As promised, we've made a run over to check out Viliv's forthcoming S7 netbook tablet, bringing along the ever-popular
VAIO P to see how the two stack up (as well as an Eee
1000H for good measure). As you can see, the S7 actually isn't that much larger than the Sony, maybe 30 percent thicker and a little bit wider, but also a bit shorter. The thing manages to find room for a track pad on top of the keyboard, but it's an awfully small one, so thank goodness for the (non-multi) touch screen. Also small is that keyboard, which is one of the most painful we've yet experienced on a netbook, featuring arrow and punctuation keys that even a pygmy would fat-finger. But, compromises must be made when making machines small, and small this one is. Viliv has written a custom skin that overlays the Windows XP install, demonstrated in a video below. It's reasonably pleasant to use (minimizing the need to rely on that tiny trackpad), but is also easy to exit if you're not feeling it. We already know the
specs of this tiny convertible, so the only mysteries left are "when" followed immediately by "how much." The answers we received to those questions are unfortunately a bit vague: "before this summer" and a rather predictable "less than the VAIO P." We're guessing it'll be a
lot less. Oh, and for those examining the gallery, don't worry about the rough edges you might spy: this is a pre-production S7, so things should be a good bit more polished when it hits retail.
posted Jul 7th 2009 at 7:04AM
