VAIO P, now with more Windows 7

We just couldn't help ourselves, and put this Windows 7 .iso we had lying around exactly where it belongs: on Sony's VAIO P. After mucking around on "the internet" figuring out the best way to install it, we ended up going the lazy route and dragging / dropping the plain files onto a folder on a USB drive, hitting setup.exe and watching the installer do its magic -- and it worked flawlessly! We weren't timing it or anything, but we'd say 45 minutes or so is a good guesstimate for the install. A few thoughts:

• It boots fast! Not that Vista was that bad on the boot front, but we're pretty happy with this.
• No Aero. That's to be expected, but the lack of transparency and visual effects makes the OS look quite a bit different than most of the screenshots out there.
• It's very responsive. To be honest, a lot of that could be from the fact that this is a clean install, minus all the crap Sony loads on. Still, we're very happy for the start menu to pop open instantly, windows to redraw like God intended... it's pretty great.
• Browsing is 100% better. Internet Explorer pops open in a flash, and pages load in times nearly on comparison with "real" computers. Also, scrolling is ultra smooth, whereas with Vista it was stuttery all the way down.
• There's a lot more to explore. We've just scratched the surface, but we love what we've seen so far.

Update: both videos are after the break!

Update 2: for those who've asked: yes, the webcam works, and no, we haven't had any luck getting Aero up and running, though we have the video drivers loaded -- we're not saying it's impossible, in fact, it's likely very possible, since plenty of other similarly specced netbooks can pull it off, but it's just not happening for us just yet.

Gallery: VAIO P, now with more Windows 7

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[Kyle @ Jan 10th 2009 6:54PM]

sweet

[Clyzm @ Jan 10th 2009 6:54PM]

Yes! now this is what I've been waiting for.

Please quote some sort of battery life Engadget! That's the only thing standing between me and a purchase of this thing.

[TareX @ Jan 10th 2009 8:00PM]

Another smack on the VAIOp's ass for lacking a touchscreen. What were they thinking? It's already small and lack a touchpad.... what else are touchscreens for?

I'm waiting for that W7 touchscreen netbook to put my hard earned $$$ into.

[aecsuper @ Jan 10th 2009 10:24PM]

sony's website says 4 hours.

[someone @ Jan 10th 2009 9:01PM]

what's with all this touchscreen obssession? people complain about glossiness, and guess what a screen will look like with your grubby fingers on it?

and people complain about price, and guess what a touchscreen will do to the price?

i would love to have a touchscreen laptop, but surely i wouldn't pay a few hundred dollars premium just for it

[Dave Chappelle @ Jan 10th 2009 10:19PM]

Recently a friend of mine bought one of those Atom powered Lenovo X200 or X400 (i cant remember) was freakishly expensive it was small had the dot in the keyboard also had touchscreen ..... I used a bluetooth mouse.

Touchscreen is not really that good and not for every single device.

[crescentdavid @ Jan 10th 2009 10:24PM]

Yeah ... a touchscreen for a vertical surface. What a bunch of morons. Like that's going to really help the user experience. Should be a real treat in terms of smeary screens, strained muscles and lack of precision control. But hey ... at least it'll be touchscreen. And that's like godhood right there .... //end rant.

[Ahmed Alzayani @ Jan 11th 2009 1:02AM]

Engadget Try to lower the Resolution & then enable Areo, it just may work.

[ITRanger @ Jan 11th 2009 4:50AM]

This Vaio looks likes it suffers from the same problem as the Toshiba Libretto U100 which had a 7 inch screen. The text is too small to read especially when in places like Starbucks where you may be some distance from the screen.

I think a standard 8.9 inch screen or 10 inch screen is absolutely essential.

[Ed @ Jan 11th 2009 5:48AM]

Sorry guys had to piggyback to the top - you have to retake the Windows Experience test after installing graphics drivers to enable aero :)

[huh @ Jan 11th 2009 11:46AM]

@someone, what does what one group of people want (a touch screen) have to do with what another group is complaining about (glossiness)?

I had a Fujitsu B series, which is a notebook form factor with a touch screen. It was quite suboptimal compared to a convertible tablet, but still better than nothing. A stiff hinge helps.

But I think what is really needed is something as well/beautifully designed as the vaio p that is a convertible tablet. Most tablet designs are quite clunky. However it wouldn't be a vaio p because the screen height is too short to be sensible as a tablet.

[taz @ Jan 11th 2009 11:38PM]

i have a vaio z11znb its so beautiful and fast, and i get over five hours of battery time, i just wanted to share that for no reason, 4gb ram 1gb just for th heck of it!!!!!!!

[OneLove @ Jan 12th 2009 12:44AM]

Microsoft didnt fix UAC. You still have to "allow" the same programs at every boot. It doesnt remember shite. Also if you turn UAC off sidebar no longer works.

[Nathan @ Jan 10th 2009 6:54PM]

First!

Nice, waiting for the impressions

[Clyzm @ Jan 10th 2009 6:55PM]

Not..

[roomtek @ Jan 10th 2009 7:04PM]

@Nathan.
Foolish fool!, and this is a first.

[Evangelion @ Jan 10th 2009 7:13PM]

@ Nathan: I low rank thee!!!

[Knee to the Groin @ Jan 10th 2009 11:40PM]

If you didn't sit around waiting so long for the impressions, maybe you could have actually been first...

[Phoenix @ Jan 10th 2009 6:55PM]

Sex in a bottle :P

[Alexander @ Jan 10th 2009 6:58PM]

Verry Nice!

[Boards of Canada @ Jan 10th 2009 7:10PM]

Frried rrice

[Asher Madan @ Jan 10th 2009 6:58PM]

What are the specs of this machine? Does it have the regular 60 GB HDD or the 64 or 128 GB SSD?

