Posts tagged netbook

The Sony Vaio W netbook

Meet the Sony Vaio W– Sony’s first venture into the ever growing world of netbooks (ok, in my opinion it’s the second Sony netbook– the first being the Vaio P they announced back in January, though Sony will never admit that it’s a netbook, even though it fits all the netbook descriptions). Anyways, back to the Sony Vaio W netbook. At first glance (as you can see in the pic above) this netbook definitely stands out, and is much more stylish looking than your traditional netbook that you’d find from ASUS, HP, Dell or Acer, instead keeping to the Sony Vaio style even in this smaller, cheaper model.

Beyond that nice outside design though, Sony keeps the inside to the standard netbook specs that you find on pretty much every netbook out there: 1.6 GHZ Intel Atom processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive, webcam, memory card slot, Windows XP, WiFi and Bluetooth, etc. It does though have a 10.1 inch HD screen (a resolution of 1366×768– or very good and clear for a 10 inch computer screen, making viewing things like videos and pix much better and easier to do), a “chicklet” keyboard (like those found on regular Vaio’s and MacBooks) which is 86% the size of your standard keyboard, and Sony’s Vaio Media Plus software for streaming your music, movies, and pix to and from the netbook with other PC’s and the PS3.

My thoughts on this new netbook? It’s nice, but I personally am not sold on it particularly with it having a smaller than average netbook keyboard (the average netbook has about 92% size of a regular keyboard like those found on normal laptops– and trust me, from someone writing this post on a netbook– an HP Mini 2140– that extra 6% is important, especially when you’re gonna need to write a lot like with notes in school). It also is still a Sony, so don’t expect the price to be so cheap– they’re saying it will be about $500, and you can get a much better deal on a netbook with a better keyboard from one of those other companies mentioned above for well below that $500 price (Best Buy.com for example, has some pretty good deals on some solid ASUS netbooks with pretty close to the exact same specs for only $300).

Anyways, if you really want a Sony computer (or a netbook that is really more style oriented than anything else),  but never wanted to pay a “premium” price for a traditional Sony laptop, here’s your chance to pick one up when it launches sometime in mid-August in either black, white or pink.