I’ve been a sucker for laptops for a while. The smaller, lighter, faster and, let’s face it, sexier looking, they get- the more I want one. Every month there’s a new superlite/ ultraportable that I’m coveting. So I was excited to check out the latest & greatest here at CES.

Sony
Sony has 3 new additions to their Vaio line of laptops. 2 are extensions of current models, 1 is new. First, my favorite.

TT 200 – to my eye, this notebook fell right into the sweetspot of tiny & light, yet without a cramped keyboard and microscopic screen. At 2.8 lbs, my shoulder immediately wanted to swap it with the larger notebook weighing it down now. 11.1” screen, comes in a slew of colors, including this handsome gold number pictured here. (Again, like the Canon camera, not shiny gold, nice muted, gold.) It’s made of carbon fiber, which is 400x stronger than plastic used in other notebooks, and looks great. Amazingly, despite the incredibly thin styling, Sony fit in an optical DVD and/or Blu-ray drive / recorder. Battery life was offered up at 6 hours, but a fellow attendee mentioned he routinely got 8 hours from the last version of this laptop. That’s impressive. He laughed when I asked him what he was doing for those 8 hours, and he promised it wasn’t just in standby mode. Price starts at $1999, so it’s definitely on the higher end, but wow, quite the stunner. And with the drive built in, if you can afford it, this is the machine I would choose.

Z600 – Also made of carbon fiber, this laptop is also quite lovely. At 3.5 lbs it’s slightly heavier than the TT200. Also has a built in DVD/Blu-ray drive.





Lifestyle PC – the Vaio P500 – this one got the oohs and aahs – it’s tiny. Absolutely tiny. You can see in the pictures, with the hand next to it, just how small it is. I was wondering if folded up this laptop might fit into the back pocket of some jeans. I think it might. It has built in WWAN (mobile broadband), GPS (so you can get directions even without an internet connection) and only weights 1.4 lbs. The keyboard is a bit cramped, but then you’re probably not using this machine to type out your long awaited novel. No touchpad on this one, only a pointing device. It can boot in 20 seconds to some non-Windows apps, and gets 4 hours of battery life. Great to carry around, but this to me seems like an additional device, rather than a replacement like the TT200.

Next I moved over to Toshiba to investigate their offerings. At first I wandered over into their business section, and quickly realized I was in their no frills, black plastic box, nondescript laptop section. Is it mandatory that every manufacturer have a line like this? The no fun line? Just so the IT department can order them in bulk and rest safely knowing that no one will be tempted to have any fun with this thing. I quickly regained my bearings and found the Protégé & Tecra lines.

Tecra R10 – Looks generic enough, nice silver finish, and I thought it was like every other notebook in the place. Then I picked it up- nope, not like every other notebook. It felt noticeably lighter. 14.1” screen (which is my favorite size) but still only 4.4 lbs. Also has an accelerometer which parks the heads on the hard drive if it senses a fall. That’s a great idea. 4 hours of battery life. Price starts at $1549. Solid package. I like this one almost as much as the Sony TT200. Hmmm, decisions.

Tecra under water – Most people live in mortal fear of spilling an ounce of liquid on their laptops. I know I’d expect smoke, fizzling and massive problems if my coffee ever tipped over onto mine. Well wasn’t I surprised when I turned the corner and saw water being continuously spilled onto a similar looking Tecra. I had to take a picture & video just to prove it. There the computer sat, running fine the entire time, with water just pouring down the keyboard. Impressive. The Toshiba reps were quick to point out that you can’t actually immerse the laptop in the water, it’s just if something spills onto the keyboard. So you’re out of luck if you drop kick the thing into the pool, and sadly the world will have to wait for underwater computing. I think the spill protection is plenty. It’s part of Toshiba’s Easy Guard 4, in case you were wondering.

Toshiba also had the beautiful Protégé R600- 2.4 lbs, 6 hours of battery, 12.1”, 128 GB SSD (solid state, the kind that doesn’t move and gets better battery life) and a transreflective screen that adjusts to direct sunlight. Very nice.

After that was HP’s turn. Interestingly, HP has a number of models that are similar in size to the Sony’s & Toshiba’s, but lack the built in DVD drive. HP has stepped up the design department with sleek looks everywhere. One of their brand new laptops that they just unveiled at the show really caught my eye, though, the HP Touchsmart tx2. They call it a convertible because you can use it as a regular laptop, or flip the screen and use it as a tablet. I loved being able to move programs on the screen with my fingernail. Plus the ability to draw right on the screen is pretty cool.

And finally, after HP I slid over to Asus, makers of the Eee PC, the one that kicked off the Netbook movement. They had a few nice entries as well, pictured here. Their Bamboo line really stands out- the name says it all. Their S101 Eee PC looked to be one of the thinnest models around. But I don’t want this to become endless specs. We’ll report back once we have some demo time with them.

All of this is to say I’m a “know it when I see it” type of guy when it comes to laptop and these definitely caught my attention. I’ll be excited to test them out and see if they can prove they’re more than just a pretty face!

--Peter Szabo

Labels: Asus, CES, CES coverage, HP, laptops, Protege, Sony, Tecra, Toshiba, Vaio

This entry was posted by Amber, on Saturday, January 10, 2009. You can leave your response .