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Sony Vaio GT3/K: You Spilled Your Laptop on my Camcorder
Anonymous Howard writes "This article talks about Sony's new, limited production Vaio GT3/K. It's a mixture of laptop and full fledged camcorder that uses the Transmeta 600mhz Crusuoe chip. Weighing in at 2.4 lbs, this hybrid has an amazing battery life of up to 17 hours, 30 GB drive, ATI Rage Mobility-M1 and 128 MB of RAM, and a swiveling screen.
This is definately a very unique device, one that completely blows away Sony's previous attempts of the laptop/video combination machines, mainly due the fact that the video camera is not a wimpy little video lense, but an actual full fledged digital camcorder."
This looks like something this place would sell. They have all sorts of cool import notebooks and gadgets. The stuff might seem expensive, but just remember all these electronics are going to help you get laid.
DVD Burner and it will be great !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Is that what you'd get from a stoner Subway employee?
;)
Yeah, we, uh, have this new kinda bread for our sandwiches... it's, uh, got a "special ingredient". We call it "hibread".
libertarianswag.com
It's called a wire
You plug it into shit
This is the technology that allows the internet to be on seperate computers (as opposed to one big one).
Who are y oo ?
Thanks, but I'll stick with Firewire and my Canon GL2
--sdem
I winced when I read that - I keep wanting to send Slashdot a dollar so that they can buy themselves and editor. Anyway, I think he meant "hybrid." Of course, I think you mean "high-bred," so there's that. Of course, maybe everyone meant, "Hi, Bread!" It's good to greet your baked goods.
Either way, Sony is very please with the outcome.
Not half as please with the editing job me bet.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
This thing has been out for over a year and this form factor has been out since 2001.
--- I do not moderate.
I have never done any kind of video recording, editing, etc. beyond your basic camcorder usage. So I have to ask, is 30 gig's of hard drive space enough for raw video to be recorded? I know after compression and stuff you can fit two hour videos into under a gig w/ quite a bit of quality loss. But for serious video recording editing I'm guessing 2 hours of video would be quite a bit larger then 1 gig. And it doesn't mention anything about on the fly compression (i dont know if that's even possibe / practical w/ today's cpu's and the software this thing has), so I'm guessing whatever format you record to is going to be huge. If anyone with any experience would care to comment on the size of uncompressed video files it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Check out my life
This type of model is in the market in Japan for more than 2 years.
I use one of these but is more a Camera Toy than a real laptop the keyboard is almost unusable. The battery life is not so good. and the screen is very tiny. But the movies it takes are clear and you can use the optical zoom.
I have noticed that SONY uses Windows ME on a lot of their unique notebooks. The PictureBook uses it as well -- they are almost impossible to upgrade to Win 2k. I never understood SONY's passion for the quirkiest Windows release with its notebook.
Anyone know why?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Finally, I can eat my electronics when I'm done with them! Even better than regular bread. Why can't we make more things out of this new, amazing "hibread"?
What's so cool about a swivelling screen? Considering how quickly and often laptops develop swivelling screens when the hinges break, I just sort of thought they were intentionally designed that way. Or are they trying to sell this as a feature now?
Good effort, but the ergonomics don't seem quite right. Also surprising it took this long to integrate these technologies.
I am reminded of that Russian MiG which was flown out to Japan. The reverse engineering team was stunned by what was achieved with "old" technology that was tightly tuned and integrated. I look forward to innovations coming from places where technology has only trickled in due to economic or supply factors, making development more deliberate and well considered.
I've never understood the fascination of combining digital products together. Cell phones with the Internet, laptops with cameras, etc. The way I see it, if you want a laptop, buy a laptop. If you want a camera, buy a camera. If you want both, buy both. Not only do you get a better selection by doing it that way, but you'll probably end up with 2 good products as opposed to 1 mediocre hybrid. Just my $0.02 anyways.
I'd like to buy myself and editor too. In fact, for all the late night postings on /., we all need to have and editor around to correct our personal mistakes. Like a personal trainer. I too winced at hibread though.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Wow, I've heard of being late slashdot, but dynamism has been carrying this thing for as long as I can remember.
"Sony says they had no intention of releasing this prototype computer/camera for general sale. That is, until the flood of interest at PC Expo 2000 Tokyo. It was quite a show for the GT3/K; whether a brilliant marketing tactic or just pure good decision-making by Sony, we're very pleased with the outcome."
Its still pretty cool though. Btw, here is a link to the dynamism page. Or is this supposed to be an article about an american release of the same product?
Little laptop with a swivel screen? OK! (think car PC)
Reasonable quality digital camcorder? kewl!
Trying to stabilise the camera with the added, needless weight of a laptop? No thanks.
A camera that has to be upgraded when the laptop is passe'? No thanks
Sending my laptop back when the camera dies? No thanks
Or sending the camera back when my laptop HD dies? No thanks.
you'll be lucky if it can read an audio cd correctly. Momma Sony always said, "Burning DVDs is da DEVIL!"
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The mention of PC Expo 2000, the low end specs of 128RAM and only a 30gig HDD, and the use of WinME and 2k instead of XP lead me to believe that this nifty little "hibread" has been around for a while.
Sir Timbly of Cannatuna, offical Knight of the Heptagonal Table
How much will a device like this cost when it finally hits the market. This is the kind of convergence technology means.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
Did you not just see me disparage it?
--sdem
Woah ... What are we going to do with all of that? ... a video editing machine with 128mb standard ... upgradable to 256mb? That's a toy ... not a machine designed to handle video editing.
Seriously
Instead of mixing these 2 devices together, I suggest just let those two device support some kind of wireless protocol (WiFi or something similar) so they can have the same functionality as this device, but they need not be connected to eachother physically...
Okay, it might add up a bit to the weight (extra battery pack for the 2nd device), but then, you don't need to carry the whole device in your hand...
I think they need to add wireless so one can record to a bsse station as bandwidth permits. I have been wanting to build something like this for awhile, I was going to use a single board computer and wireless + a screen of some type. I may still.
They keep making digital cameras and camcorders smaller, but there's one thing you need big: the lens. God damn it, I need to take pictures of the neon lights in Shinjuku without using a flash.
Last time I used a miniature camera there it only had a small lens, so I had to use the flash to take pix at 1/30s. Camera -> Flash -> into oncoming traffic -> Swerve -> BIG PILE UP.
I'm not doing that again, so give me BIG LENSES!
graspee
$2299 Check www.dynamism.com for details
Personally, I think most of the interest around it is because the batteries are supposed to last 17 hours. Who cares about the camera...
Firewire might be fast enough ... it depends where the compression happens. This thing presumably shoots MiniDV-type video, which is 4/1 compressed *before* it goes into the computer, and Firewire should be fine. This kind of thing is even done by some pros using the old "two devices connected by a wire" trick. They shoot on DVCAM or whatever (a 25 MB/s stream, unless I've confused my terms) and stream it over Firewire to be recorded on disc in real time. The advantage here is that the whole 'log and capture' phase of video editing is skipped entirely, and with a dedicated editor they can have an assembly cut ready to watch by the time you're done shooting.
Of course, in that case, it's a $15,000 dollar DVCAM connected to a G4 laptop, not a consumer cam built into a consumer computer. You know that embarrassing geek thing where you describe computer technology as unbearably sexy? I hate that.
Crow? Is that you?