David Flynn29 December 2008, 8:01 PM
Sony’s coming fashionably late to the netbook party with what looks to be a super-widescreen model known as the Vaio Pocket.
The first firm details of the long-rumoured Sony Vaio Pocket have leaked out ahead of the netbook’s coming out party at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it looks like Sony is putting its fashion foot forward with an elegantly slim design (although we suspect the price will be on the fat side).
The screen is said to be a razor-sharp 1600 x 768 pixels packed into an 8 inch display. That measurement, and the teaser images of a model holding the Vaio Pocket like a clutch purse (which mirrors some of HP’s advance publicity for its equally fashionista-friendly Vivienne Tam edition of the
Mini 1000), show Sony’s netbook to sport a uniquely elongated design which has got us bamboozled. Is the lid
all screen, or is there something else parked next to the display?
(The product shown on
Sony’s US Web site, where the Vaio Pocket is already flagged as a ‘coming soon’ product, is only a ‘placeholder’ image which is fact is from Sony’s larger 11.1 inch TT series)
The CPU hasn’t been specified, but the published 1.33GHz rating of the powerplant indicates that if Sony has followed all other netbook vendors by putting Intel inside then the Vaio Pocket will run the Atom Z520 ‘Silverthorne’ processor, as this is currently the only Atom chip clocked at 1.33GHz.
For storage, expect a 60GB hard drive or 128GB solid state drive to appear on the menu. It’s odd that the hard drive capacity is less than the SSD – usually things are switched the other way around – but this could be a move to enable Sony to set the same retail price on the unit regardless of spec.
The only operating system on offer will be Windows Vista. We don’t yet know the battery size – but hey, Sony has confirmed that Vaio Pocket will be painted in Crimson Red, Champange Gold and Black Silk. And colours are
so much more important the battery life...