DON’T CALL the VAIO P a netbook. After all, it starts at $900 with a 60GB hard drive and gets as high as $1499 with a 128GB solid-state drive (our review unit had a 64GB SSD; its configuration sells for $1199). In addition, this machine runs Windows Vista Home Basic instead of Windows XP or Linux, operating systems that are more common on netbooks. But it does have a 1.33-GHz Z520 Intel Atom processor, at the low end of second generation netbook CPUs.

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Sony claims that the VAIO P is a bite-size lifestyle laptop. But whose lifestyle? My guess: petite women with eagle-eye vision. Weighing 1.4 pounds and measuring 9.6 by 4.7 by 0.9 inches, it is about half the size of Acer’s Aspire One, slips into a coat pocket, and even comes with a matching leather purse.

The tough it borders on unusably tiny, the device is built around a QWERTY keyboard that is 88 percent the size of a standard desktop keyboard. The cut-out keys (like those on Apple MacBooks) are small—about 0.5 inch wide—but reasonably spaced. This keyboard is way more manageable than those on some of the first gen Eee PCs from Asus, but I still found my hands awkwardly clawed while trying to type. You may have to hunt and peck your way through documents. The keyboard does provide a couple of handy, customizable shortcut buttons. And one thing the VAIO P gets right is the pointer controls: the eraserhead camps intelligently amidst the keys, and firm mouse buttons rest below the spacebar.

An Appealing Display

Sony laptops typically have sweet screens, and the P’s backlit LED display doesn’t disappoint. It’s impressively crisp and bright and sports a resolution of 1600 by 768 pixels (a 16:7 aspect ratio). Sony reps say its 8-inch screen will let users view two full Web pages side by side—but don’t risk your eyesight trying to read said pages.

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The tough the VAIO P is attractive, it isn’t really built for serious business. Sure, it packs all sorts of goodies beyond the 2GB of RAM inside a slim, screwless case (say bye-bye to upgrades): 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Qualcomm’s Gobi chip 68 FAIR SONY’S VAIO P is ultracompact and has a good feature set—but it’s also pricey for a netbook. set for wireless broadband; two USB ports and a headphone jack; a Webcam with a built-in mic; and slots for both an SDHC Card and a Memory Stick HG Duo card. Those specs beat the MacBook Air’s. The P also has an intelligently designed VGA/LAN adapter connection, a dongle that attaches to the tiny power brick.

But should anyone really run Windows Vista on this thing? the P scored a measly 29 in our WorldBench 6 test suite, largely because of Vista Home Basic. As bad as that may sound, some other netbooks, such as Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9, scored even lower in WorldBench when running Windows XP. This VAIO would probably score 30 to 40 on World- Bench if it ran XP instead.

Like a Netbook

The P can play video recorded at 320-by-240-pixel resolution without a hitch. With anything larger, such as 640 by 480 pixels, playback slows so much that you get something more like a slide show than a video.

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The unit has a reasonable battery life: 3 hours, 22 minutes on the included fourcell battery. But the HP Mini 2140, which costs $529 and performs roughly on a par with the VAIO P, lasts nearly 7 hours with its battery.

The P’s quick-launching (20-second startup) Linux shell can save you time and juice if you just need to do some Web browsing or video watching. the Smart-Wi networking software quickly gets you onto Wi-Fi or wireless broadband networks. And the VAIO Control Center provides quick access to the most frequently tweaked features. Also on board are Microsoft Works and mercifully little bloatware.

So, is this thing a netbook? It’s roughly the size of one and it performs like one. And that’s the problem in a nutshell: Considering the price, it needs to do more than be small. On the other hand, this ultracompact ultraportable sure looks great.

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