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Sony U-70 Micro PC Reviewed

Posted by michael on from the finger-cramps dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "jkendrick has posted a detailed of review of Sony's dream handheld, the U-70. Slightly bigger than a PDA, with a SVGA screen, 20Gb hard drive, and 1GHz Pentium-M processor, this device could replace your PDA, laptop and desktop. The price is high, though. Oh to be rich (or at least richer than I am...)"

21 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. The "guts" of the U-70 by Joseph+Vigneau · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's what the machine looks like with the case removed. Quite compact.

  2. It's interesting... by Sheetrock · · Score: 3, Insightful
    But for that price, it should be able to handle some common storage device like CD or even DVD media. Half the reason of wanting something like this is so that you can easily watch movies or listen to music (although I suppose one could do the latter with MP3).

    20GB in a handheld does sound pretty good. I always worry about how you get these things repaired, though, especially when they're on the cutting edge like this.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




    1. Re:It's interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why people want CD/DVD drives in an ultraportable device is beyond me. I mean, there you have this small, beautiful device. Are you really going to bring your CD collection along? Why don't you just copy 1 or 2 movies onto the harddisk? And if you want to load more on the go, I'm sure a drive which you can leave at the hotel would be a much better choice than making this bulkier and heavier.

    2. Re:It's interesting... by doctor_no · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a basically a ultra-compact PC, it has four USB 2.0 ports as well as a Firewire port. You can obviously just connect an external CD, HDD, or DVD+/-RW, ipod, whatever, to it.

      For multimedia, it should also run any app or codec that is available for WinXP, if they could get the price below $1,000 I'm sold.

      But the U50 and U70 aren't available in the US, these guys sell them here, but they charge $1999 for the U50 and $2599 for the U70. Yikes.

  3. Not sure about the idea by Dominatus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like having a PDA and a laptop, I use them for completely separate purposes.

    Combining a phone and a PDA sounds good, because both are items I keep in my pocket. My laptop, however, I use when I want most of the experiences of my desktop, away from my desktop. This includes the keyboard.

    Small keyboards and small screens are OK for PIM, checking email, and what not, but any more than that and it get's ridiculously tedious. I know there is a market for this kind of thing, but I'm probably not very interested.

    1. Re:Not sure about the idea by amliebsch · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My dad has been waiting for something like this for a long time. He works in production control at a local manufacturing plant, and while he does a lot of work at his desk, he also has a great need to access spreadsheets and data on-the-go on the shop floor. A tablet PC is too big and too expensive, and a PDA isn't quite enough (he uses one, but the screen is too tiny to display spreadsheet data). This seems just perfect, especially if you could get/build some kind of docking solution.

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    2. Re:Not sure about the idea by Pieroxy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nothing prevent any constructor from building a "UC" as a PDA/cellphone, with crappy screen and keyboard. When you're home, you plug your DVI and USB keyboard/mouse in and you're done.

      That's just what I'm looking for for so long now. I think it's still a little early, but I'm sure we'll get to it pretty soon.

      Imagine: Everything in one box the size of an iPod: Phone, PDA, desktop, laptop, etc...
      You just plug it into it's station at home and... bang! Keyboard, screen and all the rest are as big as you want them to be. You can even have additional storage (CD/DVD/HDD,...)

      You can even have a "portable station", the size of an actual laptop which will add some of these features as well as some more battery power.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  4. Slightly? by glamslam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If that's slightly bigger than a PDA, then I guess PDAs have gotten alot bigger since the last time I checked into them.

    This thing looks too big for a carry-it-everywhere device, but too small for anything more than basic functionality... so I guess I'm wondering, "What's the point?"

    1. Re:Slightly? by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "This thing looks too big for a carry-it-everywhere device, but too small for anything more than basic functionality... so I guess I'm wondering, "What's the point?"

