A colleague at work bought a Sony VAIO P for his brothers birthday recently – and wanted me to install OS X on it. A few things first:
- I don’t have siblings, but if I had a brother or sister I’d very much like them to buy me something like that for my 60th birthday.
- One thousand bucks. A netbook for one thousand bucks. I just don’t get it.
- It is possible to install OS X but most parts of the VAIO P won’t work due to the lack of appropriate device drivers.
The VAIO P I could get my hands on comes with Windows Vista (Home Premium Deluxe or so), a 1.33GHz Atom Z processor, a 120GB HDD and 2GB RAM. The 8 inch screen features an insane resolution of 1600×768 pixels – which is in my opinion one of the VAIO’s flaws. My eyes are in a very good condition but everything is really really tiny, you feel like looking at icons through a microscope. Due to the size of the keyboard – which is perfect in size – there is no trackpad, instead you’ll find yourself working with a trackpoint, poining stick, trackstick, or whatever it is called – looks like the eraser of a pencil.
I wouldn’t spend one thousand bucks on a netbook, but I’d buy one if they were just a bit cheaper, the display really is a pain in the ass, though it’s shiny and bright and everything. If Apple should decide to build a netbook they should take the VAIO P as benchmark and do something about the display and that trackstickthing.
In conclusion I’d like to quote notebookreview.com:
The Sony VAIO P is like a Mini Cooper in a world full of Camrys and Civics. Sure, it costs a little more, it’s not the biggest, and certainly doesn’t offer the absolute best performance, but it offers premium features you won’t find in the competition, sexy looks, and helps you stand out in a crowd full of boring look-a-likes.
