Sony might have stopped updating the VAIO UX series ultra mobile PC a while back, but the amazing guys over at MicroPCTalk certainly haven’t. In what is being championed as the masterpiece of the forum, a modded UX490 (the lastest UX model from Sony, released November 2007) features nearly every major mod that the community has come up with over the last several years. [original thread here]
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It’s a Sony Vaio P and in my local online stores I’m seeing this ultra-mobile PC for just 470 Euros. It’s a shock to me because the last time I looked, the Sony Vaio P’s were selling for near 1000 Euros. With Windows Vista Home edition and a hard drive, you might want to think about performance but even so, it’s rare to find a stylish, 3G-enabled ultra-mobile PC at for this price and weight.
Our full review of the P-Series is available here.
The ‘gotcha’ is that this offer only seems to be happening in Germany so maybe Sony Germany overestimated the stock requirement and have a few thousand QWERTZ versions in store somewhere. Clearly they can’t be used for any other country and they need to be shifted to make way for Windows 7 versions.
If you’re in Germany though, this isn’t a bad offer at all! I’ve picked out one of the offers from a reputable online retailer. Misco have the VGN-P11Z with 60GB HDD for 474,81. (No affiliation) Amazon.de have the Black VGN-P11 for 532 Euro (affiliate link below)
Update: Added to product database.
I make no apologies for the increased amount of ‘phone’ news that you’ve seen on UMPCPortal recently because quite frankly, this new generation of phones is very interesting for web-focused users. You need to be watching this because CPU and screen sizes are allowing devices to move out of the ‘mobile web’ space into the ‘full web’ space.
Later today I’ll be summarizing all the high-end WVGA phones in an article but in the meantime, here’s another one that has just launched. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.
It has a 4 inch WVGA capacitive screen running on a 1Ghz Snapdragon CPU with the Android OS. It will come with an 8.1MP camera too which will position it right at the top of the tree when it launches in Q1.
Engadget have already put up some thoughts and highlight the two special SE features that will give you access to a flipchart of messages interleaved from a number of online social and email services, and allow you to access video and audio content online. These software apps and services are known as Timescape and Mediascape.
Pricing is unknown but based on the price of the HTC HD2, i’d say we’re looking at a no-contract launch price of over 600 Euros.
Sizing information
The interwebs were set ablaze by our earlier article showing you an awesome wearable computer setup powered by a Sony VAIO UX380N UMPC. Now we’re back with more from the creator himself. I sat down (virtually) with fiveseven808 and asked him som questions about his wearable computing setup and what he might hope to do with it in the future.
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Apologize for not being able to bring you an in-depth article about the Sony VAIO W. I actually just checked it out for a few minutes when I saw it in Best Buy. I was pretty impressed with the netbook section at this particular store. There was the Sony VAIO W, the Asus Eee 1005HA, and the HP Mini 1000, among others. Up until then I hadn’t seen much of the VAIO W so I spent a bit playing around with it.
The first thing that I checked out was the chiclet style keyboard which very easy to type on, a la Sony VAIO P. Unfortunately it had one of the most bothersome of keyboard characteristics: the tiny right shift key.
If anything sets the Sony VAIO W apart from most of the netbook crowd, it’s 1366×768 resolution on the display which noticeably increased screen real estate from the other 1024×600 equipped netbooks adjacent the VAIO W. Unless you have bad eye-sight, this is a good thing. Even the completely default IE 8 screen, which seems to thrive on toolbars, seemed spacious at that resolution. It’s surprising to consider that the Sony VAIO W’s screen has more pixels than my 12.1 inch primary laptop which has a resolution of 1280×800.
I’ve always known why companies like Apple and Sony didn’t/don’t want to jump into the netbook game. They make products that are elegant and functional. Unfortunately, good design doesn’t come cheap, but as most of us know, netbooks do. So what do you get when you strip the design budget from the price of a Sony computer? Something that is decidedly less Sony, and instead more… regular. The unit was small, light, and pretty thin, but it just didn’t look or feel like the quality build that usually comes with Sony branding. At very least, someone at Sony said “We CAN’T put Vista on this thing, or it will suck. inch And thus, the Sony VAIO W is (I think) the only VAIO released to come with XP instead of Vista since shortly after Vista launched (this is a good thing).
Aside from these things, the Sony VAIO W may as well have been the same computer as the one sitting next to it, with its Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and same old ports as every other netbook seems to have. I can’t say I was particularly impressed with the Sony VAIO W, at least not more so than any other netbook I’ve used. They haven’t raised the bar, they just reached it.
Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items from around the web.
Another gem from the geniuses at www.micropctalk.com. MPCT forum user fiveseven808 has created a wearable computer setup using a Sony VAIO UX380 [Portal page] to power the whole thing. Fiveseven808 was kind enough to give me a good run down of the setup and some images as well.
Components include:
Main system:
Input/Output:
Essentially he took the MyVu headset, removed one of the eye pieces, and mounted the other to his glasses to that he could see his surroundings and the UX’s screen at the same time. The MyVu is attached to the UX through the A/V output port on the UX’s port replicator dongle. With some additional addons he provided his UX with extra battery life via an external battery, and several input methods to communicate with the UX while the rest of the kit resides within the backpack.
Unfortunately I must report that fiveseven’s UX380 recently died due to some physical failures, but I got a chance to talk to him about his initial vision for the project:
I guess my original goal was to design a prototype wearable computing system that is expandable, cheap, compact, yet powerful enough to be used as an every day computer with the possibility of having augmented reality systems and other passive information systems convey useful location based information to the user at all times.
I had a chance to speak with fiveseven and have somewhat of an interview with him that I’ll share in the near future. You’ll be able to read fiveseven’s comments on the project. I personally found this setup, and the idea behind, it very cool. Here is to hoping that he manages to track down another UX to continue his work.
Sony, along with others such as Samsung, was one of the early companies that jumped into the idea of the ultra mobile PC with some great devices. For a company that hesitated to jump on the netbook bandwagon, Sony was surprisingly passionate in their early ultra mobile PC work, updating their Sony VAIO UX series on a nearly bi-yearly basis. Though the UX series never made it to the big-leagues (read: widespread consumer awareness) it apparently made some friends in Hollywood.
Over the years, the Sony VAIO UX series has appeared in a surprising number of films and music videos, often toted as a futuristic high-tech gadget, or a high-class luxury device. With the help of my compadres over at www.micropctalk.com, I’ve compiled a short-list of videos where the VAIO UX is featured and some screenshots of the devices in use from a few of the mentioned locations. I’ve also included Wikipedia links in case you are unfamiliar with the media:
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (film)
Same Girl (music video)
Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)
Drop a line in the comments if you’ve ever seen your favorite gadget featured in a movie or other form of media.
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