Sony brings the Vaio U750P to America
By Peter Rojas 
posted November 9th 2004 11:50AM
posted November 9th 2004 11:50AM
The word on the street was that Sony had killed this line off altogether, but instead Sony surprised us a little bit
today by introducing the U750P, an American version of the Vaio U70, their ultralight tablet-style PC that up until now
you could only get as a Japanese import. Runs on the regular version of Windows XP rather than the proper Tablet PC
edition, but Sony put some handwriting recognition software, and has 1.1GHz Pentium M processor, a 5-inch, 800 x 600
pixel LCD screen, 512MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive, and built-in 802.11b/g WiFi.
[Via jkontherun]
wonder what the battery life is like on one.
Looks cool
competing with the pepper pad 2, due for jan 2005 release. battery life will probably be the deciding factor, but pp2's "instant-on" will be tested when mine comes in, promise.
Any info on supported formats?
It runs Windows XP so any format it supports the device supports.
Instant on is oh so nice.
Battery life with the standard battery is ~3 hours. Extended battery ~5.5 hours. Time to/from Standby- <3 seconds. Time to/from hibernate- ~ 10 seconds. It's a full WinXP box so it supports ALL formats.
Abyssmal support of the UX line has turned me off Sony completely -- I can't trust that they're going to stay in the market with anything that they put out, and if they're going to include their own proprietary handwriting recognition software that makes it worse! We'll never get bug fixes from them!
Sony needs to learn a thing or two about how a manufacturer's reputation affects their overall sales. They don't seem to get that what they do in one market affects them in another.
Would have been nice to include Bluetooth on a portable item such as this... Would've been nicer to make it affordable!
I hope someone does a performance comparison between this and OQO.
Another Sony prototype got into the marketplace. High on design and specs with no support, no service and likely full of proprietary software.
This is the same as the U-70. The software is not proprietary at all- it is pure WinXP. It is a very solid computer in all respects. The handwriting recognition s/w is ritePen and not Sony's. It is a very capable program and has been around for years.
Seconding James Kendrick's comments. I too have been using the Japanese version of this machine for months. It is standard Win XP, very solid, a joy to use, great battery life (5.5 hrs with extended batt), great handwriting recog options, etc. Make your own call about Sony USA support, but the machine is excellent and not the least weird and proprietary.
How much will this cost?
does this thing have instant on?
EverNote's (previously Pen&Internet) handwriting recognition software has been bundled with this Sony unit.
ritePen allows users to intelligently navigate the tablet's desktop, write on the full screen in smooth electronic ink – and their handwriting is automatically converted into text and entered into target applications. Built on an advanced handwriting recognition engine, ritePen understands any handwritten style, does not require learning or training, and allows users to write continuously, in whole sentences, automatically segmenting handwriting into words and lines.
Very cute, but I think I'll wait three weeks given that the next version (better processor, 10gb more on the harddrive) is out in Japan on Dec 6. According to The Reg today the U71 is expected to retail for about $1900. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/15/sony_update_u-series/