I’ve had plenty of time to spend with Sony’s bite-sized Vaio P, and now it’s time to deliver a verdict on whether or not the 1.4-pound device really performs as advertised. Sony’s Vaio P managed to generate some buzz at CES, largely based around its minuscule footprint, 1.4-pound weight and ultra-wide LCD screen. Sony aggressively marketed this device as not being a netbook, but rather as a full-functioning laptop. They even went as far as to install Windows Vista Home Basic on the Vaio P despite an Atom processor, and gave it the 1600×768 resolution. This left two big questions to be answered: Is it suitable for real everyday use? And does it transcend the netbook category and enter the realm of media notebook?
This Sony Vaio P is tiny, so it’s quite amazing to see how many things can come out of it. I think the PC User guys threw in some PSP circuits to confuse us.
If we had to pick a winner from the CES gadgets we’ve seen so far, it’d be a toss-up between the Palm Pre and the Sony Vaio Pocket P netbook. The good news for Aussies is that Sony has decided to officially announce pricing and release dates for their netbook-killer… Just don’t expect it to come cheap.
The keyboard? It rocks. The screen? Beautiful. The trackball is just the right amount of gritty, so your finger sticks to it and doesn’t slide off onto the keyboard.
Sony’s much-hyped Vaio P Netbook has finally come out from under wraps, weighing under 635 grams, sitting under 2.5cm thick, and packing in an 8-inch screen with a 2.08:1 aspect ratio (1600×768!).
This keyboard teaser shot for the Vaio Pocket, Sony’s upcoming mystery netbook, shows two things. It has a full size keyboard (like the Vaio TZ) and a track stick for mousing.
