Posted: May 16th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Design, Innovation, Reviews, Technology, Uncategorized, mobility | Tags: battery life, keyboard, netbook, Sony, vaio p, video performance, viliv s5 | 2 Comments »
It’s been a few months now with the little Sony Vaio P and it’s time for a little round up of what I love, admire, and despise about it all in one post. I’ve used it for 3 weeks straight at one point as my only laptop to see if it could replace my Macbook Air as my primary and only home computer and I’ve put it through some real world tests for battery life as well. Oh yes and last but not least, I’ve come to a final decision on whether to keep this netbook or not (I don’t care what you say Sony, this is definitely a netbook). So here we go…
OVERALL DESIGN 8/10: This thing is an absolute beauty, it actually breaks necks wherever I pull it out. I can honestly say that when using it at the airport, the amount of comments and eyeballs I get with this thing will justify alone that this is worth the price tag over any other netbook out in the market for some. It’s very well crafted, elegantly designed and absolutely tiny by all means.
The build quality is good, but not great. It feels really light – which is great, but it also feels a little plasticky with the choice of materials. I mean all netbooks are made quite cheap, but for the price tag of the Vaio P, I would assume a better build quality. Yes the glossy material is a fingerprint magnet as many have suggested, but this really doesn’t bother me at all – as stunning as the Vaio P is, it’s there to work and to use and not to look at. Yes you can fit it in your back pocket (although I don’t recommend it) and you can put it in your jacket pocket if needed as well. A pretty well designed piece of hardware overall I must say.
It has the best keyboard I have ever used on a netbook. Just about the perfect width for typing – I felt like I could type about the same speed as any regular notebook. The layout is great, there are some random Sony proprietary key shorcuts, but again this is the best keyboard found yet on any netbook out there.
The only negative I have – and it’s a big one, is the 1600×1024 resolution is way to high for the screensize. It’s actually ridiculous, I noticed myself putting the Vaio P about 5 inches from my face to read a tweet or read a blog post. Yes you can increase the size of fonts in your browser etc. but the fact that the native resolution is 1600 means lots of squinting and headaches.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE 7/10: This is the big question everyone has been asking – how does it perform. Let me start by stating that I have the 1.33 model with the 60GB HD, so this is the base model and should be the slowest of all models out there (yes I cheaped out, but come on, it’s pretty damn expensive as is). I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible, but overall I thought the performance was acceptable for my daily use. It doesn’t help that it comes bundled with Vista (although people have installed XP and Windows 7 and have seen some decent performance bumps), but if you strip down Vista and get rid of all the smoke and mirror effects and transitions it will run much better and in my opinion, very respectfully. It also doesn’t help that Sony has pre-installed lots of crappy proprietary software which just hogs lots of the memory and performance, but this too can be uninstalled.
To be fair to the little Vaio – it probably did at least 70 percent of what I normally do on a daily basis just fine. When it comes to normal browsing, blogging/microblogging, skype, and instant messaging – the Vaio P does a pretty decent job. Besides the ultra high squinting resolution of the screen, I would say if this is what you do on a daily basis and have the money to burn, then this could be a good fit for you. Browsing with firefox works great, video call with skype – although sometimes with a little lag, overall works good as well.
VIDEO PERFORMANCE 5/10: So the things that it didn’t do just fine? Lets get a few things out of the way first and foremost. Watching dvix/xvid videos works pretty good, I’m talking 700 MB movies that I download from well…somewhere on the internet. If you go to HD quality movies, then I’m afraid you have the wrong companion as it will chug like no ones business – it’s just not meant for heavy duty videos and gaming of course which I don’t really do anyway.
Web video is a mixed bag. Streaming video from places like Youtube worked, but on the other hand sites like Vimeo and Daily Motion stuttered completely. Youtube HD does not work, even high quality youtube clips stuttered sometimes. I also had to go into the flash video settings in youtube to deselect an option for regular clips to play smooth. Once this was checked off fullscreen regular youtube clips worked ok, although it almost always lags at the beginning and stutters for a few moments before eventually finding its way. All in all streaming video is not a great experience…which is a big minus for the Vaio P. Flash video is cpu intensive, but with most netbooks out there doing a decent job of streaming video, I can’t let this point go without saying that the Vaio P really sucks for not getting this right.
