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Sony's New Vaio PCG-TR1A: 12" Powerbook Killer?
Anonymous Howard writes "Sony has a hot new subnote on it's hand: the Vaio PCG-TR1A. This subnote is packed full of features: integrated camera (still and video), 10.6 inch bright wide-format screen, 900MHz Centrino, CD-RW/DVD Combo drive, 30GB drive, 802.11b, two usb ports, firewire, 3.11 pounds and a magnesium alloy case. The thing looks really cool. For me, it's the first subnote that actually gives me a viable option for purchase instead of a the Apple Powerbook 12". Read a article about it over at Designtechnica. Check out this forum thread that has good pics, other then the stock pics, next to a VPR Matrix 200A5."
I don't see how it can be when it costs more. I purchased a 12 inch powerbook with a superdrive (DVR-R/CD-RW), 802.11g, firewire, 2 usb ports, 32mb nVivida gforce 4 and a bunch of other stuff for the same price as this thing, and the prices for the 12 inch pb have since gone down. I hardly see how its a "killer." Plus, I love how everyone plays catchup to apple. For such a small market share they sure do seem to set a lot of standards.
-1 (Troll) is antihammer
Hard to believe. It's going to be hard to be a PowerBook killer without it.
How can this thing be better, when the screen is 1.4" smaller? Heck I think 12" is too small, but 10.6"? Geez can anyone even read /. on that? :)
How can this be considered a PowerBook killer when it has no DVD-R option, and EXTERNAL DVD/CD-RW drives as the only possibility for burning cd's? Sure it looks small and light, but the 12" PowerBook has a hell of a lot crammed into it's small package, which is more than I can say for this Dell.
This is my United States of whatever.
This VAIO costs $700 more than a 12" Powerbook. Show me a Mac user who actually wants a Windows machine, or better yet, wants to pay *more* for one?
"I'm not interested in investing lots of money in applications for yet another properietary OS."
Hmm... Open-source Darwin core... X11... More "open" technologies than you could shake a stick at... Loads of great built-in languages... Freely available ports of tons of great Unix apps... Exactly what is so "proprietary" about Mac OS X that is scaring you away?
Wtf? Sony has had a 10 inch (not 12 inch) entry in the laptop market for years. I've owned mine for almost two years! True there was a gap between the SRX and this thing, but still. It's ridiculous to say that Sony if "following" apple because they released a laptop that's "small" I mean come on. There have been much smaller laptops through history, like the Toshiba Libretto.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Mac zealots are stupid because they think only Macs are worth paying attention to. Windows zealots are stupid because they don't realize that there are things other than Windows. Linux zealots are stupid because they discount anything that's not Open Source. Conclusion? Zealots are stupid. Sony is not following Apple. Apple didn't invent the small and light notebook. They just did it better than anyone else had to that point. This notebook by Sony is nice but I could get a 12" PowerBook for $1399... loaded with the options I'd want more like $1600-$1700.. still considerably lower than the Sony. The metal case is a bit derivative, but it's got a different look from the PowerBooks and I like it (I like the PowerBooks a little bit more, but that's me).
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
Exactly what is so "proprietary" about Mac OS X that is scaring you away?
It should be fairly obvious, but people seem to not notice.
Mac OS X only runs on a single source of hardware. That makes it extremely proprietary.