Hasta La Gadget!

Remember the boardshort-inspired VAIO W Billabong netbook that surfaced in Australia last week? The limited edition lappy’s headed stateside, too, and its Imperial Lime lid and faster 1.83GHz Atom N470 CPU will only cost you $50 more than the stock model. Mind you, this is otherwise the same pricy VAIO W that wasn’t worth five Benjamins last fall, but if you’re the type that dreams of barreling down a tunnel of deep blue ocean nightly, we suppose the occasional concession can’t hurt. Now available for preorder via the source link, the mini-notebook ships June 11th; PR after the break.

Continue reading Sony’s VAIO W Billabong hits US shores June 11th, $500 buys you a ride

Sony’s VAIO W Billabong hits US shores June 11th, $500 buys you a ride originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony has dropped its not-a-netbook Vaio P into a vat of candy-colored paint, tossed in an accelerometer, a 3G chipset, GPS, a compass and a pair of touchpads and given it a good shake. Amazingly, given this low-tech approach to R&D, the new P turned out pretty good.

The Vaio P, now officially dubbed a notebook by Sony’s PR team, is the familiar purse-sized computer we’ve come to know and ignore: It runs Windows 7 on it’s too-small 8-inch 1600×768 screen via the ultra-mobile Atom Z540 chip (with Intel GMA 500 graphics), 64GB SSD and 2GB RAM, and it eschews a trackpad in favor of a nubbin. The new hardware certainly takes it into the iPad/iPhone/Android league of portability, with the compass, GPS and 3G hooking up with turn-by-turn navigation.

In fact, you can even wander down the street and use the Vaio P as you obliviously bump into fellow pedestrians, just like you can with a cellphone, thanks to an optical trackpad and mouse buttons either side of the screen, for “two-handed operation while standing or walking.” The cellphone/iPad comparisons fall down with the battery life. Sony claims just five hours, which should be halved to get the real time. You can, if you like, pop on a bigger pack for double the life.

Finally, the accelerometer will also flip pages as you turn the Vaio P on its side, which will let you read it like a book. A very tall and thin book, but you get the idea.

The new Vaio P will be available in June, price to be decided. Given that the current 64GB model is $1000, Sony might want to lower the price to a more iPad-competitive level. Then again, an extra $200 for a keyboard and crappy battery life might be just what some people are looking for.

Press release [Sony]

See Also:

• First Look: Sony Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC
• Just Why Isn't the Sony Vaio P a Netbook?
• Video: Sony's Svelte Vaio P Runs OS X

Well, here’s a bit of a surprise. In an interview with PC Pro, the deputy president of Sony’s VAIO Business Group, Ryosuke Akahane, has revealed that the company will soon be effectively splitting its laptop business into two distinct groups. The first, called “division one,” will continue with laptops designed and built by Sony as before, but the second, or “division two,” will rely on laptops built by other manufacturers. Those behind-the-scenes changes may not be readily apparent to consumers, however, as the so-called division two laptops will still carry the VAIO name, and will apparently have the same “taste of VAIO” and “style of VAIO,” with Sony naturally first approving all third-party designs. Presumably, this will also lead to some less expensive VAIO laptops, although Akahane was quick to point out that it’s not following the Dell model with different brands at different price points, saying instead that a new brand is “not efficient,” and that it wants to “enhance the identity of VAIO more and more.”

Sony announces ‘division two’ series of VAIO laptops built by other manufacturers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What does that look like to you? We’re thinking an updated VAIO P given that stretched form factor. The previously unheard of VAIO model PCG-11111L is definitely a Sony of some sort complete with CDMA850 and CDMA1900 courtesy of Qualcomm’s Gobi silicon. Just don’t get your hopes up that it’ll be sporting Qualcomm’s latest chipsets with HSPA+ and LTE coverage as it looks like those frequencies will be locked out with the help of some rather unhelpful firmware at launch. It’ll also be packing 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR whenever it does make its first appearance, which, by the looks of a very specific confidentiality request, will be on around May 13th at a Sprint or Verizon retail store. Check the radio bill of materials and CDMA2000 declaration after the break if that’s what turns you on… really, that’s cool, we’re not going to judge.

Update: Looks like PCG-11112L has joined the party, but its only claim to fame is “acting as slave and operating on 2.4GHz band.” Sorry, no EVDO for this one.

Continue reading Sony VAIO P model PCG-11111L hits FCC with EVDO

Sony VAIO P model PCG-11111L hits FCC with EVDO originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony’s illustrious VAIO Z may have a so-called “Dynamic Hybrid Graphics System,” but NVIDIA’s Optimus it is not. Or is it. Notebook Review‘s own igorstef started digging deeper within the laptop’s switchable GPU setup, and lo and behold, it sure looks as if Optimus is underneath. He went through the painstaking process of installing a slew of new drivers and tweaking some code within select .inf files, and in the end he seemingly found a way to get Optimus drivers working on the new rig. Of course, the debate has been raging on for five pages now, and it still seems inconclusive as to what’s really going on behind the scenes. In related news, ZoinksS2k seems to have discovered a way to get Windows 7’s TRIM feature working on his SSD-equipped VAIO Z, and if you’re interested in doing some tinkering of your own in either case, you know where to dive in.

[Thanks, Bill]

NVIDIA’s Optimus uncovered in Sony VAIO Z, along with TRIM support? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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