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Sony VAIO NW unboxing and hands-on
Get used to seeing Sony's new low-priced VAIO NW pop up all over the place: not only is Best Buy heavily promoting the $800 configuration as part of its Next Class campaign, but it's a pretty great value in general -- our $880 tester with Blu-ray basically has every feature you could want in a WIndows machine. We just got it unboxed and toyed around with it a little -- it's not the smallest 15.5-inch machine we've ever seen, but it's not a clunker, either. There's just... more of it to love. Unfortunately, it's harder to love the goofy faux-wood texture that's been baked into the plastic -- it's very much like bad 80s rec room wallpaper. If you do work up the arm strength and fashion courage to lug this thing outside, however, you'll find that quick connectivity is greatly enhanced by Splashtop, which allows you to quickly boot to a Linux-based shell and run a browser. It's a nice little perk, and it should help NW owners transition into the Chrome Age quite nicely -- and speaking of which, Chrome is the default preinstalled browser once you boot back into Vista. Other quick notes: the screen has pretty dismal viewing angles and it's crazy glossy, the trackpad is textured (which we love), and we have no idea why Sony can't bother to at least properly align all the stickers on this thing -- it looks a bit of a mess. That's just sort of how it goes at this price point -- if you can get past the minor flaws, though, the VAIO NW certainly has a lot to offer. Quick Slashtop video demo after the break.
Best Buy gears up for back to school crowds with Next Class-branded laptop series
It's getting to be that time of the year where all the kids and teenagers flock to retail and spend copious amounts on back-to-school gear. Best Buy knows this cycle all too well, and has hand-picked a quartet laptops to showcase for its Next Class branded lineup. So what do these laptops have? Anywhere from a 14 to 15.5-inch screen, bundled Microsoft Office and 12 to 15 months of antivirus software, Intel Core 2 Duo processors, 3GB DDR3 or 4GB DDR2 memory, 320GB HDD, a sub-six pound weight, and a three to six hour battery life. Each of the four have their own merits, from Toshiba's $650 price tag to Dell's 4.7 pound body, but to us the HP Pavilion DV4 and Sony VAIO NW stand out. Of course, you could cast your net a little wider and shop around for all kinds of different models yourself, but if you're feeling particularly lazy, this isn't a bad set to pick from.Read - Press releaseRead - Next Class website
Sony unveils 15.5-inch VAIO NW with BD-ROM and $880 price tag, we go hands-on
Sony announced today a new entry into its VAIO series, the NW, complete with a Blu-ray drive and what they're hoping is an aggressive pricing point. It's packing a 15.5-inch WXGA display with XBRITE, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350, ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 with 512MB VRAM, a 4x BD-ROM drive, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, webcam, 802.11a/b/g/n, a 400GB HDD, and a Li-ion battery that's at best 5.5 hours in large capacity and at worst 1.5 hours with the standard-sized version. Port-wise, we've got VGA and HDMI output and Memory Stick Pro, ExpressCard, and SD card slots. We got a chance to get some hands-on time with the portable, and we gotta say, it's a pretty impressive little number. It's not the most slender 15-incher, but at six pounds, it's lighter than we expected. The chiclet keys -- dubbed "isolated keyboard" by Sony PR -- are comfortable to use, as is the textured trackpad. Body and hinge felt sturdy, with an intentionally rugged and stylistic feel to it, and as one rep was excited to show, the metallic "Vaio" logo on the back makes a great reflection in the sun. From what we saw, Blu-ray playback was smooth, but we did notice horizontal viewing angles weren't the best. We'll reserve judgment when we get some play time with the unit and see how hard we can push the software, but for now we're pretty happy with what we've seen. Starting price isn't too shabby, at $880 equipped with the BD-ROM and $800 without, and it comes in three colors: white, grey, and dark brown. Striking your fancy? Look for it to ship out pretty quickly, as in some time next month.
