BEST TOP 10 NETBOOK

Sony Vaio P-series Lifestyle PC

Sony’s marketing people say the Vaio P series is a ‘lifestyle PC’, not a netbook. We’d be inclined to believe them if the bleedin’ thing wasn’t book-shaped and let you surf the Net.

Design and usability

The P series weighs a mere 618g, making it the most portable device in our top ten. It’s far wider than it is deep and has a rather unusual 1,600×768-pixel resolution on its 8-inch display. It might look a little strange, but the screen is more than sufficient to accommodate most Web pages, although icons and text can be rather small, and the bizarre aspect ratio has a tendency to make videos look slightly odd. You’ll either love or hate the nipple-style mouse, and while the keyboard is tiny, it’s surprisingly easy to bang out short text documents.

Connectivity

The P series is relatively thin, so the fact it lacks connectivity shouldn’t come as a surprise. It has a USB port on either side and can accommodate VGA and Ethernet ports via a small USB dongle, although carrying this can be a hassle. Wireless support comes in the form of high-speed draft-n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and best of all, an integrated 3G modem — you simply connect your 3G SIM card to the slot beneath the battery and you can surf the Web anywhere you please. GPS is available too, should you fancy using the P series as a sat-nav.

Performance and battery life

P-series netbooks are available either with 1.33GHz or 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPUs and 2GB of RAM — 1GB more than most netbooks. Unfortunately, Sony’s opted to use the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system, so any advantage is lost to the memory-hungry OS. Battery life is best on the 1.33GHz model — this lasted 3 hours 8 minutes in our movie playback test, which is pretty respectable, considering its size.

Should I buy it?

It all depends on your requirements. The P series is much more expensive and slightly less comfortable to use, but a little more portable than its rivals. We love its looks, but we’d be far happier with one of the normal netbooks elsewhere in this roundup.

Places to buy: AMAZON.COM

By Cnet.co.uk