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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."
God I love seeing shiny new gizmos coming out.
Not cos' I can afford them by any stretch of the imagination, but it means that the thing I've been wanting for the last 3 months is soon to be that much closer to my budget cos' it's becoming outdated...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
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.
At least not if you have your speakers turned on.
Could it be I'm falling in love? No I don't bloody well think so.
Beep beep.
The 20 GB Vaio is heavier and bigger than the 20 GB iPod.
Great advantage: battery power for 20 hours instead of iPods 8 hours
When your battery is twice the size of an iPod... ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I for one, am a happy Ipod owner. I am very happy that the device will let me play music files. I do not need to watch videos on it, i do not need to call with it or whatever else manufacturers want to sell me. I just want to listen to music with as little fuss as possible, and the ipod serves that purpose admirably. Not to mention it integrates great with my operating system :-)
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.'
Just got a Vaio for our President, one of the small ones, he loves it and all, but the problem I have with the Sony's is the sheer amount of crap they install on the machines - the thing just seems to really drag its feet due to all the unnecessary software installed. I got rid of most of it anyways, but what a pain.
Like Toshiba, I imagine Sony will cripple an otherwise decent piece of hardware with some sort of DRM scheme. Besides, it looks too complicated to be of much use as audio player and too geeky to be bought by anyone other than otaku and clueless salarymen.
(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.
"Why are these the only approved OSs:
Windows XP Professional/Windows XP Home Edition/ Windows 2000 Professional/Windows Millennium Edition/ Windows 98 Second Edition"
Probably so they won't have to support any other OS that could be installed on the device. Just a normal case of preventing annoying/too difficult support questions.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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.
I can't wait to see what horrible DRM Sony includes with its newest music player. If the past is any indication the DRM will be the products major stumbling block. The Sony version of iTunes is already riddled by DRM issues and I can't imagine that this player would be any different. One of the major benefits of the iPod and iTunes is that the DRM is not a hinderince to the overall product, this is what needs to be copied by the other music players in order to be as successful as iTunes. A slick player with a slick interface will only get you so far if you cripple the right of the people to do what they want with the things they purchase.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
The real question is bang for your buck. One of the big things with the powerbooks is what you get for what you pay. You almost always come away with a better deal with a powerbook. The best I have seen is another laptop come even.
THe other big plus in the powerbook is a BSD based OS. Not windows so there isn't as much crap (virus, worms, etc) to deal with.
Evolution or ID?
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.
when a major multinational corporation, releases "new products" that are over priced and are "cool" because they have decorations that amount to 5 cents of shiny plastic,and a few hours with solidworks (=common cad program) /. drools.
When a major multinational corporation releases a major upgrade to an OS used by millions,and distributes the upgrade for free, they are the evil empire.
seems to be a lack of consistency here
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.
Some general comments after reading the posts, and checking the links...
It looks like the actual WideScreen offering from Sony is the S-series
(Link: http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/VGN-S70B/), not the E-series as mentioned in the post. Looks cool, but I think the WideScreen to buy if you are going to go ye old Windows or Linux route would be a 64-bit offering, like the current 64-bit AMD laptop from eMachines.
Glad to see that Sony lowered the resolution on the U-series. The older U1/U3/U101 model had XGA resolution on a 6.4 screen. I saw a U3 at trade show...beautiful screen, but talk about turning you cross-eyed. It was almost necessary to use the magnifier tool on every screen. 800x600 just makes more sense on a screen this small.
Any finally, that new VAIO Pocket player looks more like RCA Lyra Audio/Video jukebox then it does the iPod. I believe the Lyra lasted less than a year for RCA (they don't sell it from their web site anymore). I'd say Sony's will most likely follow that same fate. Most consumers I know want more storage in a smaller size, not larger.
My Japanese is not that good, but my vision is... for now
(void) signal(SIGALRM, (alarm_fired=1)); if (alarm_fired) printf("Revoke is clueless!\n");
$465, it only plays ATRAC 3 format and the looks...well, I'm not sure Apple have too much to worry about. I don't think the Sony brand has all that much cachet these days - they just churn out mass-produced stuff built down to a price, same as most other manufacturers. Shame - they used to be a bit of a Japanese icon in the days of the first Walkmans, when Trinitron was by far the best TV tube you could get.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
The IPods not much smaller than the Sony player. Sony's player has the following dimensions:
11.5 x 6.3 x 1.7(cm) as compared to 10.4 x 6 x 1.57 (cm) for the IPod (20 GB)
It weighs 195gms as compared to IPods 158 grams.
Read short writeup from The Register
Not sure if the Sony player plays video though.. It has a color screen and 20 hours of battery life. May give some competition to the IPod if the ease-of-use factor does not suck.
Oh yeah, and for all those nay-sayers who say that this will crash and burn, dont be so hasty. I know people who will buy a gizmo only because its a Sony. It has a good reputation that it will cash in on..
faulty laptop? sony *won't* sell you the spares. they don't even provide *drivers* for some of the suckers, as some different model numbers merely denote different OS's installed at delivery, and they won't let you change and keep support. they're legendary for the quality of a support - just not in a good way.
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).
And if they wanted to go with gestures, why not just use a trackpad instead of 25 buttons?
A 5x5 matrix gives you tactile feedback as to where you are, mirroring the on-screen interface, e.g. it's much easier to "go down two steps and then over one", etc. It's an improvement on a trackpad for this type of interface, e.g. a menu based interface where you don't actually have to manipulate a mouse pointer. From the animation I think this would actually be very easy to use. The problem with the iPod is that you can only go up or down, select or back. So to change the EQ for example you have to go back through lots of menus, select the EQ you want, and then get back again through the menus to the album you were playing*. This Sony device would enable much quicker navigation through the menus. The iPod UI is the best currently available on a digital music jukebox, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have problems.
*5 back, down, select 'Settings', down, select 'EQ', up/down, select eq setting, back, select 'Browse', select 'Artists', up/down, select artist, up/down, select album, up/down, select song.
Yes this device does video. . .
to be more specific there are two models:
One that plays only music and displays JPEGs and another that plays video
Picture of the interface if anyone's interested
Link to main article in Japanese
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.
Dumbass troll. The sony converts (transcodes, even--ick!) YOUR music to DRM'd ATRAC, a format ONLY SONY [cares to] support.
iTunes rips your CDs to whatever real format you want (MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF, AL) and NEVER adds DRM. The only place there's DRM is in music you choose to buy from the music store. If you don't want DRM, use AllofMP3 or rip a CD. That's not Apple's fault, ask the labels why they won't sell it without DRM.
The difference is that music you rip with iTunes is also compatible with any other decent player out there. Music you rip with Sony's software is compatible with other people with the Sony software, but oh wait, it has DRM so it's playable on the Sony portable and only your computer there. (And what happens if you have to reformat your hard drive and your GUID changes, will you have to re-rip and re-transcode your collection? So now you need two copies of your music. One real, one Sony Fantasy World. Great.)
Sony's entertainment division just brings down the electronics division. If they were this asinine back in the 90s, Sony would have quit making VCRs when they were still a must-have item, because clearly letting people record video is just asking for piracy. I think Sony should dump the entertainment division, spin it off and never speak to them again. Their hardware would improve immensely if they didn't have to worry about offending the dumbasses in the entertainment division who have no sense about technology.