The first non-Apple laptop supporting the new Thunderbolt standard has now officially been announced in the Sony Vaio Z, and it’s an impressive machine… for a Windows PC. Unfortunately, though, Sony’s implementation of Thunderbolt is hobbled by a hubristic decision to use a different connector than Apple, , along with a petulant refusal to adopt Apple’s Thunderbolt brand name.
For a Windows laptop, the Sony Vaio Z is gorgeous. As a laptop, the Vaio Z is a high-end beastie with an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a 13-inch 1700 x 900 display and Intel’s integrated HD Graphics 3000 chipset with a 7 hour battery life… but plug it into its Power Media Dock via the Thunderbolt port and all of a sudden, this all-day laptop becomes a formidable desktop powerhouse, packing an AMD Radeon 6650M graphics card with 1GB of RAM, USB 3.0 ports, VGA and HDMI out, as well as a Blu-Ray drive.
It seems like a best of both worlds configuration. When you’re out and about, the Vaio Z is a thin and light, MacBook Air like laptop. Plug it into its dock at home and all of a sudden, it transforms into a more powerful and capable desktop machine that’s not afraid to slurp up the juice in pursuit of performance.
The only problems? Well, first of all, Sony has opted to brand the Thunderbolt port as LightPeak, which is only going to confuse consumers. Secondly, Sony hasn’t used ThunderBolt’s MiniDisplay Port connector, instead using a proprietary USB 3.0 port as previously threatened.
The result? A hyper expensive luxury laptop starting at $2,294 that won’t play nice with most Thunderbolt accessories without an adapter, and which marks the first fragmentation of the Thunderbolt spec.
What a bummer: the last thing in the world I want to see is Thunderbolt go the way of Firewire. Boo, Sony.