      Niche market. Mainly business types that travel a lot. My uncle's probably the perfect customer for this product. He needs a small laptop that he can use on a plane, he needs small and mobile as possible, and he's got the money to spend on making his life as comfortable as possible.

      Nothing wrong with it not being everybody's cup of tea. If the price was right, I wouldn't mind having one that I could tote around the office. I've ordered a TabletPc for that, though.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    2. Re:Slightly? by mblase · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you look at this picture, you'll see that it's still sized to be easy to carry in one hand. It looses something in usability this way, granted, but it's not too big for anything except your pants pocket.

    3. Re:Slightly? by jaredcat · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have one of these things and I love it, but yeah, you're right... Its too big to carry everywhere like my phone (because it wont fit in a pocket), and its no-attached-keyboardness makes it too difficult to do real work on it without using the dock or carrying around the tiny external usb japanese keyboard. It ends up being more like one of those tablet PCs that everyone was talking about a couple of years ago.

      Mostly I use it for web surfing in Starbucks, AIM while I'm walking around my house (its lite enough to carry everywhere at 1.2lb-- just too bulky for carrying everywhere outside of the house), and watching ripped DVDs in airplanes, and thats fine.

      Maybe I should just get a new tiny USB keyboard with english letters on it? What have handspring/treo/ipaq people come up with?

  5. What's with the ultra ugly color scheme? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Light barf on white is not a good color selection...

  6. The price: it's no PDA by mblase · · Score: 5, Informative

    The U70 will ship on 29 May for around ¥210,000 ($1871). Sony will also offer a lower spec. model, the U50, for ¥179,000 ($1595), which contains just 256MB of memory and a 900MHz ULV Celeron processor. It ships with Windows XP Home Edition.

    -- from the Register

  7. slashdot'd??? by infonick · · Score: 3, Informative

    the page looked like it would /. so i made a mirror complete with the gallery. the server seems to be holding up thou.

    here it is anyway:

    THE U70

    --

    You are confusing me with someone who cares.
  8. anyone else think that its funny... by chrisopherpace · · Score: 3, Funny

    This unit has a built-in three finger salute, to quote:


    Around the sides:
    Compact Flash slot
    Memory Stick Pro slot
    Hold switch
    Standby button
    Ctrl-Alt-Del switch

    --


    Bored? Why not join a decent mess
  9. Reverse Freudianism by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Funny
    Only in gadgetry will men proudly step forward and proclaim "Mine's Smaller!"

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
  10. It's cool, but here is what I'd like to see.... by StressGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Would it kill battery consumption to have it output to virtual display goggles? What would really make this attractive to me is if I could take it on an airplane, plug in a trackball and virtual display goggles and work on things like AutoCAD drawings or Word documents on a full sized virtual screen without taking up the entire tray table or trying to get the screen/lid to unfold and not bump into the seat ahead of me.

    How hard would it be to make something like that?

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
  11. Just in case... by Antihero77 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The entire article text:

    Japan has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile devices, especially computers. Importers such as Dynamism, Kurns & Patrick, iCube, and Kemplar have stepped into the void for these innovative devices that US consumers crave. While Japan has been producing very small laptops for a few years a lot of interest has been sweeping the internet recently about ultra-portable computers. Slightly bigger than a PDA but much smaller than even the smallest laptop, UPCs have been anxiously awaited by consumers. Devices like the OQO and FlipStart have been vaporware for years and yet they stay in the news and anxiously awaited by many prospective buyers. The manufacturers of both device are claiming they will be released late this year.

    It was into this climate of consumer clamor for ultra-portable devices that Sony entered and surprised everyone with their announcement of their U-50 & U-70 UPCs. Slightly larger than a PDA yet packing an entire Windows XP powered laptop smashed inside it's small case, the two Sony UPCs were not only announced without prior information leaking but Sony has actually released the devices in Japan. The first units hit the market in Japan months before the other two UPCs mentioned above are expected to be released. Unfortunately, if you don't happen to live in Japan then you'll have to obtain one of these little PCs from an importer like the ones mentioned above.

