Note: UX above is show sitting it its dock.

In a surprising move, it appears that Sony is getting ready to unveil the newest model in the UX series [Portal page], which will include a mini-CD drive. While we thought that Sony was done with the UX series, they never gave any official discontinuation, and apparently for good reason. The aptly named VGN-UX491-MCD will remove the EDGE module to make way for a mini-CD drive which will accept 8cm ‘mini-CDs’. The unit is identical to the UX490 in all ways (48GB SSD, 1.2Ghz Core 2 Solo, 1GB of RAM) except for the new drive.

Mini-CDs, if you will recall, hold around 200mb of data, and are otherwise identical to the larger 12cm CD other than in size. Luckily the diameter of the hole in the center of the mini-CD is the same as a full sized CD, this means that mini-CDs that you use in your UX will also be able to function in most standard CD drives. The drive will be able to burn mini-CDs (no word on speed yet), and this will finally offer an out-of-the-box option for UX users to burn their own recovery disks. Users will be able to use the recovery software that comes pre-installed to burn their recovery disks which will fit on 23 mini-CDs.

The drive will most likely use a non-powered eject (no motors to eject the drive, just a ‘pop’ similar to many laptop drives). No word yet on pricing, availability, or if non-US CF slot models will see the same treatment.

This information comes from the UX491-MCD flash tour which seemed to have mistakenly gone up early on SonyStyle.com in place of the UX490’s flash tour. It looks like Sony has already caught their mistake and removed the flash preview of the UX491-MCD, I’ll keep these images mirrored here for future reference.

The Sony VAIO P is an impressively small unit that manages to pack some relatively powerful hardware into a small, envelope shaped footprint. Though it may not be practically pocketable like Sony wanted us to think, it is extremely light weight and slim. Let’s begin with the hardware tour, as usual.

Hardware Tour

Front (right to left): Wireless radio switch, SD card slot, Sony Memory Stick slot, power slider, battery LED indicator, SSD activity LED indicator.

Right: Kensington lock, USB 2.0, port replicator connector.

Back: Nothing but hinges.

Left: A/C adapter, USB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone jack, passive cooling vent.

Size Comparison

As you can see above, I have several comparison shots of the VAIO P with the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] and the Sony VAIO UX180 [Portal page]. It wasn’t until I set my iPhone down next to the VAIO P that it really hit me. The VAIO P is really quite tiny. If you can imagine, it is just as long as the iPhone, but wider. It has the footprint of a super wide iPhone. It isn’t quite as thin as the iPhone, but it is certainly the thinnest mobile computer I’ve ever used.

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My review journey continues with the Sony VAIO P. The unit is quite pleasing to use, even if it is running Windows Vista. A quick refresher on the VAIO P’s basic specs for those of you who are just joining us:

• 1.86GHz Atom CPU
• 2GB of RAM
• 128GB SSD
• 1600×768 screen
• Windows Vista

Find more detailed specs on the VAIO P’s Portal page.

So we have the top end VAIO P running Windows Vista. Certainly, because the OS is the center of everything that happens within the computer, people tend to get concerned when a company makes the choice to put a heavier OS (like Vista) on a mobile device. Luckily, the VAIO P has the specs to run the OS like it should be run, in the background, and not taking up the majority of resources. As the VAIO P is sitting here idle, the task manager is reporting that 1GB of RAM is in use. Now the question is, do you see the RAM as half full, or half empty? In all seriousness, I wouldn’t want to be caught running Vista with just 1GB or RAM, but then again, maybe that’s why Sony opted to put 2GB of RAM in the VAIO P. It isn’t as bad as it sounds though, if you were running less than 2GB of RAM, the OS would probably make more utilization of the page file (which would be a nice alternative if you are using an SSD). But in the end, Vista performs well visibly, so long as you don’t turn on Aero. Windows and apps are quick to load with no hang time.

