Sony

The NW also includes a chicklet style keyboard, built-in web camera and microphone, HDMI and VGA outputs, WiFi, a Gigabit LAN port, three USB ports an ExpressCard slot, SD card and Memory Stick PRO slots, and a Firewire port.

The display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Sony has published full specifications for only one VAIO NW model – the VGN-NW180J/S – which comes with the Core 2 Duo P7350 at 2GHz, 4GB of DDR2 memory, and a 400GB hard drive.

Starting at 6 pounds, the VAIO VGN-NW180J/S provides “up to 4 hours” of run time on a single charge with a standard capacity battery, and “up to 5.5 hours” with an extended unit.

The Sony VAIO NW Series comes in walnut brown, birch white, and rattan silver and runs Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit OS.

The laptop starts at $800 for the standard configuration and $880 for models equipped with the Blu-ray drive.

• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Macbook Air (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200 (04-07-2009)
• Sony VAIO Z (04-07-2009)

Sony has finally released its first ‘proper’ netbook by announcing the Vaio Mini W-series. Whilst Sony has always claimed that the Vaio P was not a netbook, there’s not a chance they’ll claim the same with the Vaio W, which fits the typical netbook mould.

The Sony Vaio W has a 10.1-inch high resolution (1366 x 768) LED backlit screen as standard. This is powered by a 1.66GHz N280 Atom CPU and 945GSE chipset. It comes with Windows XP, 1GB RAM and a 160GB (SATA) HDD. Other featured include Wi-Fi (including Draft-N), Bluetooth, webcam, microphone, two USB ports and MemoryStick / SD card readers. The three-cell battery should last around 160 minutes. There will be an optional 6-cell battery.

The design of the Vaio W doesn’t deviate from the norm too much. It’s quite a chunky netbook and has rounded edges. Open it up and you can see it is a premium model. The Sony Vaio W also comes with a very nice 86-percent chiclet (isolation) keyboard and dimpled palm rest that “resists stains and finger prints”. The touchpad also has a patterned design. Overall, it reminds me a bit of the Toshiba NB200 on the inside.

The Vaio W will weigh 1.19kg, not the heaviest or lightest netbook, and have a thickness of 32.44m (Dimensions: 179.6 mm (D) x 267.8 (W) x 32.4 (H)). It will be available in three colours (sugar white, berry pink and cocoa brown) on launch.

The Sony Vaio W will launch across Europe in mid-August. In terms of pricing, the Vaio W is listed on the French Sony site for €449 but is listed for €499 in Germany and Italy. The Sony Vaio W will be should hit the US for around $500 according to the press release. We don’t have confirmation on UK pricing right now.

Sony Vaio W Series Netbook Overview – Official from Sony

• Dell Mini 9 (03-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2008 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2009 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Notebooks for over $2.500 (04-07-2009)
• Acer Aspire One (04-07-2009)

Cons

• Way too heavy
• Less than stellar Sound
• Drab details
• Bland performance

• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Macbook Air (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200 (04-07-2009)
• Sony VAIO Z (04-07-2009)

Full review of HP HDX 16t

As a 16″ HTPC, the HP HDX 16 sports all the features you’d want in a multimedia powerhouse. The 16″ display is a flush glass 16:9 1920×1080 1080p HD ready spectacle of an LCD. Aside from that, the unit is stuffed with a P7350 Intel Core 2 Dup 2.0GHz, a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GPU, 4GB RAM, a 250GB HDD and of course a Blu-ray player. All this going along with an attractive titanium liquid metallic design means the HDX won’t be the least expensive laptop on the block, but the price is reasonable for the feature set.

Design, Keyboard and Mouse

The HDX is stylishly designed with silver and charcoal lines streaking across the charcoal lid and palmrest, even racing right across the trackpad. Above the keyboard are a number of pale glowing multimedia touch-buttons and sliders. The sliders unfortunately don’t work as well as the buttons, but it creates an altogether attractive look. The keyboard is full sized and includes a number pad (although the num pad is somewhat shrunken), and it is relatively quiet and comfortable to type on. The trackpad was a joy to use, as the smooth surface never gave our fingers that sticky feeling at the end of a long scroll which we’ve felt on other trackpads.

Connectivity

The HDX comes with some noteworthy features, most of which are packed onto the left side of the unit. It comes with HDMI, eSATA, FireWire, VGA, ExpressCard 34/54, Ethernet, 4USB (1 shared with eSATA), a multicard reader, 2 audio out and audio in. HDMI is essential for any multimedia notebook and the second audio out is a nice thought – now you and your friend can both watch that movie on the airplane without splitting up your earbuds.

