Even though in my experience, Windows XP always runs better than Vista on these type of mobile computers, the VAIO P handles Vista pretty well. The unit comes pre-installed with Windows Home Premium. I opened my unit to a nice clean slate, a perfect Vista install with no bloatware. I’m going to chalk that up to our pals at Dynamism, as Sony is notorious for sending out computers that need to be cleared of bloatware right out of the box (as happened with Jenn’s VAIO P).

Vista took several minutes to set it self up, as usual, as I powered on the VAIO P for the first time. After a fairly lengthy update session thanks to Microsoft, the VAIO P was ready to go. The first thing I generally do with a mobile unit, is go through the different settings and get everything set up so it feels right. I was excited when I found a program provided by Sony called the VAIO Control Center. The VCC lets you adjust a lot of system settings from one well organized page. The best part about this is that there is very little software overlap. That is to say that the VCC changes settings at their base level in the system and don’t get get overridden by other setting adjustments. For instance, the speed of the mouse can be adjusted right inside the VCC. Any changes to the mouse speed in the VCC will be reflected in the default Windows configuration. This is nice compared to some other devices that include their own configuration utilities but override system settings and vice-versa.

Another thing I like that relates to non-software overlap is the hardware buttons that control simple functions like volume and screen brightness. You’ll find these functions bound with an Fn modifier to the F-keys. Adjusting volume up or down using these keys changes the system volume in real-time. This helps keep everything simple, instead of having system volume be different than the volume that the hardware buttons control. The display of the changing levels (volume/brightness) is also very reserved. A very simple box pops up in the lower center of the screen and shows you what the current level is, and how you are adjusting it. There is no obnoxious fade in/fade out effect or any information that you don’t need. They are there when you need them, and gone when you don’t.

Vista is quite responsive. I would hope so given that this is the top end model of the VAIO P. Applications launch quickly and windows come up fast as well. Turning on Aero results is a very visible decrease in performance. Windows drag around the screen at a much slower framerate and the whole unit becomes sluggish. Aero off as I mentioned, feels fine. I would imagine that the particular processing that is needed to render Aero, is not the forte of the integrated graphics. Without a dedicated GPU, the CPU ends up doing the graphics work, and with a 1.86GHz clock, it is best to not ask too much of it is it is already powering Vista fairly well.

There are several pieces of software that Sony has provided that I just don’t get. For example, the ‘VAIO Music Box’ application is an extremely simple media player (too simple in my opinion). It can’t even be maximized, and really just sorts your media by the year it was released, album, or artist. The controls are pretty much limited to track forward/back and play/pause. The one interesting thing about the program is that there is a ‘Chorus Playback’ option which claims to playback only the chorus parts of your songs. This requires a separate application, the VAIO Content Analyzer, which analyzes your songs to identify the chorus parts. Luckily Sony thought to have the VAIO Content Analyzer, which would be constantly running your HDD as it scanned content, disable itself while you are on battery power. Thanks for the though Sony, but I really just don’t feel like it is worth it to begin with, so I’ll skip the content analyzer all together and use a more common media player.

Instant Mode

The VAIO P has a pre-OS that Sony refers to as ‘Instant Mode’. Pressing a hardware button on the unit next to the mouse buttons while the device is powered down will launch it into instant mode. We showed you a bit about Instant mode back when the VAIO P was announced at CES 09. The XMB (PSP or PS3 style interface) is still used a the GUI, and you have access to videos, music, images, an instant messenger, VOIP, and a web browser, all from instant mode. Considering Sony isn’t pushing this as a huge deal (at least from what I’ve seen), I’d say this is a decent attempt at an in-house pre-OS. We’ll get you plenty of detailed info on Instant Mode when we delve deeper into specifics in our long term software impressions piece, stay tuned.

See the VAIO P review roadmap here.

I’ll be doing a review for the VAIO P [Portal page] which we recently received from Dynamism for testing. This will be in a rolling-review format as we’ve done with the HP Mini 1000 MIE. Here is a roadmap that I’ll stick to when covering the VAIO P, and each section of the review will be released incrementally over the next few weeks. The unboxing post is already up and linked. I’ll retroactively link in each section as they go up as well, so make this post your home for our VAIO P review as it progresses.

Review Roadmap

• Unboxing and First Thoughts
• Initial Software Impressions
• Initial Hardware  Impressions
• Performance
• Long Term Software Impressions
• Long Term Hardware Impressions
• Summary Post

Today we got a VAIO P [Portal page] review unit from our friends at Dynamism. This is the high end model running a 1.86GHz Atom Z540 CPU, 2GB of RAM, Windows Vista, and a spacious 128GB of SSD storage. Have a look at the unboxing, and the first thoughts below that.

Unboxing

First Thoughts

The VAIO P is impressively small. It is one thing to cram the necessary computer components into a device and make it run, but it is another entirely when you make a device that is tiny but actually usable. Despite all the marketing that tried to convince us that the VAIO P is pocketable, it is not. However, it is really light and thin. One might think that the keyboard would be hard to type on considering the initial footprint of the unit, and the fact that some key real estate was lost with the chiclet style keyboard, but it is incredibly usable. I have had no issue immediately typing like normal on the VAIO P. One thing that absolutely frustrates me though, is that the keyboard layout has a small right shift key. This is the biggest mistake they could have made after engineering a tiny but wonderful keyboard. I’ll map out my review for the VAIO P in the next few days and start laying down the content. I’m excited to use the VAIO P as I’ve enjoyed the VAIO UX180 [Portal page] for several years.

