Sony finally enters the netbook market
SONY WILL BEGIN selling its first netbook computer next month by releasing the Vaio W.
The little beast is based around a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, so there is little that's unique about the basic hardware.
However, while it has a 10-inch screen like other netbooks, the Viao W display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels rather than the more common 1,024 by 600 pixels. That means more of a web page can fit onto the screen and the user therefore won't have to scroll as much.
The higher resolution screen might be enough to jam Sony's foot in the netbook door in Japan. But its price at $630 is more expensive than similar machines from Dell and Acer and might meet with resistance from netbook consumers who, after all, tend to look at netbooks rather than notebooks because of their low prices.
The Vaio W will go on sale in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Russia from August, and will be available via Sony's online store. North American launch details are yet to be announced.
Sony came close to launching a netbook earlier this year when it put the Vaio P on sale, however the outfit insisted that was a small notebook PC rather than a netbook. Sony's excuse then was that the Vaio P had a more top-of-the-range Atom under its bonnet.
The Vaio W measures 27 centimeters by 18cm by 2.7cm. It runs Windows XP and comes with 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard-disk drive, two USB ports, 802.11a/b/g wireless and Bluetooth. There's also a camera above the display and a built-in memory card reader. µ
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Sony really stick to their guns, take the Small Cheap Computer and make it Small Expensive Computer. You can just hear the marketing drones "Anyway we can lock in the memory stick too? Or maybe even a UMD drive, oh no wait we're ditching that, damn."
10" is still too small. Lenovo and Samsung (others will follow) are making netbooks with usable sized screens, 11.6 and 12" and I think both are on the ion platform, much better performance.
Naturally this move pisses off intel and MS who want to dictate to the world how big a netbook should be.
Are those dimensions for real? They're only a shaving off the size of my turn of the century Toshiba brick.
S = small
C = cheap
C = computer
Again, only scoring a single lonely C.
Good build quality, same specs as everyone else except for the miserable 3 cell battery and the stupid high price. Sony still thinks it can charge 25% to 50% more just because they put their name on it. Sheep will buy it but it will not be the big hit the Sony executives expect. Someone in the executive offices at Sony needs to be fired.
Not that we needed another one. Everyone else has already said it, stupid expensive and totally non differentiated from its competition. We can get a similar unit from Acer, MSI, Dell, Lenovo, Asus here in the states for less than 300 bucks. Now here comes sony with their nearly identical unit for more than twice the price....
Its no wonder that their business has been failing for years
Judging from my "Sony" experience, the battery will "wear out" after 2 years use (battery software - clever huh?) and you will either have to buy a new battery or for a couple of bucks more, buy a new notebook.
Sorry no more Sony or Philips products for me - too much evidence of planned obselence.
Yay for netbooks with Sony Tax. NOT.
i would happily pay extra for a netbook with a 720p screen instead of the crap resolution most netbooks have (1366x768 is 720p compliant)
the rest of you are just sony haters.
Gateway has a new netbook with a 11.6" LED backlit display at 720P and it starts at $399 and you can get it with a 6 cell battery. I would take it over the Sony any day.
Lenevo is at 720P too and cheaper.
re: "this move pisses off intel and MS"
Geesus, what have you been smoking ?
Why would Intel care about how big the screen size is --- except for the fact a bigger screen would cost more and that would mean fewer sales. Don't you want it to be cheaper than a full-sized laptop ? Read the tech news. Intel came out with the Atom to enable cheap laptops.
If you want a big screen, get a standard laptop. Even $300 is too much for netbooks. I want a $200 netbook for the kinds of things it's good for.
You would think so, but Intel are actually very picky about what the Atom goes into. The Atom is dirt cheap, and they only really want it in cheap machines. They want to sell more powerful processors for conventionally-sized and priced laptops and desktops, and set rules accordingly.
Would you put a 100 hp engine in a Corvette ? It's no better to build up an Atom-based netbook to trick people into buying something they'll be unhappy with. Most buyers hardly know what a PC is.
Google "netbook survey unhappy". One quote : "Six out of every 10 netbook buyers figured that their new netbook would have the same functionality as a laptop".
No wonder that Intel thinks cheap Atoms should only be sold in cheap netbooks and not dressed up.
Sony would do better to release the BIOS update for all those VT capable notebooks they sold with VT locked off.
Either that, or they are toast with the advent of Windows 7 and XP Mode which requires VT to work -- if they don't enable it nobody will ever buy their notebooks.
All the nonsense about VT being locked by the bios in sony notebooks would never have cropped up if people had bothered to research intel cpus. They'd know that it isn't the bios that keeps VT virtualization from being activated, it's the CPU. Unlike AMD, Intel segments their product feature functions by price. ALL AMD cpus have virtualization today. The Intel cpus included in almost sony vaios except the business class are cpus that don't have any virtualization capability because intel built them that way, bios or no bios.
You can flash and hack the bios to say that VT is enabled, those sony vaios' intel cpus will still NEVER have hardware VT.