Loose lips sink ships, Sony -- not that you'd care. Apparently the company couldn't stand to wait any longer on that long netbook it had been teasing, so it's gone and leaked it out onto the sonystyle site. Apparently, the oddly shaped P-series device will sport an 8-inch, 1600 x 786 LED display, a 1.33GHz Intel CPU, a hard drive up to 60GB (or a 128GB SSD), and will run Vista Home Premium or Home Basic. There's not much else in the way of info, save for the fact that the laptop will be available in three colors (Crimson Red, Champagne Gold, and Black Silk). Not quite the heart-stopper we were hoping for, and knowing Sony, likely not real netbook-ily priced, but still an interesting entry to the ever-widening field of teensy computers. Now if only it ran Linux...
Update: In case it wasn't clear, that's not an image of the P series, but a TT -- obviously a placeholder for now.
[Via
jkOnTheRun; Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted Dec 25th 2008 10:33AM
What the hell? They're only offering a 60GB HDD? What a load of crap. I'm not about to pay the premium on SSD just so I can get a few gigs and some battery life.
Do you need more then 60 gigs? Honestly what are you going to put on this thing?
Heh. You need to ask?
Rhymes with "corn".
@STINK
mourn
adorn
sworn
born
worn
torn
horn
korn (band)
thorn
scorn
forlorn
reborn
warn
65% chance I'll regret posting that.
@ Aguiluz
I lol'd and up-ranked.
watching porn on a netbook is the ultimate sign of psychological problems. Next thing you know, netbooks will come with built in lotion dispensers.
Ps-ps-psychological problems? Huh? *twitch*
@ Chris
I put a 160gb drive in my old VAIO picturebook so I could have an accessible backup of my music and picture collection.
@Chris: if you are really asking what you can fill up 60gb of storage with you need to wake up. Vista alone uses up about 1/3 of that ( updates + room to grow ). Then you have office applications and a heck of a lot other stuff. Then come pictures and music. And by the time you're done with those 60gb are long gone and forgotten. And we haven't even touched office docs, movies and such. By today's standards 60gb is most definitely undersized.
Oh and also why would you need such a high resolution on such a tiny screen? Sorry Sony but this product is a huge letdown at least for me.
hey flashpoint -- if watching porn on a netbook is the ultimate sign of psychological problems, what does it mean when i watch it on my smartphone? bat-shit crazy?
Santa gave me a Porn netbook. that way you can hold it only it with one hand.
Dude, the P stands for "Pocket," not "Porn"
so many people these days have severely perverse minds.
Wasn't Sony saying that netbook is impending advances of computer tech.
Oh the Irony
@Ridgecity
Santa sponsors the International Institute of One-Handed Fapping.
I am so underwhelmed with this. Really weak, Sony.
Just get an Acer Aspire 1 on sale boxing week...
Don't give Sorny any money!!!
8" 1600x768 LED backlit display and you are underwhelmed?
Oh well, stick to your 1024x600 display.
Acer Aspire $$$
Sony shite $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
This thing is for use on the go, not a replacement for a 24" screen.
@decypher44
What they didn't tell you is that it'll retail for only $50. Also, this netbook makes you invulnerable to fire.
YES KIFF! This is my favorite netbook to date, only because of its resolution.
Looks awesome. I'll have to wait for the price before considering it "underwhelming" though. The design will probably be very good considering their other laptops.
With Sony, we know that the specs is going to be awesome, the battery life will be good, the display will be brite, and the price will absolutely lead you to lose interest instantly and look elsewhere. Not to mention that memory stick slot. That's a Sony.
Now what will really grab my attention will be the Casio netbook. For those who has been around long enough, I'm talking about that brush metal faceplace Casio, brown calculator keys. A netbook will fit right in with Casio and their price will be fitting for a netbook. That will grab my attention. If only ....
That picture belongs to the TT-series. Nothing new.
"...an 8-inch, 1600 x 786 LED display..."
