Sony refuses to call its latest 8-inch mini note — the Vaio P Series
Lifestyle PC — a netbook. Why? It’s a far more capable device than
most netbooks, which justifies its price (twice that of most netbooks), Sony officials say. And boy, are they wrong.
If by "capable" they mean "stuff you can get done with it," then you’re
going to need to learn a lot of hot keys. Because the worst part of
this netbook (yes, I called it that) is its mouse. It’s a pointing
stick. A device this puny
is hard enough to use in the first place, and poking a piece of rubber
to make selections is just God-awful annoying. And for clicking, there
are
two wide, silver buttons beneath the space bar; they’re positioned so
awkwardly you’re going to pray you never have to right-click.
I don’t
exaggerate when I say this netbook’s small. The 8-inch LED screen
displays a high 1,600 x 768 resolution. That’s impressively sharp, but
it means onscreen type becomes extremely small, so even
if you have 20/20 vision, you’ll be squinting often to double check
what you type. And the netbook weighs a pound and a half — small enough
to stuff in a blazer pocket. (Let’s face it, though: The idea of
carrying one of these things in a
coat pocket screams "nerdy douche.")
Other than stifling your productivity, the Lifestyle’s slow
performance won’t help much either. This netbook ships with a 1.33-GHz
Intel Atom processor — not the standard 1.6-GHz Atom in other netbooks.
(For some reason, Sony treats Japan with faster processor options.) We ran some benchmarks on the Lifestyle, and it’s pretty damn sluggish.
For example, in our iTunes conversion test the Lifestyle took about 19
minutes to convert 25 tracks. By way of comparison, the MSI Wind U120
took 11 minutes to complete the same test. Did I mention the Lifestyle
ships with Vista? That’s probably making its performance even worse.
The keyboard isn’t great, either. It’s nice and roomy, but the keys
themselves feel very flat and unnatural to type on. The right Shift key
is extremely small, something that many consumers hate about other netbook
keyboards.
And did I mention the Lifestyle starts at $900? The base model includes
a 60-GB hard disk drive; the middle model ships with a 64-GB solid state drive
for $1,200; and the top-of-the-line Lifestyle costs $1,500 with a 128-GB
solid state. All models ship with a maxed out memory capacity of
2 GB of RAM. That’s pretty pricey compared to netbooks, which cost $400 on
average.
Don’t get me wrong: The Lifestyle is a truly beautiful device — a worthy highlight at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
The cooler part about the netbook is it ships with a built-in GPS
device, a 3G modem and Wi-Fi, meaning you’ll be able to connect to the
internet practically anywhere. Other bonuses include a multimedia card
reader (Memory Stick Duo and SD) and noise-canceling headphones.
Still, that’s a lot of money, and good looks and ultraportability aren’t
everything in the technology world. Surely, some of you travelers out
there will like this thing — maybe if you purchase a separate Bluetooth
mouse. Otherwise
I don’t see this being a good device for professionals or the typical
consumer.
We’ll post a full review soon after completing benchmarking and battery
testing. Don’t get your hopes up for battery life, though: The
Lifestyle ships with a 2-cell battery compared to the standard 3-cell
in netbooks.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Man, Post-it notes are so 20th century. Or are they? What if someone attached them to something early-21st-century, like, say, a Flash drive? Darumouse 
