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Sony PCG-U1
hexdcml writes "Just found this whilst browsing, Sony has now brought out the My Little Vaio range, (probably for rich kids..tsk) All I can say is WOW, this thing is tiny.
Makes me wanna ditch my lurvely little iBook and get this!
The site's in japanese, so you'll need to translate (for those how are non-japansese literate) using Babelfish or something." Dynamism.com has specifications in English.
Sony's latest prototype, the PCG-U1, is a wonderful and exotic piece of technology. The "U1" is the smallest and lightest model of the entire "Vaio" series. Indeed, it has long been Sony's conception to shrink a full-featured laptop into an always-carry device; they have succeeded with the Vaio U1. The entire package, including a Crusoe 867 MHz processor, 6.4" (XGA) TFT-LCD, 20gb HDD, 384mb RAM (max), weighs merely 1.8 pounds, and boasts an incredible footprint of only 7.3" x 5.5". The U1 is designed for easy operation even if the user is holding it in a standing posture. Assuming use with both hands holding the chassis, the PC has a "wide-stick" for the thumb of the right hand which functions as a mouse cursor. The left thumb rests on a button that works as the left and right mouse buttons. There is also a built-in zoom function, which works at the touch of a button. A scrolling "Jog Dial" is also mounted above the keyboard, and integrated ports include a PC card slot, firewire, LAN, a headphone/audio output. Additionally, a pair of built-in USB ports and a VGA output allow the machine to double as a desktop unit. The U1 demonstrates why Sony is recognized, even by hardened competitors, as the world's leader in miniaturizing consumer devices. Any individual, company, or organization could find a unique use for the U1. Whether the needs is for an eye-catching model unlike anything that has come before, or a powerful tool for use by a sales force out in the field, the Vaio U1 is an unprecedented and unrivaled powerhouse in an ultra-small package.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
tjhe kleybpoard ois a vbit as,mall
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Seriously, I'd have to agree with the submittor here. I am all for giving your kids the best, but kids in the My First X demographic (under 8? at some point primary colors get embarrassing) don't really have a use for a laptop. Even if they did, a retired laptop (even from ebay) would probably a better choice than this product, which just screams "status symbol."
I didn't get a current system until college, always learning on and using yesteryear's tech. It's a good way to go, b/c you don't take the cutting edge hardware for granted. I think it made me more aware of issues like backwards compatability, which is important.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
... if I mine comes with a cute Japanese girl hiding behind it. ;-)
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
The guy is typing with his thumbs! And the icons look pinhead-size. This is all very neat how we can shrink things smaller and smaller, but... ergonomics anyone? How about keeping your eyesight past your 20's?
I think the whole PDA/Tablet PC/Subnotebook thing is in general pretty silly. For general use they are horrible. Better to get something like the Hitachi WIA with an input device like the Twiddler and keep your wrists and eyes healthy.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
all the other junk you need to bring along: power supplies, extra battery, mouse, network cord, phone cord, teething ring...
I feel the same way about laptops in general - there are some out there that solve almost all of this, however. Personally I carry the following:
- white ibook
- thin little ethernet cable
- power brick (into which apple conveniently put cable management)
And that's it. Nothing else. Occasionally I bring a mouse, but not often.I suppose that leads me to a point about this Sony laptop we're supposed to be discussing: no builtin ethernet, no builtin wavelan, no builtin modem. Hmm. That would drive me insane, as I would end up carrying two or three pcmcia cards and their dongles around with me, and that's when things get broken in my backpack. I'd forgive it if it had builtin wavelan. In fact, that would be marvelous. It doesn't, however. And, I might add, I actually had a Sony SR7k (followed by an SR27k) for a year and a half, and I sold it in favor of an iBook for this exact reason. Oh well.
Moral of the story: I'm keeping my iBook. :) You can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I might even consider replacing my Newton if it weren't for the price
...if it had a built-in microphone
...and if it had decent battery life
...and if it had handwriting recognition
...and it didn't come with a bloated desktop OS
...and did I mention the price?
- The market there is (proportionally) more interested in miniaturization for its own sake.
- The initial prices for high-end consumer electronics are higher than in the U.S., so they can afford more of a risk.
- The market is smaller than in the U.S., so it costs less to launch something new.
