At CES Sony were showing off their new laptop, the Vaio P Series.
At CES it was very difficult to actually get a look at it and touch it, so Ian and myself went to the Sony store in Caesars Palace where they had a few of them on display and running, and you could actually use them! Of course, the first thing that Ian did was fire up Windows Media Center, but that’s another story!
The device itself is very small, and extremely light weight, at a little over half a kilo. There are a few different models, with the lowest processor being an Atom Z520, which is 1.33 GHz and the highest processor being an Atom Z530, which is 1.60 GHz. They all come with 2 GB ram as standard and the operating system is either Windows Vista Home Premium for the lowest spec and Windows Vista Business for the others. The top of the range one has a 128 GB SSD hard drive and an extended battery that Sony claims will last for around 8 hours, although the usual caveats apply with power settings, etc.
Due to the size of the device, there is no built in CD or DVD drive and there is also no Ethernet port, although there are a couple of USB ports and built in WiFi.
The screen itself is a widescreen 8” display capable of extremely high quality images, and it also sports a full size keyboard, although it doesn’t have a trackpad. Oh, and did I mention it comes in a variety of different colours? Personally I’m rather partial to the Volcano Red!
My biggest issue with this device is the price. Even ignoring for a moment the fact that most other netbooks cost only a few hundred dollars at most and this is a lot more expensive (you are paying for the Sony name, but also the quality), for us here in the UK, the price is even higher! The cost of the lowest spec one, the VGN-P530H in US and VGN-P11Z in the UK is almost pound for dollar. The US price is $899.99 and the UK price is £849.00, which in dollars is approximately $1400, so $500 more expensive in the UK for the equivalent model. So, I appreciate that there is always a slight difference in price, but that is way over top, and it feels like the UK is being ripped off.
I am hoping to get my hands on one shortly to do a proper review – so watch this space.
If anyone out there already has one, let us know what you think about it.
Red is nice – picked a P up in New Zealand on my latest travels and it works really well as an internet browser. Screen is really nice and have played some 720p video on it. Particularly like the fact it is widescreen.
Thanks Garry – thats good to hear. How do you find the performance? Ian and I noticed that Media Center seemed a bit sluggish, but that might have been because it was pre-production.
Performance is a bit sluggish I’d certainly recommend the higher spec Atom as that is livable with. Haven’t tried Windows 7 on it yet and suspect that might be better.
Having pruned vista of Sony’s preloaded apps I have to say I’m impressed. The only issue I have now is boot up time which is prety long though that may be to do wth having an ssd and vista.
Media Center is now quite snappy and content plays very smoothly even WMVHD.
Very impressed with how it handles TunerFreeTV as well
Didn’t get it for its media capablilites but its certainly usable.
Having pruned vista of Sony’s preloaded apps I have to say I’m impressed. The only issue I have now is boot up time which is prety long though that may be to do wth having an ssd and vista.
Media Center is now quite snappy and content plays very smoothly even WMVHD.
Very impressed with how it handles TunerFreeTV as well
Didn’t get it for its media capablilites but its certainly usable.
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the first thing I do on any PC is load Media Center. I seem to remmber you being fond of the pink model…
I think you will find it was the Red 🙂
Red is nice – picked a P up in New Zealand on my latest travels and it works really well as an internet browser. Screen is really nice and have played some 720p video on it. Particularly like the fact it is widescreen.
Thanks Garry – thats good to hear. How do you find the performance? Ian and I noticed that Media Center seemed a bit sluggish, but that might have been because it was pre-production.
Performance is a bit sluggish I’d certainly recommend the higher spec Atom as that is livable with. Haven’t tried Windows 7 on it yet and suspect that might be better.
Having pruned vista of Sony’s preloaded apps I have to say I’m impressed. The only issue I have now is boot up time which is prety long though that may be to do wth having an ssd and vista.
Media Center is now quite snappy and content plays very smoothly even WMVHD.
Very impressed with how it handles TunerFreeTV as well
Didn’t get it for its media capablilites but its certainly usable.
Having pruned vista of Sony’s preloaded apps I have to say I’m impressed. The only issue I have now is boot up time which is prety long though that may be to do wth having an ssd and vista.
Media Center is now quite snappy and content plays very smoothly even WMVHD.
Very impressed with how it handles TunerFreeTV as well
Didn’t get it for its media capablilites but its certainly usable.
Thanks Garry, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one soon!