Sony Lifestyle PC

by Cisco Cheng www.pcmag.com

It was more than two years ago that Mike Abary, senior vice president at Sony, reached into his inner suit pocket and pulled out the Sony VAIO VGN-UX180P. At the time, he called this handheld PC, which ran a full-blown version of Windows XP, "an achievement in ingenious design." Little did he know he'd be pulling the same stunt again at a quaint hotel in Manhattan, where I was one of a handful of journalists invited to preview Sony's take on the netbook revolution. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a clamshell the length of two UX180Ps, not even an inch thick. This, as he described it, is Sony's answer to the surging netbook market, only it's not being classified as a netbook, it's not an update to the UX180P, and the intended audience, interestingly enough, is women. It's the Sony VAIO VGN-588EQ ($1,199 direct), better known as the Sony Lifestyle PC.

The Lifestyle PC is unlike anything you've seen before, in large part because of the 8-inch LED widescreen, the first of its kind. Even from afar, you may feel a tingling sensation as soon as you lay eyes on it, and your first instinct is to pick it up. Sony handed me a review unit while I was at the CES 2009 show in Las Vegas, allowing me to use it in multiple scenarios. I really don't want to call this a netbook, but there's no other way to classify this gorgeous device. It runs the Intel Atom platform, it's inexpensive for a Sony-branded laptop, and the keyboard is undersized—all netbook symptoms. On the other hand, it's so much more than a netbook. It weighs half as much as one and packs in features like 3G wireless, a pre-boot Linux environment, and a high-resolution screen. Although the Lifestyle PC is now at the pinnacle of design engineering, performance is an issue when Windows Vista is the only operating system offered, and the price is over $1,000 with the solid-state drive option. Based on design alone, though, I think Sony can create a huge following with this pseudo-netbook.

Even though there are no ties between them, the Lifestyle PC conjures up images of Intel's Moorestown concept device. It weighs a mere 1.4 pounds, only 0.2 pound heavier than the original UX180P. And it measures 9.7 by 4.7 by 0.8 inches, which is about the length of the ASUS EeePC 1002HA but only half its depth. It fits nicely in the inner pocket of a suit jacket or a Coach clutch bag, and is thin enough that you can slide two of them into a manila envelope. Its look is unique, and its design intentions are clear: Sony wants to dissociate the Lifestyle PC from the likes of the MSI Wind, the ASUS EeePC, and the Acer Aspire One—some of the more popular netbooks in the market. In my opinion, it has successfully done so.

In order to maintain its physical dimensions, the vertical height of the screen had to be compressed, making the screen appear extraordinarily wide. It's clearly smaller than the 10-inch screens found on the Wind and the 1002HA, but the screen resolution is what makes everything gel. Practically every netbook uses a 1,024-by-600 resolution; the Lifestyle PC has a native one of 1,600-by-768. Such a resolution can fill up the screen, for instance, with three Explorer windows, without any overlap. There's even a Windows Arrangement button (next to the mouse buttons), which will neatly tile your application windows in a row. A movie fills the entire breadth of the screen, whose brilliance makes photos and videos pop. This high a resolution, on the other hand, makes text tiny enough to give you eyestrain after an hour's work. There's a built-in magnifying tool, but using it is impractical. If you have sensitive vision, and word processing and e-mailing are your top priorities, the Lifestyle PC is probably not for you. For others, the potential for watching a video while Microsoft Word and PowerPoint are fully opened on each side is compelling.

The target audience may be primarily women, but Sony plans to extend its reach to college students and young professionals. According to Sony, women aren't too concerned about what's inside the system; how it looks is more important. The Lifestyle PC's polished exterior and color options, including green, white, and red, aren't any different from what other netbooks are offering. A big area where Sony is distancing the Lifestyle PC from other netbooks is in accessory selection. A wide (in fact, mind-numbing) choice of sleeves, from color matching to leather ones, is available as an add-on. The Lifestyle PC also comes standard with a pair of noise-canceling headphones.

The downfall of the UX180P lay in its undersized keyboard, as it completely limited you to thumb-typing. The width of the Lifestyle PC enabled Sony to put in an 87 percent keyboard, slightly smaller than the size of the one on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10. The individual keys are slightly raised, with well-defined spacing between them, like the ones on the Sony VAIO VGN-TT190. It has the smallest keyboard of netbooks like the Wind and the HP Mini 1000. I will say, though, that my typing pace quickened after a day's worth of practice. A touch typist, especially ones with slender fingers, can make the necessary adjustments. Stubby-fingered folks, though, will be faced with a cramped typing experience. Because of space constraints, a pointing stick had to be used in place of a touchpad. There's no palm rest area, so my palms were either completely on my lap or on a table or other surface. And this was actually a good thing: With the HP Mini 2140, for example, my palms were riding the edges, which can be uncomfortable.

