Hasta La Gadget!

Belt tightening at Sony already underway during Sir Howard Stringer’s keynote.

There are plenty of directions to point fingers: trying to be a premium brand in a weak world economy, a strong Yen (harder to export) or difficulties in making the PlayStation 3 profitable, but whatever the cause, it looks like Sony lost $1.1 billion last year, the company’s first practical loss in 14 years. Of course, the report isn’t official just yet, earnings aren’t due until the 29th, and Sony has put out a statement to that effect, with no further comment — but let’s just say this is a pretty widely bandied number at this point. This seems to line up with rumors of additional cost cutting, with 16,000 jobs already cut at Sony thanks to the hard times. But don’t worry, the VAIO P with Windows 7 will save us all.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sony said to be sitting on $1.1 billion annual loss, first in 14 years originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like if you want to get a hands-on with Sony’s latest Walkman, the touchscreen NWZ-X1000, you’ve got to do two things: travel to Japan, and seriously glad-hand the product. Despite our efforts in Vegas, the Sony crew wouldn’t let us snag the player from under its glass housing, but the Stuff team gets to toy with the OLED-faced PMP in this video. From the looks of things, Sony is at pains to recreate something akin to Cover Flow, but the rest of the UI looks sadly like a whole bunch of Windows CE-based devices we see coming out of Asia on a daily basis. Of course, this might be an early iteration of the interface, so we’ll hold our final judgments till we get a thorough hands-on with the PMP. The player is set to come in 16GB and 32GB iterations, and will launch sometime this Summer. For now, enjoy the video after the break.

Update: Sony’s people tell us that you’re looking at $299 for the 16GB and $399 for 32 — right in line with the iPod touch.

[Via anythingbutipod]

Continue reading Sony’s NWZ-X1000 Walkman PMP handled on video

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Sony’s NWZ-X1000 Walkman PMP handled on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony hasn’t gotten very far along with these units — they’re really just plastic shells — but we like we’re they’re headed with it. They showed off a full-screen laptop (pictured), bendable e-reader, and Walkman bracelet concepts, all based around flexible OLED technology and built with “flexible bioplastics,” along with the flexible display that going to power them all when they hit the market… in the year 2000.

Filed under: Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Sony’s flexible OLED mockups originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just couldn’t help ourselves, and put this Windows 7 .iso we had lying around exactly where it belongs: on Sony’s VAIO P. After mucking around on “the internet” figuring out the best way to install it, we ended up going the lazy route and dragging / dropping the plain files onto a folder on a USB drive, hitting setup.exe and watching the installer do its magic — and it worked flawlessly! We weren’t timing it or anything, but we’d say 45 minutes or so is a good guesstimate for the install. A few thoughts:

• It boots fast! Not that Vista was that bad on the boot front, but we’re pretty happy with this.
• No Aero. That’s to be expected, but the lack of transparency and visual effects makes the OS look quite a bit different than most of the screenshots out there.
• It’s very responsive. To be honest, a lot of that could be from the fact that this is a clean install, minus all the crap Sony loads on. Still, we’re very happy for the start menu to pop open instantly, windows to redraw like God intended… it’s pretty great.
• Browsing is 100% better. Internet Explorer pops open in a flash, and pages load in times nearly on comparison with “real” computers. Also, scrolling is ultra smooth, whereas with Vista it was stuttery all the way down.
• There’s a lot more to explore. We’ve just scratched the surface, but we love what we’ve seen so far.

Update: both videos are after the break!

Update 2: for those who’ve asked: yes, the webcam works, and no, we haven’t had any luck getting Aero up and running, though we have the video drivers loaded — we’re not saying it’s impossible, in fact, it’s likely very possible, since plenty of other similarly specced netbooks can pull it off, but it’s just not happening for us just yet.

Continue reading VAIO P, now with more Windows 7

Filed under: Laptops

VAIO P, now with more Windows 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WiFi cameras are far from new — over the past couple of years, we’ve seen P&S after P&S arrive with minimal functionality that would allow it to sync pictures with one specific online photo portal (or similar). Sony has stepped up the game for cameras to come with the Cyber-shot DSC-G3, which is the first of its kind to include a web browser for logging into pay-hotspots and uploading to practically any photo sharing site on the web. Popular Science got to handle one for a few weeks, and in the end, they were in love with the idea but hesitant to praise the execution. The T700-turned-wireless took satisfactory pictures, but the browser experience was less than awesome. You can hit the read link for all the dirty details, but unless you’re willing to deal with “agonizingly” slow load times, you’re probably better off waiting for the next revision. Or for some other company to whip out a bona fide competitor.

Filed under: CES, Digital Cameras

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 WiFi camera reviewed: wait for generation two originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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