The Sony P-Series. Ushering in a new generation of early blindness for the netbook crowd.
Seriously, what's the point of having such an incredibly high resolution on an 8" screen?
Each step up brings us that much closer to 5" 1280x720 panels for PMPs and resolution independent interfaces.
Death to 480 x 272!
Well the Xperia X1 already has a 800x480 3" screen, thats already a lot of DPI
Right..
http://img68.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blacksquareae2.jpg
Black = resolution
White = screen (8" diagonal)
Hmm...
I own a Eee PC 900 and it does 8" 1024x600, my only real gripe about the machine isn't the speed or performance, its the resolution and viewing angle. If the price and quality of the screen is good, 1600 x 786 I could see being useful. For text size, I can easily just adjust that to be larger (same with the browser text size) so it shouldn't be a problem.
I seriously don't get people complaining about resolutions being too HIGH. Are people just too thick to turn up the font size? Every OS has DPI-independant scaling nowadays (XP has it, Vista has it, OSX has it, Linux has it, and IIRC even 98 had it). Why on earth would you want a screen with LESS detail?
"Are people just too thick to turn up the font size?"
Are you too thick to actually try that? It looks terrible on every OS I have tried it on, including Vista. Things scale awkwardly, websites display improperly, and the whole thing is a mess. If anything, it would be better if the video card offered a lower resolution at the same display ratio (which is pretty much not going to happen with this). Then it would be acceptable. As it is, tweaking my OS to look awkward isn't a viable solution to giving me an absolutely USELESS high resolution at that screen size.
It's funny you try so hard to defend yourself against an amazing screen. Fail. Hard.
AVG, I feel like you should live in the world where smartphones have QVGA screens forever. -_-"
God, I hate all these idiots that perpetuate the myth that high DPI = small text! You can scale the text in any operating system... No wonder we've hardly progressed passed the 1600x1200 displays I had a decade ago!
"you can scale the text in any operating system"
Jackass, that's the whole point here. No OS does that right yet. It looks horrible.
I agree with it's pretty underwhelming but wow, that screen sure would be a looker. That's a lot of pixels packed into 8"
I hope that it runs linux, like all hardware is supported and a hackintosh ! :)
I'm just trying to figure out if my eyes will be able to take the 8" 1600x768 screen.
This could be pretty cool. The price is everything though.
Good if it has Nvidia or ATI graphics. Better if it still maintains a 1394 port. Best if it has at least an ExpressCard34.
Good if it costs $4. Better if it can be configured with a quad-core processor. Best if it has a miniSD slot!
Nice one, AVG. :D
While the resolution is nice.. 1.33 Ghz? That's not atom speed... are we talking Celeron? + the 60Gb hard drive is weak..
I'll wait to pass judgment until price is released, but so far it is sorta meh..
That is Atom of C2D speeds:
• Atom - Model Z520 - 512k cache, 1.33 GHz, 533 MHz FSB 45nm - $40
• ULV C2D - Model U7700 - 2M L2 cache, 1.33 GHz, 533 MHz, FSB 65nm - $289
The price will tell us which processor it has in it.
1600x768 certainly is interesting. I'm with an above poster that we should wait till pricing to really judge it. Knowing Sony, I'm sure it will cost a premium, but I would still like to check it out in person as their build quality is usually pretty high.
maybe the plastic is nice, but they sure don't have any quality on their stuff, unless you buy the $4000 tvs. Out of 5 people in my group that have bought VAIOs 4 have gone bad after 2 years with fried motherboard and the other guy had bad battery.
Maybe I haven't been keeping up with the netbook news lately, but isn't that a hell of a lot of pixels for 8" of real estate?
Yikes. The price got divided by zero.
nah. it's just not a number.
WTF is that resolution? The pixel density must be insane...
i have to agree i got the aspire one and it is the best i have tryed in this price range just over 200 pounds can't go wrong
Oooh. You said "Netbook". Psion's gonna get mad.
