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Sony Vaio P

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:01:35 -0600

The perfect device for leprechauns

The Sony Vaio P is a weird device. It’s much smaller than a netbook, but much better-equipped. It has wireless broadband access from Verizon, onboard GPS, a ThinkPad-style pointing stick, and an eye-straining high-resolution screen. It’s also incredibly expensive. So who exactly is the Vaio P for?

At just 9.8 inches across, 0.8 inches thick, and 4.8 inches deep, and weighing just one pound, five ounces, the Vaio P is made for mobility—it makes a 10-inch netbook look like a desktop replacement. Into those tiny dimensions Sony crams parts that—on paper—put your old Atom netbook to shame. The Vaio P uses a 2GHz Atom Z550 paired with the US15W chipset and GMA500 integrated graphics. By comparison, last year’s typical netbook used a 1.6GHz N280 on an Intel GSE945 chipset with GMA950 graphics. The Vaio P also ships with 2GB of DDR2/533 and a whopping 256GB Samsung MLC SSD, which itself is responsible for $700 of the Vaio P’s price tag. The full Windows 7 Professional OS is a welcome change from Windows XP—or worse, Windows 7 Starter.

The Vaio P’s eight-inch screen offers an eye-watering 1600x768 resolution. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a screen that was too sharp; reading text on it for more than a few minutes hurt our eyes.

The Vaio P's 1600x768 resolution is sharp--but you have to move in really close to appreciate it.

In fact, everything about the Vaio P is just a little too small. The chiclet-style QWERTY keyboard, though bigger than boards found on most MIDs and UMPCs, is still too small to type on comfortably, unless you have very nimble fingers. And the lack of a track pad hurts—the pointing stick, though reasonably sensitive, isn’t as precise. The speakers have zero low end at any volume; you’re much better off using the included headphones.

In our netbook benchmarks, the Vaio P fared about as well as we’d expect from a device with a faster CPU, more RAM, slower integrated graphics, and a smaller battery than our zero-point. It was 22 percent faster than the zero-point in our Photoshop benchmark and 50 percent faster in our MainConcept test, but 67 percent slower in Quake III, thanks to its crappier graphics chipset. Quake 4, which is unplayable on any non-Ion netbook, wouldn’t even run on the Vaio P. To our surprise, the Vaio P bested the Toshiba Satellite T115 ultrathin notebook from last month in MainConcept, though in nothing else. Battery life, at two hours, 24 minutes, is impressive only in light of the Vaio P’s size and the corresponding miniature battery.

So what do you make of a tiny, yet full-fledged computer with a screen that causes eyestrain, a keyboard that’s hard to type on, and a nearly $2,000 price tag? The Verizon-enabled 3G wireless data connection and turn-by-turn GPS (utilizing Microsoft Streets & Trips 2009), offer some clues. The Vaio P is for the ultimate road warrior: someone who values portability above all else. And we mean all else—battery life, usability, even money. But given that modern smartphones offer a more usable, albeit smaller, interface along with mobile data and turn-by-turn navigation, we’d warrant that even the hardiest road warrior would prefer the combination of a smartphone and an ultraportable that’s easier on the eyes and fingers. This leaves us with only one possible target demographic for the Vaio P: leprechauns. We can’t think of anyone else with the small fingers, sharp eyes, and pot o’ gold required to get the most out of this device.

Faster Atom Chips Could be Introduced Monday

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:45:11 -0600

It’s no secret that Intel’s Atom chips are a bit on the slow side. While we certainly like the battery efficiency, a bit more power would be great. It appears Intel is willing to appease us, and the announcement may come on Monday. Intel is expected to introduce the Pine Trail based Atom N470, which will be nearly the same as the N450, but clocked at 1.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz. We also heard a while back that the N470 netbooks would be allowed double the memory of the N450 units. We'll have to wait until Monday to see if that's still the case. It’s not a lot, but with Atom right at the edge of usability, every little bit helps.

Atom chips have been in high demand ever since netbooks took the PC market by storm. Atom offers lower power consumption than the previous low-power solution, the Core 2 ULV, but lags behind in processing power because of it. The N450 was released late last year, and quickly found its way into consumer products. Intel expects an equally speedy adoption of the N470. No word on if you will pay much of a premium for the new Pine Trail chip.

Asus Eee PC 1015P, 1016P, 1018p Netbooks to Launch at CeBIT

Bart Salisbury — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:09:50 -0600

Asus is preparing to bust out three new Eee PC netbooks at CeBit in March: the 1015P, 1016P, and the 1018P.

Each of the new models will sport a 10-inch screen, a chiclet keyboard, a webcam, a double array microphone, and a promised 14-hours of battery life for the 1015P and 1016P. Cases will be made of aluminum.

