My, oh my. The Sony VAIO P is a popular netbook. After using some Peter Ha-taught ninja skills, I made my way through the crowd to this tiny netbook. Overall, the netbook feels Sony solid. The nub was a tad finicky but it works. The resolution though is astoundingly high on the small screen. I love small font but at the default setting it was too small for me. Thankfully the P Series does support external displays. It’s small, it carries the standard high Sony price, but it does seem nice. If you can get used to the mouse nub and small font, that is.
Photo gallery after the jump.
Photo Gallery by Picturesurf
We think that Vaio P is another mistake by Sony. Here are the reasons:
1. Poor Usability. From playing with the P on the CES show floor, the units are DOG slow running Vista. It just isn’t usable. I don’t know if it’s all the Sony crap software that’s slowing the unit down or if it’s Vista itself. But either way, it’s a very terrible experience. With no programs running, clicking on the Start button takes a few seconds to respond. Vaio P needs Windows 7 badly to improve on performance.
2. High price tag. In a world where netbooks go for around $350 – $500, Sony is selling the P for a price tag of $899 to $1499 depending on configuration. Ya, we know Sony isn’t calling the P a netbook, but I can call my Honda a Ferrari too.
3. Short battery life. In a world where *cheap* netbooks are getting 7 hours of battery life, the P has 2-4 hours of battery life. Excuse me? Am I hearing that right? Ouch.
4. Instant-On is just a gimmick. The Vaio P comes with a feature called Instant On, where you can boot into its Linux OS in 20 seconds to do some basic tasks like web surfing, playing music or videos, etc. From our brief look, it looks to be more gimmicky than anything. First of all, instant-on is hardly instant since it takes 20 seconds. Then, when we tried to load the web browser, it took another 10 seconds for the first time. That’s not really that fast now, is it? Sony, you should just put Windows 7 on when it becomes available and take this instant-on feature off.
5. Awkward Size. Hey, the size is good for looks, but its dimensions are neither really usable nor pocketable. When we were testing out the unit, one guy actually tried to put it in his jacket pocket and he almost ripped it (LOL!).
You can see picture of this poor guy here: http://www.skratchboard.com/?p=299
- J.
dream .. because in my country i cant buy this netbook((