Just joshing. This is a definite let down. They could have done something cool but decided to be very cookie-cutter.
ok that looks nice what will make this laptop is how long will the battery last and whats the price. come on sony learn damit lol
C'mon Sony, shove a PS3 in there. You know you want to...
8-inch, 1600 x 786 LED?? Is that a typo or something? A 22 inch monitor "only" has a resolution of 1680x1050
Yeah, it's a crazy pixel density, over 49,000 pixels per square inch.
"A 22 inch monitor "only" has a resolution of 1680x1050"
I'm using a 17" screen at 1920x1200 right now, and have been for almost 4 years...
My 15.4 inch precision laptop has a resolution of 1680 x 1050, so its not just big monitors have that resolution.
From the numbers given, it's a ~220dpi display. That's not terribly uncommon in high-end phones now, and if my Nokia N800* internet tablet is a testament it's quite usable, even at arm's length.
(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800
If it comes with non-integrated graphics acceleration and a ULV C2D processor I'm sold.
Are you living in the dark age? My old Dell laptop had a 14" LCD with 1600x1200 resolution, and that was eight years ago. You must be one of the few people who thought the 480x320 screen on the Iphone was revolutionary when even Sony and Palm 5-6 years ago had that resolution on their PDAs.
I's also a crazy ratio (and by this I mean weird)
1600x786 ?? that's over 2 oO
Great screen, probably great image with this kind of density but what the Hell sony, how am I supposed to read the Vista menu on a 8" screen with this kind of resolution ?
Throw 6 hours battery life, Linux (fedora would be good), and make it under 450euros and I'm sold.
(450 euros in europe not after the conversion of the US retail price huh !)
My current Lenovo has a 15.4" WSXGA+ screen. Turning 15.4" into 9.8" will be a large difference, but you'll be able to see it. If Sony did not use a high resolution display and stuck with 1024x600 but turned into an ultrawide screen like 1024x480, too many programs would not fix vertically in the screen. Sony basically made an ultrawide screen version of WSXGA+, called UWSXGA+???
"P... It fits in a pocket"
Ha!
"Not quite the heart-stopper we were hoping for, and knowing Sony, likely not real netbook-ily priced,"
This statement is funny because every time an Apple netbook gets talked about, this has NEVER been brought up. Don't like Sony much, engadget?
Because if it did, you wouldn't have to pay $70 for an OS you might not want to use (or ever hear about again, ..ever....)
See if it was shipped with Linux, you could either
#1 use their version
#2 change and install whatever you like (including Vista)
Then everyone would PAY for what he USES !
I wouldn't have to pay again for Vista and never use it.
I made a little calculus, since I discovered, and moved to Linux, 5 years ago, I bought 3 different PCs, and my father bough 2.
5 Windows licence : 450 euros directly into bill's pocket.
weird resolution, I would be happy for 1280x720 at 8", dont think this thing can decode any video more than 720p any way.
1280x720 would be a completely different aspect ratio and hence a completely different formfactor.
Didn't they make the sales folks pockets bigger to fit the walkman? I doubt this could fit in any pocket. Sony, start innovating. Do something wild, stick an OLED notebook on the market, and see what happens.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
You all expect something revolutionary to come from anythig BUT Apple?
(Public, NASDAQ:AAPL)
and from teh likes of sorny? hate to tell you this but "Walkman" went out of style in the late 90's
I just looove all these "We have something special" announcements from shite product teams...
I got sumthin special for you ! a bag full of shite!
Oh, go wait in line for your periwinkle iPhone.
Go take a shower, you STINK!
buy Aspire 1, say NO to Sorny!!!!
at least other companies are starting to innovate while apple's innovation is on the wane.
also, your "god" will not be speaking at Macworld, so, despair, despair apple fanboys
Thanks for the symbol, I really needed to check Apple's stock today.
I agree with everything apart from the Apple innovating part.