I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t pick up a VAIO UX180P [Portal page] a few years back. I’ve been a big fan of the UX series of ultra mobile PC from Sony for a long time. You’ve probably read on our site that the UX180 was my primary PC for nearly 4 years. I’ve built up a lot of respect for the unit since I’ve been using it for such a long time.

As great as the UX series might be, it definitely isn’t main stream. Since the initial release of the UX180, Sony has released incremental updates over the last few years (280, 380, 390) finally landing on the current top-of-the-line UX490. The UX490 [Portal page] is almost identical to the original UX180 in terms of aesthetics, but the insides have had some nice bumps in power and performance. The UX490 has a 32GB SSD, 1.2GHz Core 2 Solo, 1GB of RAM, and as far as I know, still claims the title of most powerful ultra mobile PC to date.

Though the UX490 might still be one of the highest performing UMPCs, it was released back in November… of 2007. It isn’t inconceivable for Sony to have some big gaps in model refreshes, but it has been quite a while now. That, and the fact that the VAIO UX series is pretty much gone from Sony’s site, make it seem like the VAIO UX line is done.

Enter the VAIO P [Portal page]. This ‘pocketable‘ computer has a pretty similar usability concept. Both the UX and the P are supposed to be relatively powerful, highly portable computers (that’s why we call them Ultra Mobile PCs), but their form-factors are inherently different. The UX is designed to be hand-held and thumb-typed. The P is supposed to be small and portable, but still retain its touch-typability, and probably won’t function very well as a hand-held device in the way that the UX does.

Regardless of the fact that the P is Atom based, both the P and the UX carry a premium price, so it is hard to say that Sony is really following the netbook trend instead of releasing a new UMPC. It almost seems as though the P is a successor of the UX, but simply with a different form-factor. The change in form factor would be a reason to switch the series denotation as well.

I think there are two ways to ask the question that is proposed in the title of this article. First of which, is asking if Sony intends for the P to succeed the UX. Second, is looking at whether the P replaces the UX in terms of usage. I’ve contacted someone at Sony and I’m hoping to get an answer to the first version of the question. As for the second… I should be able to answer that for you over the next few weeks.

It has been at least three years that I’ve owned my Sony VAIO UX180P, and I’ve been using it as my primary PC for a long time. As the internet continues to evolve, I’ve started to notice that my UX180 is slowing down and slowly becoming less that optimal to function as a primary PC. I can’t believe how long it has lasted with only a 30GB HDD, 512MB of RAM, and a 1.2GHz Core Solo CPU. The components of this machine are crammed into an incredibly small package that still challenges the size of modern UMPCs (and the newer UX models are some of the highest performing UMPCs to date). My UX can definitely still hold its own as a fully functional PC, but as I said, it is becoming less than optimal as internet use becomes even more performance intensive. It isn’t uncommon these days to be streaming HD video over the web, be running a multi-tab web browser with several web apps open at once. All of this multi-tasking is starting to take a toll on my UX180’s mere 512MB of RAM, and the biggest concern was that I was quickly running out of storage space.

Recently I’ve switched over to a full sized desktop system. I was getting really irritated that I couldn’t find anything less important than photos to delete to make space for more stuff on my UX. So I adopted a desktop as my new main PC. Nothing fancy; a Dell machine that is a few years old with 1GB of RAM, 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading and an on-board graphics card (boring, I know). I also picked up a 1TB external HDD to be able to have long-lasting storage for all my media which is great.

Anyway, enough about all this ugly full sized computer stuff. The silver lining here is that my UX180 is not my primary computer any longer, and I don’t need it to be in 100% working condition all of the time in order to function. What I’m trying to say here, is that it’s time to experiment. I now how a relatively powerful handheld touchscreen computer that I can try lots of different stuff on, and I want your suggestions. Windows 7? Ubuntu? OSX? Who has some interesting ideas for me? I’ll probably be keeping this on the software side of things as I’m not a modding genius, like some people.

Pocketables summarised a week with the Vaio P a few days ago and seems quite happy with the device. I’ve been following some discussion between a few owners on twitter too and there’s a lot of positive feedback flying around.

One thing that worries me a bit is the 1.3Ghz processor on Vista. Although the SSD seems very fast, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with the heavy stack of Vista processes stealing very valuable cycles from my Firefox experience. I’d be much happier with the relatively thin Windows XP as a base OS but unfortunately that’s not an option. There is a 1.8Ghz version though and having tested Vista with the OQO 2+ that uses the same 1.8Ghz platform and a slightly slower SSD, I know it would be acceptable for most daily work…

I had the 1.8Ghz OLED screen version of the OQO 2+ with the 64GB SSD. It was running Vista and at 1.8Ghz it performed extremely well. I used it as a desktop with the stylish docking station and an external 1400×900 monitor and the fact that it was a ultra mobile PC was almost transparent in my usage scenarios.

We’ve got a chance to get feedback on the 1.8Ghz version this week as JKKMobile has just taken delivery of one from Conics.net. I spoke to JKK on Friday and I know he’s planning a lot of coverage and the first content out of the door is this unboxing video.

The sun is shining out in Pocketables land. I can almost see Jenn’s smile radiating from here, 7500 miles away on the other side of the planet. She’s got the Vaio P and the unboxing and testing has already started.

Unboxing photos’s here.

It looks like the usual stack of Sony apps and try-me-ware is installed so Jenn will probably have some cleaning-up to do before the first impressions come out. She has the 1.3Ghz, 64GB SSD version. I’ve used a similar set-up on the OQO 2+ so if the SSD is fast on the Sony, I know the Vista experience should be bearable for casual use. Certainly if you keep the device in standby, it should be fine for whipping it out of the handbag and checking Google forthe local nail parlour ;-)

Setting up the Sony Vaio P.

More info on the Sony Vaio P here.

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.