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

Wed Jan 7, 2009 8:59PM EST

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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

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  • 46 Posted by rm9511 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:44PM EDT Report Abuse

    Get the Acer A-1 for $300. If it lasts 2 years great. About the same specs. There will be something much better out there in that time. The tech is moving too fast to spend $900.

  • 47 Posted by beischer@sbcglobal.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:04PM EDT Report Abuse

    For 900$ You getting an age old processor, and vista. fI'd rather throw in another k and buy a macbook. or, buy an actual laptop for 400$ that has the better specs and also buy a desktop, with a monitor.

  • 48 Posted by beischer@sbcglobal.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:04PM EDT Report Abuse

    For 900$ You getting an age old processor, and vista. fI'd rather throw in another k and buy a macbook. or, buy an actual laptop for 400$ that has the better specs and also buy a desktop, with a monitor.

  • 49 Posted by joe_lystad on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:38PM EDT Report Abuse

    This is a replacement for the Sony picturebook series, and the 505. It really isn't a netbook, but it is marketed as one. It's a small laptop, probably more for the Japanese market, as they appreciate small things having so little space. I'm sure the $900 will come down. I've used the trackpoint ball and it works fine, you don't hav eto keep taking your fingers off the keyboard to move around. As far as vista is concerned, you can make that as fast or as slow as you want by disabling services that aren't useful.

  • 50 Posted by joe_lystad on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:38PM EDT Report Abuse

    This is a replacement for the Sony picturebook series, and the 505. It really isn't a netbook, but it is marketed as one. It's a small laptop, probably more for the Japanese market, as they appreciate small things having so little space. I'm sure the $900 will come down. I've used the trackpoint ball and it works fine, you don't hav eto keep taking your fingers off the keyboard to move around. As far as vista is concerned, you can make that as fast or as slow as you want by disabling services that aren't useful.

  • 51 Posted by rdone43 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:33PM EDT Report Abuse

    What, are you kidding? I'm buying tomorrow - or as soon as possible- at $600, not a grand!

  • 52 Posted by calebmfreed@ymail.com on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:16PM EDT Report Abuse

    Do you realize that for 900 dollars you can buy an extremely nice laptop on today's computer market. I just bought a 4gb ram 2.0ghz dual core laptop for under 600 bucks. For 900 dollars I could pick some amazing laptops, that can do much more than just surf the web and listen to music.

  • 53 Posted by northgun09 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:41PM EDT Report Abuse

    I always thought the whole idea of a Netbook was to make it a cheaper alternative to a laptop for those who don't need all the features of a laptop, but what do I know. Many people think I'm crazy because I love Vista and will only put Vista on the Computers my company sells. If Vista wasn't on this machine I wouldn't even look at it.

  • 54 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Can it run WoW? That's my only benchmark for if the device is usable or not. If it can play WoW and it's that small - that is going to become my travel "notebook" for the future. That is an awesome size! Oh - any USB ports on it?

  • 55 Posted by carouselrealtors@ameritech.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:18PM EDT Report Abuse

    Wow Sony, Innovative! How many years ago was the Palm Folio in development?? Now, with their new OS and Pre cellphone ready to bury the iPhone, maye they should put that new OS into an updated Folio and bury Sony's overpriced stuff too.

  • 56 Posted by dougcepe on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:47PM EDT Report Abuse

    Boy you want to downgrade to XP, and not be a Windows Vista beta tester.

  • 57 Posted by backspacelll on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:01PM EDT Report Abuse

    you can get 2 to three crappy ones for the price of this..this one's specs aren't that great either

  • 58 Posted by much_clutch on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:29PM EDT Report Abuse

    Why can't I post to any of these blasted blogs????

  • 59 Posted by danielvice@ymail.com on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:35PM EDT Report Abuse

    The $900 price tag is the biggets hang up for me. I could not spend that kind of money on a machine that doesnt do much more than the ACER one that I just bought for $269.00 with an adapter I made to get 3G internet. It was lot better buy for nearly a third of the price.

  • 60 Posted by sherylbloodworth on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:19PM EDT Report Abuse

    I'm thinking (that)there will not be people camping out to buy this over priced netbook,instead they will wait to see if it's a hit or not,and then wait for the price to come down.Did Sony not know the economy is really bad right now?To have a miniature notebook priced (starting) at 900.00 is a little over the top!

  • 61 Posted by tewil1991 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:01PM EDT Report Abuse

    We bought the Acer Netbook around Christmas. It's small like this new netbook from Sony. We are very happy with the Acer Netbook because we only paid $99 for it at Radio Shack. It was a promotion for Christmas. Normally I think they cost around $399....but 99 bucks for a computer is awesome! We are really happy with it. Only drawback is that the standard battery only lasts 2 hours. But thats OK because we normally plug it in at home anyway. Another good thing is that it uses Windows XP. I'd like to see how this Sony compares to our Acer.

  • 62 Posted by drewwiv9661 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:48PM EDT Report Abuse

    I just bought a Dell Mini for a total cost of $448, half the price of the Sony Vaio, direct from Dell. My mini runs XP and Office XP, has wireless capability and 16g on the hard drive. They also had an option to get one with an integrated webcam, but I passed that up for the bigger memory. I'm thinking I got a better deal.

  • 63 Posted by nudeandnice on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:42PM EDT Report Abuse

    Maybe in 5 years or so we will be forced to buy Vista but in the meantime I can find very useful and frequently cheaper alternatives. I've steered friends away from nice new computers because it was such a hassle to install XP. Fortunately, there are a lot of used and some new computers that don't have Big Brother dictates driving the deal.

  • 64 Posted by t0bt0 on Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:47PM EDT Report Abuse

    soon, very soon we will work from local park and planes

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