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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."
http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/products/model_latit _latit_x200.htm. it's pretty nice, although i prefer the c400 myself. the x200 is just too small.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
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
Interesting that Apple's notebooks (and mp3 player) are now the standard others are compared against. A big shift since the 90s...
A 900 MHZ Centrino really doesn't compare that well to a 987MHZ G4.
That's a pretty wide range...
4.6 lbs.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Sony used to use Transmeta chips in their subnotebooks. This can't be good news for TMTA. It's good that Linus could read the writing on the wall, but I feel bad for their other employees... facing unemployment in this economy. And, let's be honest, even if they do find work elsewhere, few companies have as much potential as Transmeta had.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Hard to believe. It's going to be hard to be a PowerBook killer without it.
Hmm... you obviously haven't looked very hard.
Seems Slashdotted--Here are some pics from Sony.com
Not so much a comment as a question...
What has really set the Vaio apart from ye olde everyday laptop was the interesting addition of the integrated still/video camera. Are there any other manufacturers out who do this? Also...is it really usable as an integrated camera?
Have you *EVER* tried to load a different OS (as in what did not come originally on the system) nto a Sony Notebook?? You will tear your hair and generally feel like throwing out the notebook... ou will find no drivers or support on their site or it, and contacting Sony will give you a response of "It did not come with that OS so we do ot support it"
... just a Win2k or something.
I am not talking about putting Linux/BSD or Solaris (what I am thinking??)
Plus their position/membership/stance on DMCA,RIAA et. all makes me want to spend my money elsewhere...
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
I recently sold my Vaio after owning it for less than a year. Memory had problems, seemed slow and just did not live up to expectations. I recently bought a Mac PowerBook G4, my first Mac laptop and I am extremely pleased with it. Airport Extreme 802.11G works flawlessly with my Linksys router using the G standard, I have Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, PhP and host of other apps installed all working flawlessly. If you're looking for a great UI with unix under the hood look no further.
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? :)
12" Powerbook killer... err except that all Apple hardware is very well supported by linux... whereas the Centrino 802.11b isn't supported at all. So your fancy subnotebook is going to have an 802.11b card sticking out the side.
:)
Unless you want to run Windows that is, in which case you have bigger problems.
While this may be cool (wouldn't know can't read the article), let's face it people will sacrifice weight, size, and battery life for a cheaper model that does the same thing. UNLESS they are walking around with the thing, or travel a lot, or have a particular breifcase they'd like this to fit it. Believe it or not I've seen someone buy a new laptop because it was the right "size" of the breif case they had grown quite accustomed to.
12" is hard to read at a res bigger than 1024x768 as well. I really don't see this thing killing anything as there are so many laptops on the market now that no one can decide on one "ultimate" laptop.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Apple's 12" Powerbook costs $1,600 ($1,400 for students), while the new Sony Vaio is expected to cost around $2,000. Even with the cheaper price, the Apple laptop gives you 10GB more hard drive space, and a larger screen, and OS X as well. The only advantage I see is the weight difference, as the Sony weighs 32% less than the Apple. As long as you don't have trouble lifting 4.6 pounds, go for the Apple. :^)
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It seems to me there is a largely untapped market for notebooks. As I shop for one I am looking for a small, lightweight system with a long lasting battery. What I am NOT looking for is a 1Ghz+ system. I do not want a laptop that replaces my desktop but instead one that accompanies it. 500MHz is plenty for something that I would use for word processing, listening to music, and browsing the web. As processor technology improves you'd thing the long battery life and other features would make a great combination with older processors but I never see that. The only choice is to buy an old laptop but it's big and bulky and usually used. On top of that the cost savings isn't enough to warrent such a device. Why don't I ever see something like this: Pentium III 500MHz 20GB Harddrive 128MB RAM 12 inch screen 4lbs or less And some crappy 4MB video for $500 I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I just want something portable yet more capable than a PDA. I don't want to replace my desktop.
Um, if I remember the benches for everyday use, there already was a 12" powerbook killer. Not much less performance, with the exception on altivec, and cheaper too.
yeah and on my 12 in PB, I get a DVD-RW/CD-RW
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Not sure if this one runs Linux but anyone else running Linux on Sony Laptops should check out the linux-sony mailing list.
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?
Have you ever tried to call Sony's support desk? I have a pretty sweet little sony R505-ELK. It has been a really great machine, until I started loosing sectors. So I called them up to get a warentee replacement. They told me... and I quote... "That's only a couple megs! You have a 30 gig drive. That doesn't come close to meeting our criteria for failure." They went on to explain that they would not replace the drive until it was completely nonfunctional.
So. Please keep this in mind before you make the leap. Dell and Apple have high support ratings for a reason. Your laptop WILL fail at some point. Make sure you pick a company that honors thier warentees. Although as of late, Dell has been getting pretty bad too.
I've been carrying a Vaio Z505 for about three years now, and have never once been in a situation where I was away from home and needed the optical drive. I just don't install software when I'm working or surfing at a coffee shop.