The latter two are important because the smaller devices generally involve more custom engineering, and thus have a higher initial cost and greater risk to the company.Look at the pictures; it's intended (Torvalds' mother only knows why) for two-handed use. The right side has a knob/button that acts as the pointer, while the left side has two knob/buttons that act as the mouse buttons. Although it weighs only 1.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to use it in two-handed mode for long, and this layout seems like it would be hopelessly impractical unless you also carried along a USB mouse.
On the plus side, it looks like it would be fairly easy to defenstrate, except for the modem, which is almost certainly a winmodem.
I've been looking at the Japanese site, trying to find out how much it costs in Japan. I'm fairly certain that it would be cheaper there. Any takers?
:Peter
I don't know what kind of improvements Sony might have made since I bought my Vaio, but I can't imagine they're anywhere near up to speed with Apple yet. I'm comparing a powerbook and a Vaio that were bought around the same time.
These are all the reasons why I don't get excited about the ever smaller/flimsier/less expandable offerings from Sony. If you want the mother of all laptops, get yourself a Mac, and take your pick between Linux (haven't tried the new Mandrake PPc yet - looks sweet) or OSX (I'm a sworn Mac convert now).
My 16-month old has already broken a cellphone and 2 DVD-ROM drives. Yeah, you can bet I'll be buying her one of these real soon...
Tiny keyboards only allow one finger at a time typing. You can't get much work done on it
I can touch-type on the Libretto 70 keyboard which has a 14.5mm key pitch. I'd guess I could do it on this 14mm keyboard too. Once on the shuttle bus from an airport to a conference, I was sitting beside someone who thought I'd never be able to type on it. We had a race, which I won (or I'd never be telling this story, obviously).
There was a big advantage in having the computer not take up much space, so my hands weren't as cramped as his. This is also an advantage on planes in economy class.
and it'll cramp your game playing.
The game playing also affects how much work you get done...
The Japanese name for this thing is "Ichiban chiisai Vaio", which translates directly as "number 1 small Vaio". An idiomatic translation would be "The smallest Vaio", although in Japanese as well as English "Number 1" also connotes "best".
There's no suggestion in the Japanese name that it's aimed at kids; rather that it's ultra-portable, something you could put in your purse, fit into your 3-square-meter million-dollar Tokyo apartment, or use on a packed Shinkansen.
The English trademark "my first Vaio" gives a different impression of the device, at least to native English speakers, but native English speakers are not the primary audience for this.
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.
It's designed for the "Thumb Generation", the Japanese who have taken to 3G wireless technologies with abandon. Because they use cell phones for messaging, they're developing amazingly adroit thumbing skills. The suggested thumb use for this Vaio is demonstrated here.
With a base price of $2199....umm...yyeeeaaaahhhh
So buy it for USD $1329 from here, instead. Looks like a shop in Japan that ship direct to you (as opposed to Dynamism's ship to them then to you)
What the hell does this mean?
Babelfish is col and all, but I can't wait until AI's are advanced enough to translate thigns properly.
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
I took Japanese classes a few years ago. I tried looking at some web sites in Netscape 4.x on a Windows system. I even downloaded a few fonts to try to get it to work better. It never looked good.
Just now, using Galeon, I clicked on the link to the Japanese page, and oh my gosh wow! The whole thing looks like it should. Hiragana, katekana, kanji, English text, it's all there and it all looks like it should.
Kudos to the Mozilla and Galeon developers.
By the way, it still bemuses me how the Japanese like English words so much. They will use their Katekana phonetic alphabet and spell out English words by sound.
Their phonetic spellings look odd to English-speakers. In Japanese, the consonant sounds don't appear alone; you can never have just "k", it has to be "ka", "ki", "ku", "ke", or "ko". The sole exceptions are "m" and "n" (e.g. "Nisan" can end with just "n" instead of "nu"). There is no "l", so they use "r" for "l" when doing foreign words. They often swallow or drop the "u" sound, so a Japanese speaker pronouncing the word "mobairu" will say something like "mobile" (i.e. he will get it pretty much correct, even though the spelling looks odd to us).
Examples on that page: "katarogu PDF" is the link to the PDF Catalog; "rainuppu" is the link to the "lineup"; and the picture showing two hand thumb-typing says "mobairu gurippu sutairu" (mobile grip style).
Note that the name "Vaio" is very difficult for the Japanese to pronounce; the phonetic spelling is "Baio", much easier for them. Japanese doesn't have a "v" sound.
steveha
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