Engadget still haven’t sussed-out that neither the S7 or the Vaio P are netbooks…
Also small is that keyboard, which is one of the most painful we’ve yet experienced on a netbook
Given the size, it’s actually one of the best keyboards. Up there with the Everun Note and way better than the SC3. With 8hrs battery life, CPU options up to 1.8Ghz and a Windows XP option, expect this to win in a bang-per-buck comparison with the Sony and with a rotated, flipped screen, reading websites and RSS feeds on the sofa will be one of the most relaxed experiences on any PC. Style and build quality are not, however, up in the Sony league. 
Engadget extracted a price from Viliv but ‘less than the Vaio P’ obviously means that the marketing department will make sure that 1.3Ghz model is $100-200 below the Vaio P price. We’ll have to wait to see how much the loaded pro version is. Short video also available in the Engadget article. Via Liliputing. More info and links for the Vaio P here, and the Viliv S7 here.
next…
according to netbooknews.de the vaio p is lousy in terms of performance – any department. a good keyboard or nice built is not worth paying over 1k USD, not for me anyway. the viliv s7 is rather a device i would consider, though the videos with those fancy UI stuff is just not what i’m interested in. first of all raw figures about performance, the nice UI comes in second place and will work for sure if the device is good. in another video i saw the vaio p in a video where a user clicked on “My Computer” in the start menu, it took literally a minute to open the windows explorer. my 10 year old dell latitude with PIII 800MHZ and 256 RAM is faster!!! come on guys, design cannot be everything.
The P isn’t as slow as it has been made out to be. There are a lot of variables to consider when timing things like launching apps, hibernating, shutting down, etc. Sometimes my Vaio TZ, for example, takes a long time to launch something because there’s some sort of background process going on or WMP is doing something ridiculous; other times, that same action takes seconds to complete.
I visited the P just about every day at CES to test out various things, and it never took more than 2 seconds for stuff like the control panel, My Computer, device manager, etc. to open. And Switched just said today that the P “ran Vista faster than most other netbooks with faster processors”: http://www.switched.com/2009/01/14/is-sonys-clutch-purse-like-sony-p-notebook-for-you/
Basically, I think assessments on performance, especially gleaned from pre-production display models at CES, just need to be taken with a grain of salt. :)
I also see the P at CES. And I also checked the battery capacity. I wonder the standby time and actual playback time of P. I hate that thick extended battery. How Sony could have that kind of ugly extended battery????
I guess that’s the kind of thing that will continue to happen until they exclusively includes SSD instead of 1.8″ HDD.
2.5″ HDD compete very well with SSD, but SSD are much better than 1.8″ HDD.
Of course I’m not speaking of some lousy MLC SSD like we were used to, but use things like the RunCore SSD that JKK is so fond of (and I’m too, given the price and performance of these).
If I were to design such computer I would even completely remove the HDD enclosure and go for the “mini PCIe SSD” like in the Asus EeePC ou Dell Mini-9, whose provide additional compactness than an 1.8″ HDD.
If you don’t consider them to be netbooks… what do you consider them to be?
depends on what definition is used… nobody actually knows maybe. is netbook a definition of price or performance or utilization? i think the nearest definition would be a notebook style device but with less power, more battery time and the usual browsing utilization. not the full productivity, but more portability/mobility device. so basically both devices, be it the sony or the viliv would fit. i think they (endgadget) thought about the price. but the expensive asus eee pc model would not fit it as well…
it’s like…are the portable devices laptops or notebooks? what’s a desktop or workstation? both latter ones could be laptops..or notebooks..they are on top of a desk and we work with them… confuse me…
By the way, remember that “netbook” is a registered trademark of Psion and, as suck, should not even be used to denote anything than Psion products — that is, the first EeePC (with the low-cost is mind) are not netbooks :-P
The expression ‘netbook’ pivots around price for me and devices use the ‘netbook’ processing platform of Diamondville processor and 915 chipset. (As defined by Intel.) Netbooks also focus on standard laptop form factors.
Neither of these devices are in the netbook price range, the netbook size range or use the netbook platform. The devices aren’t even called netbooks by their manufacturers.
However, it’s clear that where there’s a good marketing term, it will be used for as much as possible. Expect The UMID MID to be called a mini-netbook when it launches!
Shame that I held on with my original definition of UMPC (and the name UMPCPortal) and now that the devices are starting to appear, then name is forgotten. Sob sob!
We’ll soldier on…
Steve.
The Viliv S7 looks very promising. If the 3G option is released and reasonably priced it will be a good replaced for the discontinued HTC Shift (I’m desperately searching for a replacement as a work project has been designed for the shift and now we can’t get any! Gutted).