Next to the Windows Arrangement button is another unfamiliar key, which boots the Lifestyle PC into a Linux environment. Rather than wait a full minute for Vista to boot up, Sony's Linux preload can do it in 20 seconds. The interface looks eerily similar to the Sony PS3's, in which each transparent menu item drops down to reveal more items. And that's no coincidence, either: Both user interfaces are basically the same. They even share the same name: The Xross (pronounced Cross) Media Bar. In this pre-boot mode, you have access to all your physical drives, network connections, and applications, like Skype and Firefox. This mode is very handy when battery life is critical.

The feature set is what you would expect from a netbook, with some slight twists. The Lifestyle PC has two USB ports, which isn't bad considering that the Fujitsu LifeBook U820 and the UX180P offered only one. In typical Sony fashion, there are separate card slots for both Memory Stick and Secure Digital (SD) formats. My test unit came with a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD), which should be your primary option. A 60GB hard-drive alternative, which spins at 4,200 rpm, would severely compromise performance, and there are already several compromising factors, which I'll get into soon.

For the first time, Sony is launching with Verizon's EV-DO Rev A as its 3G service provider. (Sprint had been Sony's provider of choice in the past.) I had 3 hours to kill at the airport, and having a broadband Internet connection through a cellular carrier was invaluable. The Lifestyle PC also comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS module. With GPS, my unit was preloaded with Microsoft Streets & Trips. Though the GPS is a handy feature to have, the version in the Lifestyle PC is not going to replace a standalone device or even a smartphone with Google Maps loaded—you don't want to have to boot into Vista, load Streets & Trips, and wait for the GPS to acquire a signal when you need to use it. A VGA and an Ethernet port that you would normally find on a netbook won't fit on the Lifestyle PC's thin chassis. Instead, there is a separate adapter, with Ethernet and VGA, that plugs seamlessly into the AC adapter. Combined, both adapters weigh 0.3 pound.

Interestingly, Windows XP Home Edition will not be offered, nor will Linux as a standalone operating system. I see this as yet another attempt to dissociate the Lifestyle PC from the netbook category. Instead, Windows Vista Basic, Home Premium, and Business are your only options.

At times, processing might be an issue. The 1.33-GHz Intel Atom Z520 is slower than the 1.6-GHz N270 Atom processors found in the HP Mini 1000, the MSI Wind, and the Samsung NC10-14GB. The 2GB of memory and the solid-state drive help counter Vista's ferocity, but they aren't enough. For one thing, my unit was bloated with at least 25 VAIO-branded applications and numerous third-party ones; that's too much for an Atom-based device. Another indication was the sluggishness in loading 100 picture thumbnails or the icons in Vista's Control Panel. The Lifestyle PC finished its video-encoding tests in 7 minutes 20 seconds, more than 2 minutes longer than the HP Mini 2140 and the MSI Wind.

Because the Lifestyle PC is so thin, cooling concessions were made. At times, the system was on the cusp of being uncomfortably warm. A low-powered Atom platform typically implies great battery life, but the combination of the heat and the small 16-Wh battery yielded a MobileMark 2007 score of only 2 hours 4 minutes. The Wind's score was 20 minutes better, thanks to a faster processor and a bigger battery, while the HP 2140 managed 3 hours of battery life. Sony has a six-cell battery option that should improve battery life drastically, and I highly recommend it.

If the Apple MacBook Air can make followers turn a blind eye to its flaws, so too can the Sony Lifestyle PC. Its design is magnificent and features ample. Sony has a history of overpricing its products, and I think the most important question here is the price. At $1,199 (configured price), it's $300 to $400 more than what it should be but still significantly less than the UX180P cost when it first launched, not to mention practically every other Sony-branded laptop. It's more expensive than any other netbook I've seen, though Sony is not calling it one. For now, I think the Lifestyle PC is strictly a traveling companion, and you'll need the solid-state drive and the extended battery to avoid complications. Yet based on design alone, I think that its reach will extend beyond just women and college students.