The Register has posted a hands-on video review of the Sony Vaio P, Sony’s take on the netbook lifestyle PC. There’s not much more to say, so just watch the video and tell us how you feel about it.
The Register has posted a hands-on video review of the Sony Vaio P, Sony’s take on the netbook lifestyle PC. There’s not much more to say, so just watch the video and tell us how you feel about it.
Already got one on order, just waiting for it to show up at the local Sony store. I don’t mind paying the price premium for the size, weight, design and the high-quality screen.
I had a Picturebook C1XS for years. That cost more second-hand on eBay than this does new…:)
I haven’t seen a Picturebook for a looong time. Back in 2003, I saw a customer with a little lilac aluminium (or some kind of metal) Sony laptop that was perishingly thin. It ran Windows 98, but I’ve never known what that laptop was and would love to find out.
As much as I would like a VAIO P, I’d rather something that wasn’t so valuable incase someone wants to mug it off me. I’m trying to hunt down an eee 901 Go in the UK without contract (a near impossible task) as a good balance between cheapness, speed, battery and weight.
Not a Sony fan by any means, but have owned a C1VE for 3 years now – still a sweet little machine I use for work almost half the time.
In fact I just replaced a dead hard disk in it a month ago – if only it had held another few weeks I’d have upgraded to this baby
This Vaio P is so much more powerful than any machine I own that I’d see this going hand-in-hand with a docking station.
Pros:
1) It’s from Sony.
2) It looks pretty damn sexy.
Cons:
1) It’s from Sony. Usually this means it’s bundled full of crapware.
2) Vista. Why, oh why, can’t there be an XP option?
3) Pointing stick. Not the biggest fan. Then again an undersize touchpad isn’t my idea of fun either….
4) Screen ratio. What’s it really good for other than watching movies? I could see using it in vertical mode as an eBook reader, but otherwise I’m thinking you won’t be able to fit all that much (readable) text on the short screen.
Summary:
It’s a pretty sweet-looking machine, and compared to Sony’s other ultraportable offerings, it’s cheap. But unless Sony lets you install XP on this thing (read: lets you download XP drivers online), it’s no deal for me.
Well, I’m going to run Linux on it, so I don’t care about the Windows issues (crappy Vista, and crapware).
That’s a good plan, and I’d be curious to hear how it goes. If it turns out to be possible to get suspend/resume working on Sony’s hardware and there’s little-to-no loss of battery life, then I’d consider giving it a shot.
Suspend always worked out of the box on any distro on my old Picturebook – APM or ACPI, it worked fine.
Could be something to do with the fact that Linus used to own one, of course
That screen ratio really is awful. 16:10 is usable. 16:9 is a little cramped when you want to full screen an app that has a lot of toolbars (like most web browsers and document editors). 16:7.68 though? Are ever-shorter screens considered progress?
The resolution seems a bit high for an 8″ screen as well. I guess you can make your fonts huge, but then you have that screen height issue again. I’m all for lighter netbooks, but it has to be usable for tasks like programming (which I can comfortably do on a 10″ eee). I can see this screen giving me massive eyestrain.
I understand it’s a nifty little machine, but the price is quite hefty for a netbook… sorry, “lifestyle PC”. For that price, I’d want a lot more power. 2GB of RAM and a 16:9 screen ratio doesn’t add up to that price, in my opinion. Anyone else think they should have waited for the next iteration of Atoms so they could give it a dual core processor?
I really like some of the decisions they made here.
I think the pointing stick is a great fit in an ultraportable. It is very space-efficient, and you don’t have to move your hands from the keyboard and back. (Granted, I’m an old ThinkPad loyalist, and I always use the TrackPoint even when a mouse is available.)
I also think the 1600 pixel wide display is very nice. The pixels will obviously be very small, but I like the option of getting a lot of text across the screen if I want to.
They also say it has a full-size keyboard. We’ll have to see about that, but if so, that’s a plus too.
I’m a little worried about the proprietary expansion port, given the lack of I/O (e.g., wired network), but I guess that’s one of the trade-offs.
It’s time for a new laptop for me, and this is going to make the decision that much harder. I usually go high-end. But I’m already upgrading my desktop/server to a (cheap) quad-core system, and using virtualization to create task-specific environments, so I am considering a cheaper laptop than usual to use as a remote desktop while at home, because I usually don’t do demanding tasks on the road. In this case, the screen and keyboard become prime concerns.
I will have to see this in person before deciding, but I am going to have to consider this one.