[Fernando @ Jan 10th 2009 6:58PM]

Now install a decent browser on it :P

[Quikboy @ Jan 10th 2009 8:18PM]

There is a decent browser on it: it's called IE8.

If it had been IE7, then yeah, I guess that wouldn't have been decent enough. But IE8 has really changed what IE was, and it's not a so-so browser anymore. My favorite parts are the Accelerators and the fantastic Search box. It's also pretty speedy as well.

IE8 is as decent as it gets.

[KAIKAI @ Jan 10th 2009 8:45PM]

as much as i hate to admit it
ive been using ie8 for a while and its faster than firefox 3 o.O

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 10th 2009 9:03PM]

I use chrome as my main browser and IE8 for anything else, and its good, surprisingly good, for IE.

Compares to IE, and even more so, Firefox seems slow, which is a shame, as its the browser that made MS give us something so much better than the utter junk that was IE6, ect!

[Matthew C @ Jan 11th 2009 4:11AM]

@ Kaikai

Speed isn't everything...

But I agree that Microsoft has made huge improvements to IE, and just like all else to bee seen in windows 7, the new interface is really streamlined to work intuitively for the user.

[conor @ Jan 11th 2009 10:12AM]

minefields pre-beta is faster.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 10th 2009 6:59PM]

Nice, windows 7 is fantastic, been using it as my main OS since yesterday, I dont need to boot back into Vista (Which i like anyway), its that good.

It seems a bit lighter, any chance of some benchmarks? Vista V 7?

[Bill Jobs @ Jan 10th 2009 7:57PM]

Do you have any complaints? I've been curious about making the switch myself. Anything that's not working? Etc.?

Thanks!

[gonintendo @ Jan 10th 2009 7:59PM]

Do it do it do it!
It is the, eh how you call it, bomb!

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 10th 2009 8:27PM]

Everything that worked on Vista worked in Windows 7, Chrome has some problems, but its easy to fix!

As with a beta OS, some things are not 100% all the time, but nothing bads happened to me, my nVidia driver crashed after it was installed, once, been gaming for a few hours and no problems!

I couldn't install intels bus drivers without putting it in Vista computability mode, but that doesn't matter, all vista drivers work!

I have it installed on a slower HDD than vista ( partition'ed 500gig 7.2k RPM standard V 80gig velociraptor (sata II) )

And its just as fast booting ect.

It runs really fast, I would do it!

My pc: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=449565

[Bill Jobs @ Jan 10th 2009 10:09PM]

Thanks!

[Matthew C @ Jan 11th 2009 4:14AM]

Once your nice and settled in. Get rid of vista.

Initially, I did a clean install on a seperate partition, but after realizing how amazing Windows 7 was, I used the upgrade funtion. No more vista for me. Just xp and 7 on my windows machines now.

[chefgon_ign @ Jan 10th 2009 6:59PM]

Windows 7 without Aero makes me kind of sad.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 10th 2009 7:02PM]

I would have to agree, basic on Win7 looks even worse than basic on Vista!

[Student Driver @ Jan 10th 2009 8:30PM]

The lack of Aero is strange, considering it worked firn when I installed it on my Dell Mini 9. However, it wouldn't resume from standby, which was a dealbreaker for me. Do the standby and hibernate functions work on it?

[Kyle @ Jan 10th 2009 8:50PM]

Aero works perfectly on the Acer Aspire One (which is also cheaper)

[guy @ Jan 11th 2009 4:31AM]

Aero works fine on my Pentium 4 desktop with 1gb ram and a 6800 GT(4 yr old machine,running XP 2 days ago). It surprises me that it doesn't work on any brand new PC.

[christopherborne @ Jan 15th 2009 5:55PM]

Windows 7 is quite usable without Aero, more usable than Vista.

and Aero Shake works without Aero...go figure.

[wakanya @ Jan 20th 2009 3:41PM]

Vaio P's VGA is GMA500. Its 3D acceleration ability is about half of GMA950, which most netbooks are using. It's still capable hardware playback, but media player has to enable HD acceleration. I wonder if WMP 12 can play HD videos.

[L @ Jan 10th 2009 7:00PM]

Yeah - can't wait to hear more about this!

[Lundmark @ Jan 10th 2009 7:02PM]

Is it possible to scale the GUI now or is Windows still resolution dependant? That friggin' screen sure needs it.

[L @ Jan 10th 2009 7:14PM]

Vista already is completely resolution independent...

[The Dude @ Jan 10th 2009 7:22PM]

Good job not looking at the entire gallery. What did you expect during the setup? It's an obscure display ratio and the necessary drivers needed to be loaded. Once it was installed it was fine.

[Lundmark @ Jan 11th 2009 9:17AM]

@The dude:
What are you talking about? I did look at the entire gallery and the GUI is still really really tiny. No GUI scaling documented...

[Jason Cartwright @ Jan 10th 2009 7:03PM]

I expect that while it will run, you'll have much more luck running the Netbook optimized version of Windows 7 when it comes out.

[Major4Play @ Jan 10th 2009 10:36PM]

Microsoft have already stated there will not be a special version of 7 for netbooks. 7 works on netbooks fine without anything cut down as Engadget have shown.

[VS Dude @ Jan 10th 2009 7:05PM]

I'd like to know if this OS picked up and can work with all the USB ports, the web cam, etc. Please post a video showing startup and use!

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 10th 2009 7:13PM]

Windows 7 will work with any Vista driver, so, yes it will work!

Windows 7 picked up every single one of my drivers (bar intel bus drivers, just used vista ones)