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A Raft Of New Products From Sony Japan
my1wong writes "Sony Japan has launched a DoVaio campaign which features a lot of new stuff. ... Main new stuff included wide screen notebooks ( E series), multimedia desktop replacement ( A Series), long-awaited evolution update to the ultra small U101, and this time it's a tablet indeed ( U series). Last but not least, the expected challenger to iPod, it's called VAIO pocket, VGF-AP1. All very sexy... Guess Sony has been woken up by Apple's success with iPods and Powerbooks."
It looks like their iPod clone has some funky screen on it - is that a video player of some description?
Score:-1, Funny
Except for the proprietary ATRAC format killing of your poor MP3 world.
Ever notice that if you choose Sony, everything seems to work really well with if it is also from Sony? In their hardwary kind of way, they are getting as hegemonous as the big M.
I wonder what OQO's response to the U70 will be? The U70 is totally capable of acting as a desktop system as well, whereas the OQO was kind of underpowered in the same role.
Anyway, as a consumer annoyed by its vapourware status, I just have to say "IN YOUR FACE, OQO!"
I'm all for competition and for things looking desirable. But I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with the two products I checked out (the tablet and the iPod-competitor), especially considering that Sony have a pretty decent reputation for product design.
I own an Archos Jukebox from a couple of years back. It's not the most attractive device. More recently (when I was passing through Singapore and Hong Kong) I got to see and hold the new Archos devices and they are a vast improvement.
From Sony, with a substantial budget and existing stable of industrial designers, I expected a lot more. The buttons are an absolutely crucial component of a device's usability and appearance, and I don't think these two products really stand out. I have an iPod 40GB (thinking of selling it because I don't really need it; but the design and usability is excellent) and it's a very attractive object. I guess I expected Sony to challenge that a little more -- to provide more competition.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
(that would be the G-Sense instead of the flywheel).
Second thought after viewing feature intro:
Why horizontal instead of vertical and are color album cover icons a good usage of space/processing? Especially if it doesn't have Firewire.
Third thought after seeing more features:
Why are these the only approved OSs:
Windows XP Professional/Windows XP Home Edition/ Windows 2000 Professional/Windows Millennium Edition/ Windows 98 Second Edition
Isn't sony's line of Hi-MD players, found here their first line at hitting the iPod?
I mean, even though a disc only stores 1 gig, I'd take removable media with $7/disc cost, ability to double capacity of old minidiscs, and a very long (minidisc standard) battery life over the iPod. This of course all before we even compare the cost of the units.
When will some company take a decent processor and throw it into a tablet? I used a Fujitsu tablet the other week and loved it. It makes alot of sense to me to be able to flip the thing over and read like a book. Great for kicking back and reading datasheets. Now, if it just had some gusto- I could put a bunch of design tools on it.
It is all Japanese to me.
25+ buttons? Do they not know that people like(d) the ipod for ease of use, amongst other things?
I've thought a lot about the iPod UI, and it's neither as easy nor as powerful as I would have liked. I wrote this about it.
Most of what I'd like fixed would be easier to do with a couple more buttons. 25 does seem a little excessive however...
Check out the VGC-RAxx desktops... pretty slick looking. Looks like there is some crazy cooling scheme going on too, with air intake slots in the middle of the chassis and a heatpipe CPU cooler; check out these pics.
Industrial design is just so difficult.
How many ugly little stickers adorn your laptop when you take it out of the box? Three? Four?
And LED indicator lights on laptops that shine right into your eyes? That's just plain daft. My clamshell iBook has zero battery/HD indicator lights, just one that is on when it's asleep... and it pulses. There is a little ring around the hole which you plug in the AC connector, to the laptop. When the power's on, again, no harsh lights. They've made the side of the laptop a little transparent so you can see the green/orange tone.
Even the connector (the old one, circa clamshell iBook) has been carefully designed (it looks a bit like a flying saucer), not one of those black fugly things that may have come with your laptop.
ID is about thoughtful detail. And Apple is the holy grail of industrial design. It isn't just because they've got a technically talented bunch of designers. So do Sony. It's because of the tiny little things that have been done, all the little details, touch sensitive buttons, slot-drives, lights that don't shine into your eyes (like the very bright ones on my mom's NEC that they put just below the LCD screen!), lights, etc.
All factors equal, little things like this are going to help Apple prevail over Sony in the end.
I have a Vaio laptop (don't remember the number, but 700MHz PIII in the slimline case with external CD and floppy). It's a really nice machine, but when I went to replace the hard disk I discovered something: Sony tech support is useless. The only thing their hardware support page tells you is where to send the machine back. No service documentation available, and no spare parts.
Contrast this with IBM, where you can download PDFs with full disassembly instructions and parts lists. You can order parts from IBM for reasonable prices, and they show up in a couple of days. They're actually *helpful* on the phone -- I bought a refurbed Thinkpad that had a European keyboard, and they cheerully talked me through finding the US replacement.
Can't tell you if other vendors are as good as IBM, but I can tell you that if you plan to touch the hardware at all, avoid Sony like the plague.
The VAIO Pocket Interface (play movie to view in action) does not seem very good to me.
For those who won't watch the above link, there is a grid of 5x5 'buttons' you run your finger up and down, left to right to simulate scrolling and navigating menu levels. The problem is, what if you want to go down more and you run out of buttons because you initially positioned your finger wrong? Maybe you can just pick your finger up, but I would think it easier to use the touchpad a la notebooks (and what Apple derived for the iPod) that we have been used to using for years.
There is also a rather large color screen whcih looks like a nice power drain to me, especailly when the thing is playing in my pocket, displaying a color albumn cover.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
They've done it to me with a tape recorder and a laptop in the last couple of weeks. Numerous other crap before. It's reaching the point where I'm discouraging folks from choosing Sony, 'cos they can't even keep stock of a product for the lifetime of their 'Sony Style' magazine/catalog thing that they have here in Australia.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I won't get into "Why worry about the $30 you're spending for Windows" and just say that, in my experience, Vaio's are not the easiest/best to install linux on. My latest excercise was an R505 with the "Docking" platform that attaches to the laptop via Firewire. A nice little machine, but very difficult to get everything working with Linux. (Mandrake, actually, which has good hardware detection). I used another Vaio before that, and that one was not a snap either, from the Linux perspective.
For example the original iPod was 1.8cm deep - the new ones feel like they're half the thickness.
I'm sure some people won't mind, but really - it's much bigger, and much heavier (all things being relative).
I worked in Sony here in Japan. Every division except movies and PS2 is running at a loss. They have NO new ideas and the morale there is rock bottom. Everyone hates the President as an arrogant a*hole. 5 years from now they won't exist. It's goodbye Sony. They'll be bought out soon after they lose enough money... How many Sony appliances have YOU bought in the last 8 years? Not enough to keep them solvent.