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.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
34 responses to “Sony Vaio Z Is The First Laptop To Fragment Thunderbolt”
If anything, they built a special connector so it would only work with their laptop and nothing else. Last thing they need is a bunch of people complaining that their dock isn’t doing anything on a MacBook Pro.
The lack of compatibility. with official Thunderbolt devices means they only wanted the dock and nothing else. LightPeak is the only bi-directional external 10Gbps spec that exists.
ok im new to this so im going to ask some questions, is apple’s thunderbolt a new technology? is this new technology patented? if the answer is yes to both of these questions, couldn’t sony get in trouble here for taking that technology and snapping new connectors on it and calling it there own? if the answer is no to my questions then nevermind..
or not calling it thunderbolt?
why should I get an i3 processor for 2.2k $ ???
you can license that technology (made by Intel and apple), and it has to be open to be licensed to get peripherals. Unfortunately there are still no peripherals…
That looks like the biggest piece of expensive plastic junk that I’ve seen in a while. What a design team. I see an award in your future soon. (Low sales numbers) They must be using surplus desktop parts in that thing.
“LightPeak is the only bi-directional 10Gbps spec that exists.” Not true.
LightPeak does not technically exist anymore. Thunderbolt is the new name for LightPeak and both do 10Gbps bi-directionally anyway.
in the apple store there’s one cable and one raid system. All other peripherals can’t be bought yet
for a windows notebook it actually look quite good ;)
Why does Sony always go it’s own way with proprietary solutions? Although this seems like a good system on the surface the question that pops into my head is how useful is this system in a wider ecosystem? Can you use the ‘bigger bang box’ with other sony laptops or is it going to be a single use accessory for this laptop alone? If it’s the latter then who the hell is going to buy this thing? Seriously, it doesn’t look like a good investment when you compare what you can get for the same cash in the PC market. There’s thinking outside the box then there’s thinking off your box, I think Sony’s R&D have been on the saké again.
I’ve never seen such erroneous pedantry in my life.
Should we wait to see what the porn industry goes with before making a purchase. They usually set the pace.
Note quite….Sony Z uses the light peak technology and it is compatible with USB 3 devices as is; no adapter> Mac on the other hand will need either an adapter or USB3 ports.
Oh and the Z you mention is bottom of the line..the custom version is 1920x1080p, up to 512GB SATA 3 (! 1GByte / s sequential disk access) and 2.5 pounds…
Oopss, forgot the Core I7 2.8GHz option, still 2.5 lbs
Oops forgot one other thing! The disk system is RAID 0 that’s where the 1GByte / s comes in
Lightpeak is Intel tehnology. Apple just made up the trademark Thunderbolt to satisfy their egos…now if Apple really wanted good laptops they would license the Z