Sony wows with 8-inch, 1.4-pound Vaio netbook

Wed Jan 7, 2009 8:59PM EST

See Comments (64)

Dubbed the Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC, the eight-inch wonder—complete with WWAN 3G broadband, GPS, and an instant-on option for music, pictures, and video—easily stole the show at Sony's CES presser Wednesday.

Set to ship next month and priced at a cool $900, the P Series drew a crowd of photographers after Sony's pre-CES event, and it's easy to see why—this is one of the sexiest netbooks yet. Slim, light, and available in five colors, the P Series Lifestyle PC looks small enough to slip into a jacket pocket (well, a largish jacket pocket), yet it still manages to pack in a tight, 1600 by 768 LED display, an integrated Webcam, and yes—it runs Vista.

Wireless options on the P abound as well, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and integrated 3G through Verizon Wireless. Also on board: GPS, good for location-based services and geotagging photos, as well as an "instant-mode" Xross Media Bar for no-wait access to your tunes, videos, photos, and Web browsing. Sony promises four hours of juice from the standard battery, or up to eight hours with a larger-capacity battery. Under the hood (this from Gizmodo), you've got a 1.33Ghz Atom processor and 2GB of RAM.

Overall, pretty nice—although the $900 (and up, depending on the options) price tag might be a tough pill to swallow, and it remains to be seen how the little guy will handle a monster OS like Vista. (Although given that the P Series can run Vista and has such a high-resolution screen, maybe we should call it a notebook rather than a netbook.) Thoughts?

Comments on Sony wows with 8-inch, 1.4-pound Vaio netbook

Post a Comment

Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.

  • 1 Posted by alan_r_cam on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Can I upgrade it to XP? Or Ubuntu? Vista is a deal-breaker for me.

  • 2 Posted by angel_abdiel on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:54PM EDT Report Abuse

    I think it is a netbook rather than a notebook based on it's size and processor type. The Intel Atom is pretty indicative of it being a netbook. If I ever buy one of those I would at least install XP Pro, Vista is the suck..

  • 3 Posted by jvmagisano on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:45PM EDT Report Abuse

    It looks good. The biggest issue will be the 1600x768 screen. My Eee PC 1000H has a 1024x600 and all looks well. I suspect the text and icons will be super small on that screen. The high resolution is un-necessary and a bad design choice that likely drove up the price for no reason. Also all the Vista wining is a pile of you know what. I am running Vista Basic on my Eee PC with the CPU is power save mode (~600 MHz) and life is very good. I agree that running Vista Premium would be a bad idea but Basic works great. They did not mention in the article which version of Vista they are running however.

  • 4 Posted by tux on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:25PM EDT Report Abuse

    Sony definitely needs to rethink their decisions. There were praises and predictions that the ps3 would be the winner of 08, there were praises of the sony psp with his range of features being the clear winner over the other hand-held applications. What went wrong with both? Well other companies like Apple beat them to the punch of some of the features and a significant lower price tag. Sometimes EXTRA cool features is not wise like the record has shown resulting in overpriced products that overtime have to be marked down due to dismal sales due to the economic state and from significant lower price competitor products. A netbook for $900? Get real, this product is just another loss in profit product down the line from Sony. Let me think I could probably get an 2-3 netbooks on the market one for each household family member for that price.

  • 5 Posted by chmyr on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:23PM EDT Report Abuse

    Sounds good for flight passengers, but the Sony netbook is ultimatly destined to vehicle dashtop. Otherwise, it might end up a here-today-gone-tomorrow gimmick. And its price tag of about one grand is not much fun at all. Hopefully, it will do some age-specific segment job. Basically, what could be a big difference between UMPC and a netbook? Is it like the difference between a cellphone and a smartphone?

More Posts: First Prev 1 2 3 4 Next Last

Post a Comment

Sign In to Post a Comment

My Tech

Please enable your browser's cookies to activate the My Tech column.

Also on Yahoo! Tech

Computers Home Office Wi-Fi & Networking Phones & PDAs Cameras & Camcorders TV & Home Theater Portable Audio
 

Site Map | Tour | Subscribe to Yahoo! Tech

Question and Answer content at Yahoo! Tech is written by Yahoo! users at Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any Yahoo! Answers content. For more information, read the Full Disclaimer.

Opinions expressed by the Advisors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! receives no compensation from any manufacturer or distributor nor does it compensate any Advisor for the coverage of any product or service in any Advisor's content.