Sony enters the netbook market for real with Vaio Mini W-series

Posted on 7 Jul 2009 at 12:59

After the gorgeous but deeply flawed Vaio P-series graced us with its presence earlier this year, Sony has entered the netbook market 'for real' with the newly-announced Vaio Mini W-series.

Yes, the company is a little late to market and it'd be easy to poke fun at the mistakes it made with the P-series - it looks like most of those have been addressed with the W-series.

The design is typical of Sony; it's sleek and stylish and comes in a range of three colours - white, pink and dark brown. It also features the chiclet keyboard synonymous with the Sony brand, which is a definite plus, as is the 10.1in LED-backlit display. It sports a 1,366 x 768 native resolution (16:9 aspect ratio), which means text and images will be incredibly sharp.

Sony says that this means "your web browsing experience isn't compromised" because it "eliminates the need to scroll sideways".

Weighing in at 1.19kg, it packs the familiar set of components associated with just about every netbook available today. Atom N280 processor, check; 1GB of RAM, check; 160GB mechanical hard drive, check; Windows XP Home, check - all present and correct here, sire.

Aside from that, there's Draft-N wireless networking, Bluetooth, a couple of USB ports and a MemoryStick card reader slot. Bizarrely, there's no SD card reader despite it essentially being the established standard for multimedia card storage.

Battery life is quoted at 160 minutes, but we expect it to be less in reality. Sony is yet to announce pricing, although we have heard it'll be around the £350 to £400 mark, which will make it quite a bit cheaper than the P-series - it'll be on sale in August.

Author: Tim Smalley

Get more reviews, tutorials and in-depth advice, every month with Computer Shopper.
Click here to try 3 issues for £1

< Previous News : Laptops Next >

Be the first to comment on this article

You need to Login or Register to comment.