Multimedia Power

Aside from the gorgeous, glossy, flush glass 1080p 16″ display, the HDX offers a number of other multimedia features. The unit sports an integrated remote which can be used to watch movies or listen to music from a distance, and there is preinstalled HP MediaSmart software to help your organize and enjoy your media. The Blu-ray player displays beautifully on the LCD and a TV tuner is an available option for those who want it.

Performance and Conclusion

The HDX scored an 80 on worldbench, a 3320 on PCMark Vantage, and a 1225 on 3DMark Vantage. Translating those numbers a bit, you’ll find you have a computer that fares well on general performance and puts up average gaming numbers, although it’s clearly not designed for it. Perhaps the weakest number revealed in our testing was the 80 minutes of battery life during Blu-ray playback, which is barely enough to watch an entire film, although regular use battery life almost doubles to 156 minutes. The laptop is a little on the bulky side, but on the whole this laptop is an excellent and beautiful multimedia powerhouse that you can take with you when you need to.

• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Macbook Air (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200 (04-07-2009)
• Sony VAIO Z (04-07-2009)

Full review of Sony VAIO Z

We haven’t reviewed the Sony VAIO Z laptop yet – the following is a summary based on the hardware in the VAIO Z series.

Summary and Information

The VAIO Z series is one of Sony’s premium ultraportable series, and is priced accordingly. Like most VAIOs it comes with a little extra, such as a high-resolution ‘X-BRITE’ LED-lit screen, a Blu-Ray player and dedicated graphics.

It’s neither the thinnest or lightest laptop, like for instance the MacBook Air or the Lenovo X301, but makes up for it by using more powerful hardware. For example, the VAIO Z is equipped with the regular, higher clocked Core 2 Duo’s, whereas its thinner competition use low-voltage CPUs. It even has a dedicated graphics card to help with the HD media playback and provide some light gaming capability, which is unusual in this weight category.

An optional upgrade that should make this laptop incredibly fast is the dual-SSD RAID configuration. This gives it almost double the performance of the already fast and completely silent Solid State Drive technology. Coincidentally, it also doubles the price tag – but hey, if you want the fastest laptop on the planet, I’m sure you don’t expect it to be cheap.

• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Macbook Air (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200 (04-07-2009)
• HP HDX 16t (04-07-2009)

• Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (04-07-2009)
• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Macbook Air (04-07-2009)
• Sony VAIO Z (04-07-2009)

• Sony Vaio FW (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo ThinkPad X200 (04-07-2009)
• Sony VAIO Z (04-07-2009)
• HP HDX 16t (04-07-2009)

Full review of Lenovo IdeaPad S10

Seeing that a majority of netbooks are based on the Intel Atom N270 CPU, GMA950 graphics, and Windows XP Home as the operating system (the s10 being no exception), you have to look at what other features it brings to the table. Besides the eye-pleasing and MacBook-like design, the base model of Lenovo’s S10 is actually not that well equipped compared to similar netbooks. It has an 80GB hard drive and only 512MB of RAM, although most buyers will probably throw in an extra $50 and get the 160GB hard drive and 1GB RAM.

Keyboard and Trackpad

After testing the keyboard/trackpad combination on the S10 for a while, we found that the trackpad provided a nice and consistent experience, although the buttons where a bit loud when depressed. Also, the keyboard felt somewhat cramped like it does on most netbooks, but some odd-sized keys like a minimal tab key made it feel even more so on the S10 than most other 10″ netbooks that we’ve tested.

Connectivity

Looking at the connectivity, the S10 has a nice set of features: Two USB ports, VGA out, headphone, microphone, LAN, multi-card reader, Bluetooth and Express Card. A big plus and a gold star to Lenovo for the last two items on the list – having Bluetooth is a must for some users, and an express card slot is also nice to see on a netbook. Again, like most other netbooks it lacks support for wireless N (the fast variety).

Performance and Battery Life

In our WorldBench test, the S10 delivered a score of 29, which is a slightly lower score than the competition, but this can probably be attributed to the 512MB of RAM. Upgrade to a gig of RAM and you will probably see an improvement to a score in line with other netbooks. According to Lenovo, you should be able to get almost 4 hours of battery life, but in the real world – with Wi-Fi on and screen brightness turn up – you’ll be lucky to get 3:30 out of the 3-cell battery. This is to be expected from a 3-cell, but it would have been nice to at least have the option to get it with a 6-cell.

All in all, the Lenovo S10 is a nice-looking netbook that performs predictably. It can definitely be recommended, but I would opt for an upgrade to at least 1GB of RAM. Unlike some other netbooks, the S10 is also thankfully very easy to upgrade.

• Dell Mini 9 (03-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2008 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2009 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Notebooks for over $2.500 (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (04-07-2009)

Full review of Sony Vaio FW

The multimedia powerhouse that is the Sony VAIO FW-270j meets all your entertainment features and more in one attractive package. The 16.4″ glossy 16:9 HD display in concert with the HDMI port and Blu-ray player give you all the tools you need for high quality video playback. With an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz CPU, 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD, it can handle most other computing tasks too. It’s a little heavy and just fair on battery life, but it makes up for it with style points and multimedia prowess.

