Was almost hoping that they could write about the Vaio without mentioning the Air, should've known better. At least the Vaio is far sexier and smaller and it has a DVD drive!

ultraportable != slimline

Looks pretty. Not buying a vaio again, though.

Yeeah, I like too, but sorry Sony.

Their stuff is always cool looking and often cutting edge, but I just don't feel right giving 'em money again.

I do like the T Types .. Got an early T type it's still going strong unlike the 2 powerbooks that I had.

I do have to say that Sony has a lot of crapware on their install ( not as much as Dell though but thats not saying much)

oh pritty.. but sorry sony.. after what you did to my momma i promised myself nevar again..

@strider_mt2k: Strange thats the way I feel about Apple at the moment

Some of those patterns give me flashbacks to some of the horrible wallpapers I grew up staring at during the early 80s.

Gotta chime in for the T-series. It rocks! I've had (the same) one for three years now, and not only do I still love it, but I've never wanted more from it (well, apart from kick-ass 3D graphics - but that ain't coming to this form-factor any time soon)...

Ethernet, VGA, PCMCIA, modem, firewire, bluetooth, Wifi, dual-USB and DVD writer, nothing more to bring along than the AC adaptor and even that isn't always necessary (can get up to 8 hours use off a single charge)... Problem (for Sony) is that I'm in no hurry to buy another - this one (thanks to the battery recall last year) will still last me quite a few years...

Had a Sony C1 before which was much smaller, but once you add in the drives, dongles etc. it becomes bigger/heavier. Need to take that into account when gauging portability. I like Apples (Intel Mac Mini rocks too!), but you wouldn't get me to swap the T-series for an Air any day...

@ki.designs:

'Course, we won't be hearing any Sony fanboy going up in arms about how ridiculously underpowered the ULV 1.2GHz CPU on this is.

@Dearhaw: But it doesnt need to be, its an interweb/word/screwing around machine. That is always been the defense of the Air. You know, that its not powerful because its not designed to be.

And despite the slow CPU its probably on pace with the Air since it comes with that horrible 4200RPM drive.

It also has the benefit of being able to play DVDs without an attachment and rock the hell out of the Air's battery life.

:Homer Simpson doughnut voice: Mmmm Sooooony

I've been a sucker for Sony since the PS1 hooked me as a kid (young adult... whatever), but I've been very underwhelmed with my Vaio laptop... at least they look nice ._.?

@Dearhaw: They could do better. I'm planning a move to Europe and one of these would be excellent for my purposes, but 1.2G? really? That's a lot less than people expect today, even though it's perfectly functional.

That's it? All they did was upgrade the processor? No new chipset? No improved battery life? No Xohm? (Okay Xohm would be a bit early but still . . .)

I'm very disappointed.

Why can't they put a plain design on the back like everyone else?

@archercc:

Well, there you go. I'm merely pointing out the fact that there are plenty of people who go absolutely bonkers about how underpowered the MBA's C2D 1.6/1.8GHz is, but I don't see any of them bombarding this article. Do you? Point being that different people are willing to sacrifice different aspects of portables to suit their needs/wants. You feel the ultra-crappy ULV 1.2GHz is OK, so long as it comes with an internal optical drive. I say an optical drive need not be included, but feel that ULV 1.2GHz is out of the question (in fact, the 1.6/1.8GHz C2D in the MBA isn't enough for me either, which is why I'm not buying it).

@Pope John Peeps II:

I agree with you, but you know, that's always been the case with most of Sony's ultra-portables. The last Sony I had was the very first VAIO SR. Fantastic little thing, but a crappy Celeron (even by then-standards) processor, and should I add that it, too, didn't come with an internal optical drive? Many, and I mean many Japanese laptop makers have, over the years, asked their customers to sacrifice a lot of things on their ultra-portables, and still demanded obscene prices. There may have been grunts here and there, but that's it. Apple does the same, and all hell breaks loose. I just don't get it.

that uber-linear design (er... the one with all the lines) reminds me of the self-healing cutting mats in graphics class, after about a 10,000 goes with my trust x-acto. Ah, memories... I can practically smell the quicksilver G4 macs...

@dearhaw: wow, almost missed your comment there... pretty much right on. a 1.2ghz processor is especially torturous in vista. I'd be seeing choppily-animated aero windows in my sleep if i had to use this thing.

My Advising Professor bought one of these on my recommendation. At the time he was considering this or the Toshiba R500 which wasn't available yet so he bought this with 1.06 Ghz and 1GB of ram.

Aero runs fine LPRANAL and not choppy at all even on the 1.06 proc the 1 gig however is killing him, considering all the crapware it came with and runs in the background like the wifi switcher, and other sony proprietary software. Other than that, great machine, keyboard is a bit small though, but the screen is oh so sony beautiful.

Also please note that they're already offering this machine with 1.33 Ghz U7700 processor and ssd which should be sweet, but all things considered, if you compare the specs to the macbook air, you really do begin to wonder who's making the real (or the right) compromises to be ultra portable. I don't know yet until I actually get to manhandle a macbook air.

On a side note, anyone consider doing a Macbook Pro Hack to replace the ROM drive with a secondary battery? I can't find anything on the net though the idea seems quite simple and space looks like it would fit a stock battery minus the cover.

I was thinking "Damn, I just bought one of these". But after looking at the designs, nope, they're all ugly. I'll stick with the shiny bare carbon fibre pattern thanks.

Interesting though is that the 1.2GHz CPU is an "upgrade" to the current model, mine (Australian model, TZ28GNX) came with the U7600, pretty sure it had been available for a month or two before I bought it too.

As for people saying the C2D 1.2 is slow, it performs about on par with the Pentium 4 3.0 in my desktop machine at work. For somewhere around 1/8 of the power consumption, I call that pretty impressive.
If you're having problems, it's clearly because you're still running Vista, upgrading to a real operating system (mine runs Linux, but if you feel it's necessary to use WinXP I won't hold it against you) will undoubtedly fix things.

Sony looks like they got a lawsuit down their hands with the stealing of that Sigvard Bernadotte pattern (Virrvarr).. Temptingly delicous though!