The 1018P will be slimmer than its compatriots, and will come with USB 3.0. Unfortunately, its battery will provide power for only ten hours.

Sadly, information on the guts of each machine is unknown. Full details will most likely emerge when they show themselves at CeBit.

Image Credit: blogeee.net

Adobe Debuts Flash 10.1 Beta 3 with Wider Netbook Support

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:45:34 -0600

Adobe has released the third beta version of Flash 10.1, and it comes with a nice treat for the early adopter on the move. Beta 3 finally adds GPU acceleration support for the Intel GMA 500 chipset. This is the graphics hardware found in the majority of netbooks. What does this mean in practical terms? Well, just 720p Flash video on a netbook, that’s all.

Over at Engadget they were able to coax a Dell Mini 10 to play back 1080p content as well. Both Youtube and CBS streaming appeared to work well enough with minor lag. Still, when any previous attempts to play this content brought a netbook to a grinding halt, you can’t be too picky.

The results are good for a beta. Sure, there’s still some jitter but it’s a vast improvement. Adobe has been racing to complete the update of the much maligned plug-in. The new beta gives us hope that the wait may be worth it. Get the beta 3 version of Flash right here and enjoy.

Dell's Mini 10 Gets the WiMAX Treatment

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:02:45 -0600

Both WiMAX and LTE are vying to be the successor to the current 3G mobile data standards. The first 4G LTE networks are going up around the world, but in the US they have yet to roll out. What we do see stateside is WiMAX 4G service beginning to crop up. Taking note of that, Dell has decided to offer a WiMAX option on the new version of the Mini 10.

The netbook has all the usual Wi-Fi 802.11 connectivity including the N standard. But that standard card can be replaced with a combo 802.11n/WiMAX card. This will give the system access to either Sprint 4G or Clearwire mobile broadband. The upgrade adds $60 to the price of the computer. If you want a new Mini 10 with all that 4G goodness, you can order now, but it won’t ship until early March.

Ubuntu Optimizes its OS for ARM CPUs

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:02:31 -0600

An ARM-based netbook running Ubuntu could be in your future with the newest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Much like Windows, the popular Linux distro did not previously have support for ARM processors. This meant you’d only see Ubuntu on Atom-based netbooks, a category dominated by Windows. With the anticipated flood of ARM packing “smartbooks” expected to materialize, the devs got to work rewriting Ubuntu.

According to Ubuntu’s Jamie Bennet, the problem was that Ubuntu Netbook Edition required 3D graphics drivers that didn’t exist for ARM chips. They got around this by employing 2D Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to fake a 3D interface. We’re hearing that you won’t be able to tell the difference in the interface. If true, that’s a big win for smartbooks and Ubuntu.

This may be the space that Ubuntu specifically, and Linux in general, can succeed in. Windows is completely locked out of the smartbook game until such time as Redmond gets around to adding ARM support. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Is an Ubuntu smartbook something you’d buy?

Asus Announces Convertible Netbook Tablet

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:49:49 -0600

The new Asus T101MT netbook tablet was spotted in an FCC filing back in December, but it’s now been made official. The systems comes with the familiar netbook internals including a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, a 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen (with touchscreen capabilities), and 1-2GB of RAM depending on which version of Windows 7 the customer opts for. Consumers will also have a choice between a 160GB hard drive, or a 320GB hard drive with 500GB of Asus cloud storage free for a year.

Of course, the real trick here is the rotating screen that swivels around to put the computer into tablet mode. The system is not obscenely heavy at 2.9 lbs, and will offer a reported 6.5 hours of battery life. As an extra added bonus the SD card slot will be able to read the new SDXC cards up to 32GB in size. No specifics on price or availability were announced, but we’ll keep an eye out. Does this sort of form factor interest you at all?

KDE's "Caikaku" Software Offers Social Network Apps for Netbooks

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:15:36 -0600

KDE has announced the “immediate availability” of KDE Software Compilation 4.4, dubbed “Caikaku”. According to KDE, version 4.4 fixes 7,293 bus and adds 1,433 new features. Probably the biggest new feature is the Plasma Workspace, designed especially for netbook users.

The Plasma Workspace, an alternative to the Plasma Desktop, is “specifically designed for ergonomic use on netbooks and smaller notebooks.” It allows better use of the smaller space available on netbooks, and will be more suitable for touchscreen input. The Plasma Netbook shell has a full-screen application launcher, search interface, and a Newspaper for widgets to display content from the web and small utilities.

There’s also a Social Desktop feature which updates the Community widget. Says KDE: “The new Social News widget shows a livestream of what is going on in the social network of the user and the new Knowledge Base widget allows users to search for answers and questions from different providers including openDesktop.org's own knowledge base.”

A goodly list of other improvements will be found at KDE's web site, along with links for downloading the new version.

Image Credit: KDE