Here is my initial report on the Sony Vaio X netbook, er, laptop. (Sony may be watching.)
Wow.
Did I say, "Wow"? I meant . . .
WOW!
I really wanted the iPad to be my choice for this upcoming trip to Xiang Sha Wan. I could taste it — that slick presentation screen, the 1.6 pounds that is as close to antigravity as you can come, the eBooks/music/audiobooks/email. I really wanted it to work. After weeks of fretting over this, I've decided it is simply is too much of a compromise when I can take the Sony Vaio at 0.55" thick weighing in at just 1.5 pounds. Including a keyboard, Lightroom, Skype video, etc. Sorry, iPad, you were close but no cigar.
I've loaded all my software into the Vaio and it is simply amazing. Sure, it's a "netbook" in spite of Sony's insistence that it is a "laptop." It's running an Atom Z550 processor and any way you slice it and dice it, it's a netbook. Even so, the 2GHz speed is noticeably faster than my 1.6GHz ASUS even though it's an N-series processor. It's not going to smoke in a multi-multi-task environment, but that's not what I do on the road. Two, maybe three apps at a time, it does just fine.
The Vaio may be a netbook, but — and this is no small matter — it runs Lightroom much faster than my ASUS netbook did, has a higher resolution screen, and is simply the perfect sweet spot of functional power at minimum weight.
My first real-world test was to fire up Lightroom (3.2) and OneNote 2010 and flip back and forth. Even when Lightroom was exporting a bunch of JPGs, OneNote skipped right along as I took notes and even recorded audio. I simply don't need anything more than this when I'm traveling — but it is sure nice to have both. Unfortunately neither of these things were possible with the iPad.
I assumed I'd use the (included) larger and heavier 12 hr battery for most of my needs. But, then it dawned on me that a couple hours is all I ever actually need for most uses except the actual plane flight. For meetings, for use with a projector during my talk, for taking to breakfast and catching up on the news — the 3 hr (more like 2+ hrs) is sufficient and so light weight. Again, I think the folks at Sony must have talked to real world users. They got it right.
Windows 7 (my first experience with it) is a winner.
The 128GB SSD solid state hard drive is fast, quiet, and efficient.
The Vaio took some heat in the reviews for it's smallish keyboard, but it's essentially the same size as the one on my ASUS netbook. The ASUS is 9.75" and Sony is 9.5". I can't tell any difference between them as I type except that they are both smaller than a regular sized desktop keyboard. That does take some getting used to. I think I'm going to try loading up Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking and see how well it does with voice recognition. I use this so extensively with my desktop, it would be great if the Vaio X has enough horsepower to run this software. I'll let you know.
Decisions over. I'm all set.
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