@eyEi -- You're banned. Again. Merry Xmas everyone!
let me restate that statement..
apple has never innovated. period.
eyEi, we know your trying to be/are iEye, but please, I beg you. LEAVE ENGADGET. PLEASE! You don't even develop an argument but just say throw the same crap out! I doubt you ever owned any Sony, therefore you wouldn't know shit.
SO JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO SOMEWHERE ELSE TO BE A BITCH.
...no.
i have a feeling people's eyes will burn out from seeing that incredibly hi-res screen
the specs are leaked but not the device itself. the picture is a placeholder, as you see only the TT model there right now!
"Now if only it ran Linux..." Why wouldn't it?
or is this just Engadget showing bias against certains brands as usual??
Why Vista? Netbook after netbook and MID after MID come out and every reviewer says they are sluggish as hell using Vista. This is not a particularly strong CPU even as Netbooks go.
Vista will run like even a worse dog than usual on this device.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I probably have enough Sony points from my credit card to get this for "free", but I sure as hell ain't gonna waste those points on this!
XP or Ubuntu drivers might change the equation.
can I have your sony points?
My 4 year old Tablet PC is slower than this machine and it runs Vista just fine. How spread the news!
vaio tt @
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/2886417593_fddf5c60a1.jpg?v=0
jup, not the new P series. Should be longer. The ratio just doesnt add up with the back picture...
W.
With an 8" diagonal and an aspect ratio of nearly 2:1, the panel itself will be roughly 7"x3.5" -- on a device with a 9.5"x4.5" footprint.
That means screen bezels in excess of 1" on the sides... DAMNIT SONY
i wonder what chipset it'll use...no doubt it'll just be a poulsbo... i can't see this being anything special...
maybe if they sort out the xp drivers so it can do hd video (shold be possible now that the dell mini12 also comes in XP)
otherwise how is this different from the number of MIDs out there...
resounding meh.
This computer will have an ULV C2D cpu. That's how it's different, and it will outclass any other netbook(TM)/MID of comparable size.
yay, I was one of the people who sent this in!
ULV C2D, the Res, and the SSD are all sure signs this will be priced beyond normal netbook pricing.
This does not seem like a netbook but rather something in between a netbook and a notebook but it may cater to another group of people. The kind who likes the form factor of a netbook but craves more power without the ridiculous price of a notebook that size (Sony TT/TZ.)
I look forward to this.
I'm surprised so many folks are down on this. And nobody has speculated yet on whether or not it has 3G capability built-in. If it does, it could be a very nice (albeit expensive) MID. I'm interested.
The screen rez does seem way overkill for the size, but extra rez can only be a plus (other than price and maybe minor scaling issues running at less than native).
Can't wait to see the unit once unveiled.
I hope it used qualcomm's dual-3G (evdo/hspa) Gobi chip
RAM? Can you imagine 512MB of RAM on a Vista machine? And Sony's version of Windows? Linux is sounding better and better for this machine. I am sure I will see this at Sony's CES display in Las Vegas. As for equipping it with 3G, don't bother. Most people will purchase this as a second or third computer and will need the 3G card so they can use it on multiple machines...unless they want to pay for multiple 3G accounts at $59.99 per month! Depending on the price point, if Sony pulls a Sony on all of us, it will be at least $100 more than the HP or Lenovo or $200 more than the Aspire One or Asus eee.
why wouldn't it run linux?
micro$oft$ money$, m$ probably pay$ $ony to not u$e linux
According to the picture, the price starts at $NaN.00. Now normally I'd chalk this up to a programming error, but since this is Sony and features a 1600x768 display, I'm guessing that they're telling us that the price is so high that there isn't a number capable of expressing it.
hum nothing changed still Atom and it still stinks and it still stinks thqat sony makes it cuz then the price will be $$$$$$$$$$$ to much
I just have this feeling it's going to cost more than the average range of netbooks. Sony & Apple don't make budget-priced laptops.
What a joke....