Turning on Aero really hammers the system and drops performance quite noticeably. I would attribute this to the particular processing that is required to render the transparent Aero effect (and with no dedicated GPU, all of that processing has to be run on the CPU). Don’t worry though, the VAIO P is quite snappy when it comes to other tasks. Have a look at the performance section if you are interested in some additional details.

As I mentioned, the VAIO P has a zippy 128GB SSD for storage. However, out of the box my VAIO P only had 92GB available and only displays as having a maximum of 119GB. This is after Dynamism installed an awesomely bloatware-free image of Vista. So where is the extra 9GB of space that seem to be missing from my drive? Sony has a good track record of installing recovery partitions on computers that don’t have disk drives. This is useful because they don’t need to ship a DVD with the computer, and you don’t need to own a DVD drive. I’ve used the recovery partition on my Sony VAIO UX180 many times with great success. In fact, I used to do so on a fairly regular basis to keep my computer running in tip-top shape. There are ways to reclaim that space if you really want it, but for the majority of users, I would leave it there in case you want to restore back to the VAIO P’s factory state.

But what about the other 27GB of space that is already used on the drive? There are several things that are most likely to be consuming this space. First and foremost is the operating system itself. Vista certainly isn’t the slimmest OS in town. Second is probably the page file. Beyond those two, there is always the recycling bin, and hibernation file. All of these can be trimmed down, it is just a matter of what you are willing to give up.

I always have a feeling in the back of my mind that dropping Vista in favor of XP on the VAIO P would take it from ‘better-than-netbook’ performance, up to ‘real-laptop’ performance.

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I’ve had the VAIO P for a few weeks now and it’s time to look at the performance of the unit. You may recall that this is the top-end model: 1.86GHz Atom CPU, 128GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, and running Windows Vista (see more detailed information on the Portal page). This particular configuration is only available in Japan at the moment, but can be bought from places like Dynamism.

The VAIO P runs Vista, which most people recognize to be quite the resource hog, and feel that it isn’t optimal for mobile computers because of limited resources. Luckily the VAIO P’s lightning fast SSD, 2GB of RAM, and 1.86GHz CPU, handle Vista pretty well. The OS itself is responsive and doesn’t show any signs of hanging. Even Windows Media Center, which runs a graphically complex GUI, runs acceptably on the VAIO P, even if it doesn have some slight issues with the VAIO P’s super-wide screen (more on that in the upcoming full software impressions section).

Video Playback

It amazes me how much more video content we see online these days, than compared to a few years ago. Back in the day, usually only small videos would be uploaded to the web, and playing them back often required downloading them then watching them. With many different Flash players out there today, we see lots and lots of video content, and video playback through Flash players is a big deal now, as it is often a frequent web activity. So let’s see how well the VAIO P can play back Flash video. Using an SD quality video from Gametrailers.com (which uses a pretty efficient Flash player), I saw full framerate playback with no issues. Below you can see the CPU usage while the video was playing:

Unfortunately, the VAIO P can’t handle the same video in 720p HD through Flash playback. The image below represents the CPU usage during Flash HD playback of the video. One thing to note is how the CPU graph on the left (representing the virtual second CPU from Hyperthreading) is a bit higher than the right. While the CPU isn’t being maxed out, the video playback was very choppy, to the point that I would call it unwatchable.
Flash HD playback might not work to well, but 720p, h.264 encoded WMV, and similar formats play back without much issue in Windows Media Player. For some reason or another, videos were a bit choppy, and showed some horizontal tearing when using my preferred video player of choice, VLC. I would imagine this has something to do with VLC’s implementation in Vista, as I’m used to using the XP counterpart. The image below shows a 720p h.264 encoded video playing through Windows Media Player, and the resulting CPU usage.