BATTERY LIFE 6.5/10: This would totally get a 5/10 if it wasn’t for the extra extended battery that comes packaged with the Vaio P. The normal battery on average use which includes wifi on most of the time, screen brightness about about 50 percent, simple browsing with the occasional youtube videos, micro blogging and checking emails – will last maximum 2 hours. The extended one should get double right? Well not really, I’ve never used the Vaio P from full charge with the extended battery for more than 3 hours.
On a good note, the extended battery is much bigger, but also acts as a keyboard stand for the laptop. With the added girth it raises the keyboard on an angle and makes it more comfortable to type, it also doesn’t look bad at all and the design of the extended battery seems very well thought out. It does make the device much heavier, but its well worth it as even 3 hours is not very great at all.
OTHER FEATURES 5/10: I know people will ask me if I tried the 3G with the device – the short answer is no. For some odd reason I’ve never been one to take my sim card out or get another data only card for my laptop. I see the value in it, but I have never tried it…sorry no review here. I’m sure if works great and as advertised, but for me this a moot point. I have a phone which I can tether to the Vaio P, but mostly I will almost always be browsing with wifi, otherwise I’ll stick to my mobile device for any browsing and emails.
There is a mode where you can boot up the Vaio P real quick into a really simple UI that has the bare necessities, like calendar, emails and a stripped back browser. If you’re looking for a in depth review on this then you’ve come to the wrong place – it sucks big time. I think I booted it up many twice and was horrified at how cheap and not thought out it was. The fonts are all messed up, the browser is horrible and to be honest I don’t see the value of having this here. Yes it may save you 30 min of battery life, but if you’re going to do something – do it right. This feature just seems to have been thrown together at the last second.
Other things like sound quality of speakers – ok I guess, but nothing spectacular, I’ve heard better on a netbook. Let’s just say you wont be throwing a party around these speakers anytime soon, good thing it comes with decent headphones.
FINAL CONCLUSION: After spending almost a month as my main computer and actively trying to test the Vaio P with my normal use behaviors I have come to the grand conclusion. It’s a pretty little thing that if priced competitively would be a hot seller, but because of the price point I had to let it go and I am no longer the proud owner of the Sony Vaio P.
It is a good netbook, pretty similar performance wise to any other netbook out there – I mean they all have the same specs under the hood anyways right? So what you have to ask yourself is do the good looks, wide screen, high resolution and great keyboard make that much of a difference for price you’ll pay – for me it wasn’t worth it.
With that said I’ll probably be picking up the latest and greatest device out there eventually and be selling it off a month after anyway, but my purchasing behavior is an odd one and not something I recommend.
Anyone heard of the Viliv S5 yet?
Posted: February 25th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Design, Fashion, Innovation, Reviews, Technology, gaming, mobility, social media | Tags: netbook, Sony, vaio p | 3 Comments »
This is how it all happened. I was flying back home to Montreal a few days ago and ended up a Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport. I had some time to kill so I got a quick bite to eat, checked out some shops and low and behold in front of me sat the little sony vaio p – so small I almost missed it actually and took a double take. This was probably the most spontaneous, impulse purchase ever – no I don’t need it,yes it’s expensive and overly priced for a netbook, but yes I had to have it…another sucker born every minute.
So how does it fair? Is the 1600×768 resolution on a 8 inch display overkill? Is it worth the high price tag? If I were to quickly summarize – yes and no, but it’s a beautiful thing. Not only is the smallest, sleekest device I’ve seen, after about 3 days of use, I can honestly say that it does everything I need to do and do it pretty well. Now I know there have been reviews targeting the lack of processing power (I have the low end 1.33ghz version) and couple that with the fact that it comes loaded with Vista (windows 7 will be coming up shortly), but when you think of what this device is supposed to be, it’s done an amazing job so far in my everyday life. Now maybe my demands are not as tough as the other guy who expects to play Call of Duty 5 on this thing, but a netbook is very simple – it’s used as a secondary computer for road warriors. All I really need is to be able to do some heavy browsing, type some emails, play and watch videos/movies, view and write the occasional powerpoint or pdf and maybe do the occasional video chat to my girlfriend when I’m away – that’s all
I’ll post more thoughts really soon as I get to use the Vaio P a little more…but overall thoughts are very positive so far and typing this post from the Vaio P is a breeze.
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