Design, Keyboard and Mouse

The FW-270J isn’t lacking for grace. With a minimalist design featuring a Macbook-like silver chassis and black chiclet keyboard, you’ll love looking at more than just the glossy display. The display rests on what looks like two large hinges, the rightmost of which has a glowing green band which is lit when the computer is on. Everything about the laptop looks very smooth except for the lid, which is strangely black matte. The keyboard itself lacks a number pad despite room for it but the keys are well spaced and are decent for typing. The trackpad is smooth and comfortable.

Multimedia Power

This VAIO comes with a Blu-ray player, HDMI, and a beautiful 16.4″ glossy HD display. Although the display claims to be “Full HD 1080p” the resolution is a 720p 1600×900 (Sony explains that it’s only 1080p “when connected to a compatible HDTV”, which essentially means you can use it as a Blu-ray player for your TV). The backlighting was excellent and helped eliminate the glare, and the viewing angles were good enough that multiple people could easily watch a movie on it sitting side by side. There is also a set of multimedia buttons placed above the keyboard, one of which gives you access to Sony’s helpful built in multimedia software.

Connectivity

The FW-270j has a standard slew of ports with a few nice additions. You’ll find a card reader, audio in/out, VGA, HDMI and i.Link S400 (ie: mini FireWire) as well as an ExpressCard/34 slot and 3 USB ports. Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g/n was also included in the unit. The HDMI port is essential to any HTPC, and the list of other ports is enough to get most of your general computing jobs done.

Performance and Conclusion

This computer is a multimedia powerhouse with good internals but it lacked a GPU, which explains the score of 3235 on PCMark Vantage, although we were a little disappointed with the 74 on Worldbench. Battery performance was adequate for this type of laptop, with 101 minutes while watching a Blu-ray (enough time to actually finish it on one charge) and 181 minutes in general use. The downside of this laptop was that it is “just” decent in overall testing and it is a little heavy, but in return you are getting a beautiful laptop which looks as good as the HD video it is capable of easily playing.

• Dell Mini 9 (03-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2008 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2009 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Notebooks for over $2.500 (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (04-07-2009)

Full review of Asus Eee PC 1000HE

Asus started the netbook craze with its tiny, 7-inch Eee PC. Shortly thereafter, every notebook manufacturer except Apple produced at least one tiny and inexpensive laptop just like it. Nowadays, netbooks are not that tiny anymore – little by little they have increased in size from 7″ via 9″ and now the standard screen size of a netbook is 10 inches. Even a couple of 12-inch models have been released.

Hardware

What they all have in common is the hardware – with a few deviations it consists of an Intel Atom CPU at 1.6GHz, 1GB or RAM, a 160GB hard drive and integrated GMA950 graphics. The Eee PC, however, has been upgraded with an ever so slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom processor and a higher 667MHz FSB speed instead of earlier models which had 533MHz.

The speed increase is not big enough to be noticeable, but you might feel better purchasing an upgraded model. Asus’ main selling point with the 1000HE is the battery life. According to the manufacturer, you should be able to keep it alive for 9.5 hours without resorting to an outlet. To achieve this formidable battery life, you need to use aggressive power-saving schemes, no Wi-Fi and turn the brightness all the way down. In our general usage test it still delivered more than 7 hours, which is still more than acceptable.

Design

As far as the design goes, the Eee PC 1000 HE stays with the concept we’ve seen in previous Eee netbooks. The keyboard is almost full size (92%) and the trackpad buttons are slightly tilted in the front. The entire casing of the netbook is glossy, which enhances the overall look but also attracts fingerprints easily.

On the whole, the design of the 1000HE focuses on usability; it’s not spectacularly thin like some of its siblings, such as Asus S101 netbook, but it certainly gets the job done with flying colors. Besides, keeping the design simple also helps keep the price to a minimum, which is often the deciding factor for a netbook buyer.

Connectivity and Features

The ports have been placed on the left- and right-hand sides of the laptop – none at the back. On the right is a memory card reader, 2 USB and VGA and on the left is another USB port, Ethernet, and audio line in/out.

Summary

While there are better looking netbooks on the market, the Eee PC 1000HE comes at a very attractive price point and offers excellent battery life. It’s also very easy to use thanks to the large keyboard, and has all the features that the competition offer plus a little extra. Combine these aspects and you have one of the best netbooks currently available.

• Dell Mini 9 (03-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2008 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Netbooks 2009 (04-07-2009)
• Top 10 Notebooks for over $2.500 (04-07-2009)
• Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (04-07-2009)