Sony P-series "netbook" unveiled, underwhelming

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]

[Jon Nelson @ Dec 25th 2008 10:38AM]

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.

[Chris @ Dec 25th 2008 10:47AM]

Do you need more then 60 gigs? Honestly what are you going to put on this thing?

[STINK @ Dec 25th 2008 11:07AM]

Heh. You need to ask?

Rhymes with "corn".

[Aguiluz @ Dec 25th 2008 11:17AM]

@STINK

mourn
adorn
sworn
born
worn
torn
horn
korn (band)
thorn
scorn
forlorn
reborn
warn

[Aguiluz @ Dec 25th 2008 11:18AM]

65% chance I'll regret posting that.

[Jon Nelson @ Dec 25th 2008 11:20AM]

@ Aguiluz

I lol'd and up-ranked.

[Flashpoint @ Dec 25th 2008 11:29AM]

watching porn on a netbook is the ultimate sign of psychological problems. Next thing you know, netbooks will come with built in lotion dispensers.

[STINK @ Dec 25th 2008 11:47AM]

Ps-ps-psychological problems? Huh? *twitch*

[Mr. B @ Dec 25th 2008 12:30PM]

@ Chris

I put a 160gb drive in my old VAIO picturebook so I could have an accessible backup of my music and picture collection.

[cg0def @ Dec 25th 2008 2:07PM]

@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.

[wyatt @ Dec 25th 2008 1:57PM]

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?

[Ridgecity @ Dec 25th 2008 2:18PM]

Santa gave me a Porn netbook. that way you can hold it only it with one hand.

[Matthew C @ Dec 26th 2008 2:12AM]

Dude, the P stands for "Pocket," not "Porn"

so many people these days have severely perverse minds.

[adobochicken @ Dec 26th 2008 4:03AM]

Wasn't Sony saying that netbook is impending advances of computer tech.

Oh the Irony

[The Number 1 Cubs Fan @ Dec 26th 2008 11:48PM]

@Ridgecity

Santa sponsors the International Institute of One-Handed Fapping.

[decypher44 @ Dec 25th 2008 10:40AM]

I am so underwhelmed with this. Really weak, Sony.

[eyEi @ Dec 25th 2008 11:10AM]

Just get an Acer Aspire 1 on sale boxing week...

Don't give Sorny any money!!!

[KIFF @ Dec 25th 2008 11:15AM]

8" 1600x768 LED backlit display and you are underwhelmed?

Oh well, stick to your 1024x600 display.

[eyEi @ Dec 25th 2008 11:20AM]

Acer Aspire $$$
Sony shite $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


This thing is for use on the go, not a replacement for a 24" screen.

[Chuckles McGee @ Dec 25th 2008 12:58PM]

@decypher44

What they didn't tell you is that it'll retail for only $50. Also, this netbook makes you invulnerable to fire.

[Matthew C @ Dec 26th 2008 2:09AM]

YES KIFF! This is my favorite netbook to date, only because of its resolution.

[Ravi @ Dec 25th 2008 10:41AM]

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.

[Casio FTW @ Dec 26th 2008 10:05AM]

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 ....

[Saad Rabia @ Dec 25th 2008 10:41AM]

That picture belongs to the TT-series. Nothing new.

[AVG @ Dec 25th 2008 10:42AM]

"...an 8-inch, 1600 x 786 LED display..."

The Sony P-Series. Ushering in a new generation of early blindness for the netbook crowd.

[bartoron @ Dec 25th 2008 11:03AM]

Seriously, what's the point of having such an incredibly high resolution on an 8" screen?

[good grief @ Dec 25th 2008 11:08AM]

Each step up brings us that much closer to 5" 1280x720 panels for PMPs and resolution independent interfaces.

Death to 480 x 272!

[coolius @ Dec 25th 2008 11:59AM]

Well the Xperia X1 already has a 800x480 3" screen, thats already a lot of DPI

[O'Neill @ Dec 25th 2008 12:00PM]

Right..

http://img68.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blacksquareae2.jpg

Black = resolution
White = screen (8" diagonal)

Hmm...

[Temple @ Dec 25th 2008 12:08PM]

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.

[EdZ @ Dec 25th 2008 12:18PM]

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?

[AVG @ Dec 25th 2008 12:59PM]

"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.

[darx23 @ Dec 25th 2008 1:26PM]

It's funny you try so hard to defend yourself against an amazing screen. Fail. Hard.

[Poom @ Dec 25th 2008 6:04PM]

AVG, I feel like you should live in the world where smartphones have QVGA screens forever. -_-"

[loosely_coupled @ Dec 28th 2008 7:25PM]

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!

[AVG @ Jan 2nd 2009 10:23PM]

"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.

[Pumping_Iron @ Dec 25th 2008 10:43AM]

I hope that it runs linux, like all hardware is supported and a hackintosh ! :)

[Rollins @ Dec 25th 2008 10:43AM]

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.

[Dax Cruz @ Dec 25th 2008 10:43AM]

Good if it has Nvidia or ATI graphics. Better if it still maintains a 1394 port. Best if it has at least an ExpressCard34.

[AVG @ Dec 25th 2008 11:08AM]

Good if it costs $4. Better if it can be configured with a quad-core processor. Best if it has a miniSD slot!

[Dax Cruz @ Dec 25th 2008 11:21AM]

Nice one, AVG. :D

[midnightblade @ Dec 25th 2008 10:44AM]

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"

[joe @ Dec 25th 2008 10:45AM]

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..

[Bender Bending Rodriguez @ Dec 25th 2008 10:50AM]

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.

[therooster @ Dec 25th 2008 10:45AM]

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.

[Ridgecity @ Dec 25th 2008 2:56PM]

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.

[puhsitch @ Dec 25th 2008 10:45AM]

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?

[anon @ Dec 25th 2008 10:46AM]

Yikes. The price got divided by zero.

[Buis @ Dec 25th 2008 2:18PM]

nah. it's just not a number.

[aznofazns @ Dec 25th 2008 10:46AM]

WTF is that resolution? The pixel density must be insane...