Review: Life With The Sony Vaio P Netbook

Posted by: Gadgetman at 4:04 pm, January 29th, 2009

The Vaio P is Sony's new very small netbook (for those of you who are just tuning in to the netbook show, netbooks are smaller and generally less expensive notebook computers, usually built around the Intel Atom processor). Sony, as is often the case, has taken a different approach to netbooks. Because the Vaio P is quite different, this blog will be updated frequently over the next week or so as I wade through the many interesting features and design elements Sony has delivered.
 
If you missed my unboxing blog, you can see pictures of the box content and the Vaio P with other items for scale here:

http://www.avguide.com/blog/unboxing-the-tiny-sony-vaio-p-netbook

Since part of the netbook story involves low price, let's get that out of the way. The basic Sony Vaio P VGN-P530H/Q, with 60Gb hard drive, costs $899. More expensive versions are available with larger silcon-based drives (not the electro-mechanical hard drive of the base model). From one perspective, that’s not a lot because previous small Sony notebooks have cost $2000 or more. On the other hand, many netbooks are priced under $500, so the Vaio P is premium-priced.
 
Is it worth it?

Well, one distinguishing feature of the Vaio P -- in fact the distinguishing feature at first glance -- is its size. This baby is small. I had the Vaio P in the AVGuide.com offices next to a Lenovo ideapad netbook (see picture above; note that the ideapad is much smaller than a normal notebook). The Sony is so small and sleek that no one who saw both did more than glance at the Lenovo (a very nice netbook btw).

One benefit of the small size is that you can actually use the Vaio P while standing. That’s because it is very light (1.5 lb.), and also because it has such a small footprint that it doesn’t tilt and tip on your hand (as you can see from the picture, the Vaio P is smaller front to back than my hand).

The other benefit of very small size is that the Vaio P encourages you to bring it along. The size and weight seem less than a Daytimer or Filofax, and when you have it on a conference table or in a restaurant, the small screen doesn’t feel like a barricade between you and others.

Small size requires a small keyboard. The Vaio P has taken that to about the right level, at least a far as key size goes. You can touch type just fine, for the most part. I found myself making only a few more errors than on my 17” MacBook Pro, with one exception. The shift key is very small (same size as any letter). As a result, I often hit the key next to the shift key (which happen to be the "Up" arrow). Suddenly, I'm typing on the next line. Not good. The keys themselves are slightly less than full size, so if you have larger than normal fingers, your results may not be as good as mine.

The Vaio P also uses an eraser-head pointing device rather than a touchpad. While this is usable, it isn’t nearly as fast or fluid as a touchpad, and so represents a compromise that some will find objectionable (IBM popularized the eraser head and I noted that the larger Lenovo – formerly IBM – netbook uses a touchpad).

The screen is also smaller than normal. It offers 768 lines of resolution, but those 768 vertical pixels are crammed into 3.5” of space. While clarity is superb, text is small. I found it created a bit of eyestrain. Still, if I could do it over for Sony, I’d make the screen 3.9” tall but no higher resolution to increase reading comfort. Still 768 pixels is better than the 600 pixels offered on some netbooks. 600 pixels, with all the menu overhead of most applications, leaves too little active area for easy usage.
 
Thankfully, Sony has delivered 1600 pixels of horizontal resolution. Why is 1600 pixels important? Well, for many applications it is overkill, but since a lot of netbooks have 1024 pixels horizontally, let me mention that 1024 isn't enough. That's because most web sites are 1024 pixels wide, so that with some browser controls a 1024 screen can't quite display a 1024 wide site. The region of 1280 to 1440 pixels wide is a better choice. 1600 does the job, except for the issue with small text, and it does allow spreadsheets to be very wide and formatting palettes and the like to be on screen without crowding.
 

Since netbooks are small, and the Vaio P is especially so, connectivity is key. For wired connectivity, you have to use a dongle (see the unboxing blog), but wired connections really aren't the idea here. The Vaio P has WiFi, of course, with built-in 802.11 b/g/n capability. It also has the unusual but very logical addition of WWAN built in. Wireless Wide Area Networking means that you can connect to 3G "cell phone" services so that you have low-speed broadband capability pretty much anywhere you can find a good cell signal. To really take advantage of the always with you, connect anytime element of a netbook, this is a must have for avid travellers. It isn't perfect, it isn't super fast, and it is expensive, but if you've become addicted to, say, an iPhone's ability to bring up the web almost anywhere, you'll want this in a netbook.
 
Many of the usage scenarios where WWAN is valuable, are also usage scenarios where a quick boot feature would be desirable. Say you're in a restaurant and the topic of the NCAA tournament schedule comes up. You might like to whip out your Vaio P and find the answer on ESPN.com. But then you remember that the Windows Vista boot time on the Vaio P is 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Well, Sony knows about this and has included an "Instant Mode". By pressing a button on the keyboard you boot to the Sony Xross Media Bar instead of booting to Windows. This takes, by my measurement, 23 seconds instead of 160 seconds. The Xross Media Bar (familiar to PS/3 users) lets you browse the web. You can also look at pictures, listen to music, and watch videos. Very nice.
 
Still 23 seconds isn't exactly instant. An iPhone is instant. And in the PC world, Phoenix technologies has a piece of software called HyperSpace, that does what Sony's Instant Mode does, at least for the web. But HyperSpace is truly instant (the PC is on by the time you've opened the screen). I'll have more to say about HyperSpace next week in another blog.