And flimsy? What, do you mean it's flexible or something? Sony shipped laptops with metal (magnesium alloy) frames long before the "tibook" came out.
That said, I'll be picking up an iBook soon... but I sure wish they would shave a few pounds off it by leaving out the optical drive.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Perhaps the pound unit should be measured as a fraction of the total weight of a US Tank ripping through the cobblestones of your quaint European village street.
How's the screen and keyboard? I drooled over the Actius MM10 for months, but when I went to Micro Center I immediately hated it. The 10" screen tries to pack in a resolution of 1024 x 768, and the keyboard is tiny. Heck, the thing is even missing one of the shift keys... Since most of what I do on a subnote is typing (since, given their power, they aren't decent for gaming), screen size and keyboard usability (and battery life) are some of the largest factors for me. My iBook has a great keyboard (the one on the 12" PB G4 is even better), an amazing screen, and a battery life of over four hours. The only thing I don't like about it is the lack of a PCMCIA slot and the fact that Apple tech repair keeps sending it back with problems (the thing is making this really annoying ticking noise, and the ethernet port is shot). The ethernet port wouldn't be such a big deal, except that it has no PCMCIA slot for me to plug an adapter into, there are no Mac drivers for any USB adapters, and they want 600ish bucks to get the motherboard replaced... Conclusion: Macs make great lightweight notebooks, but have a few design flaws. All in all, they're probably better than the new Sony laptop.
The powerbook is more expensive! Macs have to be more expensive, or what would the trolls complain about (Greater ease of use? Longer battery life?)?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is not true. There are plenty of people including me running ACPI on a sony-laptop without any problems. You can check out the mailing list archives for more info. The problem is that most distro's don't include ACPI by default (except SuSe at least), but the new RedHat beta that came out today includes ACPI in it. Building your own kernel with the ACPI patch is not a bit deal as well.
Nah, I think it's closer to a very large multiple of the weight of all the Weapons Of Mass Destruction the US has uncovered in Iraq.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I have to wonder why so much perfectly good equipment goes to waste, while people lust after new machines, so that their CPU idle time can go from 99% to 99.5%. Especially among the ./ geeks, who probably have top end machines already.
Seriously people, if you want to play a game, get a game console. If you want some REAL fun, install Linux with just a floppy drive. :-)
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Sounds like a sony (or maybe any PC) is not a powerbook killer for the reasons listed in the parent comment. I have never had to worry about installing any other Apple OS on any supported machine and I have never had to jump throught these kind of hoops (installing drivers in the right order? for christ's sake!).
Now, even though I am a long time mac user/proponent, I use PCs at work and the pure usablity gap is decreasing. But when it comes to polish, fit and finish, and total cost of ownership - I just can't see the pc as a good choice for most people. It's too bad that the price sticker at best buy doesn't have to include a breakdown of how much the unit will cost over its lifetime and how much hair you will pull out (sort of like energy costs on appliances).
Everytime I think of adding an ultralight PC laptop to my home network to run the odd pc app, I read these posts and remember that it ain't worth it.
And the things cost way more than a 12" PB!
-matt
Knowing Sony, they're probably going to be those crippled (as in no power supply wires) iLink ports. I can't tell from the linked pictures. If so, you can forget about using Firewire to charge an iPod, or using a bus-powered hard drive.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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.
Has anyone noticed that it lacks PCMCIA slots? Sure its cool and I'd like one but I sure find it easier to move my digital photos off my compact flash cards with a PCMCIA adapter. Memory sticks don't work in a Nikon CoolPix 5000.
Seems you forgot the last sentence of your comment... perhaps I can help?
.
I'm __________________ and I'm a __________________
(fill the blanks)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly affected when you come and go, you come and go)
Too bad taste isn't one of those standards.
Pay attention to the laptops in TV/magazine/newspaper ads, not to mention TV shows, music videos...and of course movies...by far, Apple Powerbooks are the laptop of choice, and when a movie features a pseudo-screen-graphic, it usually bears a play-skool resemblence to the older MacOS. Oh, and the sounds you hear while Joe Movie Star is working at the computer...is usually either an ancient seagate MFM drive(wee wee...wee wooo weee) or a Macintosh 3.5" drive(Boop boop boop boop boop brrrrp booop boop). The MFM drive sound not surprisingly is more popular in the low-budg films(just kidding :-)
You have to kind of look closely since they almost always black out the Apple logo(esp on the powerbooks that have glowing apple logos :-), but the case is very distinctive on the G3 powerbooks(the Lombard was code-named after Lombard Street in CA- the curviest street in the world..because almost every surface of the case is curved.)
In fact, at one point, one of the major fashion magazines many years back said the most fashionable item you could have on you while walking down Wall St. was a Powerbook under your arm(probably where the Wallstreet codename came from). The TiBook continues the trend- they're downright gorgeous machines, at least before the paint starts chipping from the case(which is why Apple is, on new models, using unpainted aluminum external surfaces- the painted exterior of the 15" Tibook did NOT go over very well).
