Systems Sony officially supports).

If this were a consumer laptop I could understand – but it’s specifically targeted at business users.  In my business I make extensive use of both Microsoft and VMWare’s virtualisation systems – both of which run much faster on hardware that has the VT functionality enabled.  There are a good number of people on various forums spitting blood about this issue so I’m not the only one complaining.

There is light, of sorts, at the end of this tunnel.  Since Sony have done this before on other machiens in the Vaio series, people have managed to re-enable VT by using BIOS editing tools to flip the right register.  Unfortunately it requires intimate knowledge of the BIOS – knowledge that we won’t have until Sony release a BIOS update that can be reverse engineered.  If we’re very lucky Sony will make amends by releasing a BIOS update that allows us to enable VT in the BIOS interface proper.

The worst part of this is that we (Vaio Z owners) didn’t know that VT was disabled until after we bought the machines.  I know a number of people have returned their units and bought Toshiba or Dell machines that haven’t been crippled by the vendors.  Sony advertised a Core 2 Duo Mobile processor, they didn’t mention in any literature that they’d be disabling bits of the processor for no reason.

Sony, if you’re reading this – please give us control over the entire processor and let us enable VT.

I’m lusting after the new Sony Vaio Z Series which doesn’t come out in the US until mid-August, and I’ve no idea when it comes out in the UK.  Annoyingly, while the US site allows you to configure your system from scratch – including putting in dual solid state drives – Sony UK limit us to choosing from three prescribed models, none of which contain quite the match of processor and storage I’m looking for.

I know that in the US store the model I’ve specced will cost in the region of $3600 – about 1800 quid at the moment – which doesn’t seem unreasonable for a machine with such an array of features:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P9500 (2.53GHz)
• 4 GB DDR3-SDRAM (DDR3-1066, 2GBx2)
• 64 GB Solid State Drive
• DVD±R DL / DVD±RW / DVD-RAM Drive
• LCD 13.1″ (XBRITE-DuraView) 1600×900
• Combined Intel integrated graphics plus NVidia for (low demand) games
• Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology
• Integrated Wireless Wide Area Network (that’s 7.2Mbps 3G)
• Gigabit Ethernet, Biometric Fingerprint Sensor

There’s no telling what the actual UK price will be for the device closest to my desired spec, the VGN-Z11VN/B, which differs only by the replacement of the SSD with a 5400rpm 320GB drive.  Given the amount of storage I have at home, I’d rather have the benefit of no moving parts and the (possibly unverified) reduction in heat and power consumption than such large amounts of portable storage.  Also the UK site is listing DDR2 memory rather than DDR3, I hope that’s a typo and not indicative of some cost cutting exercise.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to spec the SSD and a BluRay drive at the same time, so I’ll settle for a dual layer DVD writer instead.  Assuming that is, I can get hold of an SSD configured machine in the UK.  I may have to import one, which raises ugly warranty issues I’d rather avoid.  That said, another advantage to buying an American specced machine is that they give you the option to remove all the usual cruft that Sony install on their laptops – all the free trials and demos of software you’ll never actually use.  They call this service “Fresh Start” and it seems that the UK division have yet to be hit with that particular clue-bat, as they list this little lot under installed software:

• Windows Media Player 11
• WinDVD 8.0 for VAIO
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
• Google Picasa
• Easy Media Creator 9
• Adobe® Reader® 8.1
• Adobe Standard 8
• Microsoft® Office Ready 2007 (60 days Try & Buy)
• McAfee Internet Security Suite (with 60 days free virus updates)
• VAIO Recovery Utility – HDD recovery (hidden partition)
• Protector Suite QL 5

Granted, I’d be installed Acrobat Reader and Writer myself, but the rest of it?  Pfft.  I’ll bring my own full copy of Office 2007 thank you.  And the day I let a McAfee Internet “Security” Suite anywhere near my system is the day I stop caring about usable computers.  Oh yes, and the “VAIO Recovery Utility”?  That sounds like a way to use up my disc space while saving Sony the cost and bother of shipping me optical media with my Operating System on it.  Grrr. :@

Speaking of the OS, I may have to play the downgradable licence game and see if they’re going to support XP on the device, rather than Vista.  Time for a call to Sony to find out what’s going to happen come August…