Apologize for not being able to bring you an in-depth article about the Sony Vaio W. I actually just checked it out for a few minutes when I saw it in Best Buy. I was pretty impressed with the netbook section at this particular store. There was the Sony Vaio W, the Asus Eee 1005HA, and the HP Mini 1000, among others. Up until then I hadn’t seen much of the VAIO W so I spent a bit playing around with it.

The first thing that I checked out was the chiclet style keyboard which very easy to type on, a la Sony VAIO P. Unfortunately it had one of the most bothersome of keyboard characteristics: the tiny right shift key.

If anything sets the Sony VAIO W apart from most of the netbook crowd, it’s 1366×768 resolution on the display which noticeably increased screen real estate from the other 1024×600 equipped netbooks adjacent the VAIO W. Unless you have bad eye-sight, this is a good thing. Even the completely default IE 8 screen, which seems to thrive on toolbars, seemed spacious at that resolution. It’s surprising to consider that the Sony VAIO W’s screen has more pixels than my 12.1” primary laptop which has a resolution of 1280×800.

I’ve always known why companies like Apple and Sony didn’t/don’t want to jump into the netbook game. They make products that are elegant and functional. Unfortunately, good design doesn’t come cheap, but as most of us know, netbooks do. So what do you get when you strip the design budget from the price of a Sony computer? Something that is decidedly less Sony, and instead more… regular. The unit was small, light, and pretty thin, but it just didn’t look or feel like the quality build that usually comes with Sony branding. At very least, someone at Sony said “We CAN’T put Vista on this thing, or it will suck.” And thus, the Sony VAIO W is (I think) the only VAIO released to come with XP instead of Vista since shortly after Vista launched (this is a good thing).

Aside from these things, the Sony VAIO W may as well have been the same computer as the one sitting next to it, with its Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and same old ports as every other netbook seems to have. I can’t say I was particularly impressed with the Sony VAIO W, at least not more so than any other netbook I’ve used. They haven’t raised the bar, they just reached it.

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items from around the web.

• AT&T Rolls Out Barely-Subsidized Acer, Dell, Lenovo Netbooks Across the Country – AT&T fires up a bit of netbook subsidization, offering the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page], Acer Aspire One [Portal page] and Lenovo S10 [Portal page] for $200 with a two-year, $40/month (minimum) contract.
• ASUS Eee PC T101 tablet reportedly facing uncertain future – Though the Asus Eee T101H [Portal page] was seen quite a long while back on an Asus’ Eee roadmap, it seems to have a questionable release at this point. Most likely the success or failure of the Asus Eee T91 [Portal page] will decide what comes of the T101H.
• Samsung Go (N310) reviewed, gets 8.5 hours battery life – The Samsung N310 [Portal page] which we saw several months ago is being branded as the Samsung Go in the US. Apparently its standard 6-cell battery is good for 8.5 hours which is quite impressive.
• Sony- Netbooks are Here to Stay; Touch Enabled VAIOs This Year – Sony recently hoped into the netbook game after sitting on the sidelines since the genre appeared. Now they are recognizing the netbook as something that they need to get involved in. In addition to the release of their Vaio W [Portal page] netbook, they are planning on releasing touchscreen computers after Windows 7 lands.
• Asus Finally Launches the Eee PC 1004DN – Another one that we’ve known was coming for a while: The Asus Eee 1004DN [Portal page]. Asus’ first netbook with optical disk drive and the Intel GN40 chipset. Asus has now released it in Taiwan.

Sony has been resistant to admit that the netbook is something that consumers want for quite a long time. The closest thing they’ve released to a netbook to date is the Sony Vaio P [Portal page] and that is really stretching it. Sony itself doesn’t consider the Vaio P a netbook and certainly doesn’t market or price it like one. You could say that Sony makes premium computers, which are often of good build quality, but come with a price to match. It is plain to see why a netbook wouldn’t be part of their plans. It isn’t exactly easy to build a computer that would hold up to Sony’s idea of quality while keeping the price down. Additionally, a netbook has the potential to devalue high priced laptops whether its warranted or not.

Well it looks like Sony finally had to do it. Recently announcing the Sony VAIO W netbook, Sony enters the netbook game again stiff competition from companies that already have lots of experience in the field of creating inexpensive, but relatively high quality computers.

The Sony Vaio W has fairly typical netbook specs: 1GB of RAM, 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and running Windows XP (thank goodness!). One area where the VAIO W kicks back at cookie-cutter netbook specs is the screen. Offering more than the obligatory 1024×600 resolution, the VAIO W will have a 10.1” screen sporting a resolution of 1366×768 which is a nice properly formatted 16:9 aspect ratio. Sounds pretty ugood right? Unfortunately Reuters is reporting that the Japanese price of the VAIO W is ¥60,000 or about $629. I can’t say that price bodes very well for the VAIO W, especially considering that it may be the price for the 3-cell battery version of the device.

The VAIO W will be released in three colors: pink, white, and brown, and it looks like Sony has whipped up three color matching accessory kits which include a mouse and slip case, both matching the color of the VAIO W of your choice. The keyboard seems to be very similar to the VAIO P’s chiclet style keyboard which we loved when we reviewed it [VAIO P review, keyboard section].

[Engadget]