Please help metamoderate.
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".
I can't possibly imagine using one of these.
I am certainly not against Sony, I bought a Vaio for my fiancee. But I personally have no idea how anyone can use one of these things on a daily basis.
If you have a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse to plug into it so that it is essentially a mobile station that you move about, then that makes sense.
Of if you have that setup at work for all your uses, but if you travel to a client site you can then bring the little thing with you and use it to do a presentation - you can woo them with the little shiny thing that you brought with you to do it all.
But I just can't imagine using it, sitting there typing on it and the screen... ugh.
It would drive me absolutely nuts.
I have my 15" screen at 1400Xwhatever and a nearly full keyboard on mine and it still is a bit confining for my tastes, but is at least usable.
I use this at work and at home (at work I have a desktop that I do most of my work on, the laptop is for work that goes with me all the time).
When I get a new one, I will either get one of the Dells that can do 1600x1200 and has a brighter screen, or I will go to powernotebooks.com and see what I can setup there.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone would seek out a smaller laptop.
Easy to carry, lighter, less screen to drive means longer battery life to some extent... but to actually use the damn thing...
Shows I'm narrow minded I guess.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Okay, so the original poster's point was that he already warezed those programs for Windows, and the Mac versions are really hard to find on Kazaa.
Seriously. If Apple went out of their way to create a vibrant warez scene for all the third-party OS X apps, they would sell much more hardware. I've seen worse business strategies.
-Graham
I bought two nearly ideantical Sony Vaios (PCG-Z505LS and PCG-R505TS), hoping that ,if one breaks, the other one will be working. No, wrong!
In two years, in the Z505LS internal power board had to be replaced, modem jack fell off, and Win 2000 "had bad interplay with VAIO hardware" (this is a quotation from MSFT Customer support).
In R505LS, hard drive broke, and firewire jack broke.
First computer has been sent to Sony Repair Center 3 times, second- two times. In all 5 cases, the turnover time was very long, and once the notebook arrived unrepaired, so it had to be re-sent.
Never again!
Since I've experienced Sony's so called "support" I've decided to never buy a Sony product again. My girl friend had problems with her Sony Vaio FX802, so we sent it in and it came back unrepaired. I had to beg them to pick it up again, btw. the hotline is not free in Austria, even if you still have warranty. This time I added a very detailed description on how to reproduce the error, however, the technician ignored it and called my girl friend to complain in a very harsh tone that the notebook was not defect. I talked to the technician and could convince him that it was in fact defect, and after 3 more weeks we got it back (they exchanged the motherboard). However, when putting it together again, they forgot the screw that fixates the DVD ROM... had to provide one myself. Facit: My girl friend bought a new notbook that was significantly more expensive than others, believing that Sony's support would be better than the support of no-name manufacturers. She ended up waiting 1.5 months for her notebook.. in the meantime, it had of course become significantly cheaper. I'm now thinking about buying an Apple Powerbook. Can anybody tell me about his experiences with Apple's support?
Georg
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
1 pound = 453.59 g. Ergo, 3.11 pounds = 1.41 kg.
The Vaios I have seen had what amounted their own version of Windows. They seem to have funky BIOS, hardware, and drivers. In my opinion, Windows Update slowly destroys the machine as these goofball drivers become less and less compatible with the new DLLs you get from Microsoft. I wonder if the word "Vaio" is perhaps Japanese for "disaster"? Sony makes alot of great products, but the Vaio is not one of them. Check Usenet; see just how satisfied the customers really are. Then buy some other brand, any other brand. You really can't do much worse.
Vaios look cool, and we have a few PHBs who fell in love with the style and (lack of) weight, but they are a total nuisance for the support staff. Our travelling people occasionally gripe about the weight of their IBM Thinkpads, but at least they aren't calling headquarters with show-stopper events in the field.
the new sony:
900MHz Centrino
512MB Memory
30GB Hard drive
802.11b
10.6" TFT
3.11 Pounds
~$2000
867MHz PowerPC G4
640MB DDR266 (128MB built-in & 512MB SO-DIMM)
40GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
AirPort Extreme Card
Keyboard/Mac OS for SuperDrive - U.S. English
12.1-inch TFT Display
$2048
128MB more memory, 10GB more hard drive, faster processor (almost even on bare clock speed, even!) and has OS X with UNIX goodness out of the box, and a larger display by more than an inch. for about $48 more.
and this is a powerbook killer how?
sure, the apple is a bit heavier, but 4.6 pounds is still damn light. Also, do you think the sony really is going to last 7 hours on a battery? i know my 14" ibook has lasted more than 6.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
Killer? We haven't seen the tip of the iceberg yet. Come 2004 I'll be posting from my 64 bit notebook. I'm sure I won't take a second look at this Sony after today.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Anti-zealot zealots are stupid.
No need for anything external except a flppy drive.
and a paper tape punch/reader while you're at it.