Sony Life Style: at last the truly portable computer
By Gareth Powell
The Sony VAIO P-Series or more simply, the Sony Lifestyle PC, is a revolution for Sony in two senses of the word. It is the most seriously portable computer it has ever made. And it is afforable as in $899.
For many perpetually perambulating journalists life is one long search for the perfect portable notebook.
The closest was perhaps the Sharp PC-3000 which was hampered by a very slow operating system from Woking in England and some non-standard plugs. If you lost the connecting wire you were stuffed forever. And yet this truly odd machine won the hearts and minds of journalist everywhere. Mine — it does not work any more — is on my desk as I type this.
Sony has now produced a very serious rival. The Sharp measured 8.5 x 1.8 x 4.4 inches. This new Sony Life Style measures 9.6 x 0.8 4.7 inches. Yes, there is a difference – the Sony is slightly longer and considerably slimmer. And it is only — you can use the term if yoiu compare it to Sony normal pricing — $899.
The previous lightweight contender, the Sony VAIO VGN-UX180P cost $1,799 — twice as much as the new machines — and a lot of users were unhappy with the keyboard. It looked a bit like a mobile phone with delusions of grandeur. It is currently unavailable from normal retail channels and there are none on eBay. At a guess it has died the death.
The new computer looks as though it has a much better chance. First of all it is priced closer to reality. That is the head person Sir Howard Springer — he is Welsh and therefore a decent chap — winning his first battle against the Old Guard at Sony. He wants to get Sony prices competitive. They want the Sony tradition of high prices for the name and quality goods to remain. It appears that his view is starting to prevail.
Some journalists who have had their hands on the new machine worry about the keyboard. Which is a bit daft. The number of journos who work with hunt and peck is legend. And there are many, the writer included, who are very happy to write long screeds using such a keyboard.
This is a clamshell and Sony seem to think the ideal market is women. Apart from that being somewhat sexist it is also rubbish. The target market is people who travel incessantly and want to cut down on essential weight.
This Vaio, weighing in at 1.4 pounds is, for the business traveler, the business. And it looks unique. Like nothing else on the market. Here, plainly, Sony wants to dissociate the Lifestyle PC from the MSI Wind, the Asus eeePC, the Advent 4211-B and the Acer Aspire One. And it has succeeded.
The 8-inch LED screen is unique. It has a vastly improved resolution over most notebooks. It is 1,600 X 768 while normally you would be working with 1,024 X 600. Which, Sony insists, allows you do jazzy things like having three file Explorer windows without any overlap. Why you would want to do that is not explained. It sounds that one of the marketing people got carried away and forgot the point of the exercise. At Sony, that happens a lot.
For me the interesting point is the keyboard.
No one could speed type on the UX180P in the same way that no one can speed type on the iPhone.
This desirable Lifestyle has an 87 percent, which means it is bigger than that of the Sharp PC-3000 and it was possible to really hammer stuff through with that. You would have to get used to it but that is no great problem.
The individual keys are slightly raised with well-defined spacing between them, like the ones on, yes, the Sharp PC-3000 and the Sony VAIO VGN-TT190.
There is some sort of daft pointing stick to be used in place of a touchpad but I always use a mouse going in through the USB port OR, and this is very easy to do, change all the mouse work to keyboard work. Once you get used to it you realize that touchpads are a much over-rated hobby.
The Lifestyle PC’s comes with different color options, including green, white, and red but I would like mine in muted gray to suit my modest and retiring nature.
Sony is getting to be serious about accessories and there are sleeves — some in leather — which look pretty ace. And, a feature I love, Lifestyle PC also comes standard with a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
Windows Vista Basic, Home Premium, and Business are your only options. If you do not want to run it in Windows you can run it in Linux although that is not for me.
The Lifestyle PC has two USB 2.0 ports,separate card slots for both Memory Stick and Secure Digital formats. The hard drive is 60 gigs which for me is more than enough. Spend a lot more money and you can have a 128 GB solid state drive.
The 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520 is slower than the 1.6GHz N270 Atom processors found in the HP Mini 1000, the MSI Wind or my Advent. This is not a problem. For what it will be used it will more than suffice. And, plus point, it will extend the battery life.
The UX180P when it was launched was US$2,000 which was a totally daft price. The Lifestyle PC costs $899 and the writer is buying one.
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January 8th, 2009
Maybe with the cut backs at MSFT, I guess they will be giving these computers out instead of the Ferrari’s to the bloggers and astroturfers who write favorable comments about MSFT.
Must be a pretty good gig to get free computers and software. Maybe I should start my own blog and call it “Why Microsoft is so great”.
Anyway, nice looking laptop. I’ll take the Linux version.