    I have been using a U-70 for a few weeks now, and I have been totally impressed with the thoughtful design Sony has put into this computer in almost every way. So, can you use one of these UPCs in your everyday mobile lifestyle? Read on to see how it works for me.

    Photos and screenshots of the Sony U-70

    What you get in the box

    The Sony comes in two flavors, the U-50 & U-70. There are three differences between the two models which are otherwise identical. The U-50 comes with a Celeron 900 MHZ processor, 256 MB of RAM, and Windows XP Home Edition. The more powerful U-70 comes with a Pentium M processor running at 1 GHZ, 512 MB of RAM, and Windows XP Pro Edition. Of the three differences noted above the amount of RAM is probably the most significant, as anyone running Windows will certainly attest to. The different processors might exhibit different battery consumption too, but I don't have two devices to compare. So what do you get in the box? The specs:

    U-50 / 70
    Internal:
    20 GB hard disk
    CPU (one of the two mentioned above)
    256/ 512 MB RAM
    Around the sides:
    Compact Flash slot
    Memory Stick Pro slot
    Hold switch
    Standby button
    Ctrl-Alt-Del switch
    1- USB 2.0
    DC in
    Docking connector:
    Hold switch
    WiFi on/off switch
    Power switch
    Headphones jack
    Front of the device:
    Three mouse buttons (L, M, R)
    Three indicator lights
    Zoom button
    Rotate button
    5" LCD screen (landscape orientation default)
    Scroll pad with Enter button
    Track point stick with Enter button
    Tools button
    LCD brightness button
    NextText button
    External:
    1800 mAh standard battery
    Docking cradle
    I/O connector
    4 - USB 2.0 ports
    1- i.Link port (fire wire)
    DC in
    Plastic stylus
    Mini surf board style
    VGA/ Ethernet dongle
    Fontopia style headphones with remote control (LCD display)
    Sony AC adapter
    Fold-up USB keyboard (Japanese and Engl

    --
    and now Tom with the weather...
  12. here are a lot of pictures... by ptorrone · · Score: 3, Informative

    i took a lot of pictures of the unit i reviewed...

  13. portability in multiple sizes by mblase · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't really like multi-gadgets, even ones as cool as this, for the simple reason that they always get the size wrong somehow. There are three types of "portability" that I usually come across in business:

    1) hand-sized -- the mobile phone, which fits easily into any pocket and is comfortable to grip with the whole hand, but is unsuitable for reading more than about twenty characters per line.

    2) palm-sized -- a small notepad or PDA, which can be easily gripped between the thumb and finger for reading or writing but still fits into a large, flat pocket in my coat or pants. GameBoys fit into this category as well.

    3) tablet-sized -- a large pad of paper or a laptop PC screen, possibly a Tablet PC, but not a laptop computer (too thick and heavy).

    A phone is simply too small for displaying large quantities of text, no matter how high the resolution. Contrariwise, a palm-sized PDA is too wide to be useful as a phone. And the idealized Tablet PC, complete with handwriting recognition and an all-day battery in a 1-lb. package, is still being pursued by many companies because it takes a screen that size to display more than a small amount of text or spreadsheet data.

    But no matter how much you fold and hinge a device, it's nearly impossible to turn a gadget designed for one of these form factors into another form factor. And any device that tries to sit halfway between two of these form factors -- like the Treo smartphones or this Sony U70 -- generally fails to attract widespread interest. Most people find it easier to carry two devices that are correctly sized to two different form factors than to try to use one that uses neither.

  14. RTFA by technoviper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the way he got it the system was far from perfect to use...

    he had to install Windows XP Tablet PC Edition to get it to work the way he wanted.

    XP Tablet PC edition is only available to OEM's or MSDN subscribers (which is $2500 a year) so i think the average user may find the system a little frustrating