Is Sony’s new Vaio P the new Lord of the Mini Notebooks? The tiny mini-me laptop weighs a puny 600grams, with 60GB HDD or 128GB SSD.
Available in Autralian on Feb 14 (Sony tells us they’ll be taking preorders later this month) the new laptop is tiny at only 28cm x 20cm.
The good – tiny, and killer battery life
While we’re not sure the 8inch screen is as useful as, say a 10in Eee PC 1000H, there’s no doubt the Vaio P totally outdoes the Eee PC line in the executive toy stakes.
The 8in screen has a 1600 x 768 resolution, LED backlit screen and you get 2GB RAM and a 1.33GHz processor, with either 60GB HDD or 128GB solid state drive. There’s 802.11n, and in the US models “realtime” GPS.
To my mind the killer feature is the battery – Sony claims 4 hours on the standard battery, b ut that jumps to 8 with an optional 6 cell battery. While we’ve reported excellent battery results with the ASUS Eee PC 1000H and MSI Wind notebooks, not all mini systems are so impressive.
Also good to see is 3G broadband under the hood, another feature gradually making its way into more notebooks (Dell has been doing this for over a year).
The not so good - Vista and the price
Given that the Vaio P starts in the US for $899, after the exchange rate it’s not going to be good value versus the rest of the mini netbook crowd. Also, we spoke to Sony’s reps who told us the high end model will retail for $5999 in Australia, though we’re going to recheck this with them.
Also, this is being marketed as a Vista machine, with no XP option as far as we’ve been told. Not so great when you consider the 1.33GHz CPU.
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| The Vaio P - Business envelope sized |
