Sony P-Series

This is the laptop I bought for my wife for her birthday in June and since my 13" MacBook is in the service centre at the moment, it is the laptop I have writing this post with now. Quick review is that I would prefer to use my MacBook. This Sony is too small for me, both the screen and the general size.

A couple of other comments: I bought the version with the solid state drive and as a result this thing is Quiet (with a capital Q). This coupled with a relatively slow boot time often has me wondering if the computer is working at all. Patience is often required to just wait for the Windows login screen to come up.

The keyboard is minimised and has a pointing stick in the middle rather than a dedicated trackpad. This can be annoying as I will occasionally tap the pointing stick and the cursor entry point will change (as happened while I was typing this sentence). I am sure this action can be turned off though.

The big disadvantage of this laptop is the battery life ... 2--3 hours. Granted the battery is very small to fit with the form factor of the overall laptop, but it really isn't great.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of the usability of this laptop is that my wife has since obtained an iPhone and she uses that far more than she uses this laptop. Admittedly she will use this laptop if she needs to write a Word document or similar, but for general web browsing (like Facebook) or IM'ing (Yahoo), she will use the iPhone. For more extensive web browsing she will use the iMac on the desktop which is almost always on (or asleep). The instant on feature of these devices really seems the key usability feature.

Actually, I just remembered that this laptop also has an instant on feature that provides the crossbar familiar on the Sony PSP. This can be used to browse the web (Firefox) and listen to music or watch movies. But it feels like a tacked on feature rather than a primary use case.

Overall, it is an OK little laptop, good for web browsing and document creation. If it was faster to boot and had a better battery life it would almost be good. Perhaps Windows 7 will help with boot time. However, if the speculated Apple tablet is anywhere close to the performance of this thing and maintains the instant on function of the iPhone, I can't see the point of this laptop in the future.