HD playback performance is particularly important on the VAIO P because the screen can actually display the content. In most cases, we test HD video playback on netbooks simply for performance’s sake, however when you really think about it, it doesn’t always make sense to watch a 720p (1280×720) video on your netbook which only has a resolution of 1024×600. However, in the case of the VAIO P, the high res screen can really display full 720p content with 1:1 pixel mapping and even has room to spare. The VAIO P’s screen has a resoultion of 1600×768, which is even wider than the widescreen HD standard of 16:9. For comparison’s sake, 16:9 (standard widescreen format) breaks down to 1.78:1, while the VAIO P’s screen has an aspect ratio of 2.08:1, meaning that the screen is slightly more than twice as wide as the height.

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The first beta of Mozilla’s mobile focused browser was recently released, and provided that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, I thought I’d give it a try on my Sony VAIO UX180 [Portal page]. I flipped the unit into portrait mode and recorded a quick demo of the action. I’m pretty impressed so far and I like the interface. They still have some work to do and it will be really interesting to see how good of a web experience you can have on a Linux powered device (like the N810 [Portal page]) with lots of familiar Firefox addons running in conjunction with Fennec. Check out the video below:

It’s been a long time coming, but someone finally managed to throw some 3G into their Sony VAIO UX ultra mobile PC [Portal page]. It is simple to use a USB dongle, but when you have the know-how, why not make it a challenge to fit everything inside the UX’s tiny case? I’m really impressed that there is even room to add anything inside the UX as the device is already so small and packed full of hardware.

User Oginger1 of MicroPCTalk has managed to put a Huawei E169G USB 3G Modem inside of his UX for internal 3G goodness. The US versions of the VAIO UX come with a built in EDGE modem, but Sony never refreshed the line with a 3G capable model. Oginger1 wasn’t even able to use the slow EDGE connection as he owns an international model (UX50) that comes with a CF slot instead of an EDGE module. He documented the process and gave a rough guide of how to do the mod (definitely not for newbies). To understand just how small the modable space inside the UX is, you should note that he had to cut out one of the back hand grips and raise it up 2mm, then epoxy it back into place to be able to squeeze the unit inside. Head over to his thread to see the whole process.

It has been at least three years that I’ve owned my Sony VAIO UX180P, and I’ve been using it as my primary PC for a long time. As the internet continues to evolve, I’ve started to notice that my UX180 is slowing down and slowly becoming less that optimal to function as a primary PC. I can’t believe how long it has lasted with only a 30GB HDD, 512MB of RAM, and a 1.2GHz Core Solo CPU. The components of this machine are crammed into an incredibly small package that still challenges the size of modern UMPCs (and the newer UX models are some of the highest performing UMPCs to date). My UX can definitely still hold its own as a fully functional PC, but as I said, it is becoming less than optimal as internet use becomes even more performance intensive. It isn’t uncommon these days to be streaming HD video over the web, be running a multi-tab web browser with several web apps open at once. All of this multi-tasking is starting to take a toll on my UX180’s mere 512MB of RAM, and the biggest concern was that I was quickly running out of storage space.

Recently I’ve switched over to a full sized desktop system. I was getting really irritated that I couldn’t find anything less important than photos to delete to make space for more stuff on my UX. So I adopted a desktop as my new main PC. Nothing fancy; a Dell machine that is a few years old with 1GB of RAM, 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with hyper-threading and an on-board graphics card (boring, I know). I also picked up a 1TB external HDD to be able to have long-lasting storage for all my media which is great.

Anyway, enough about all this ugly full sized computer stuff. The silver lining here is that my UX180 is not my primary computer any longer, and I don’t need it to be in 100% working condition all of the time in order to function. What I’m trying to say here, is that it’s time to experiment. I now how a relatively powerful handheld touchscreen computer that I can try lots of different stuff on, and I want your suggestions. Windows 7? Ubuntu? OSX? Who has some interesting ideas for me? I’ll probably be keeping this on the software side of things as I’m not a modding genius, like some people.

The Sony VAIO P [Portal page] was a big deal at this year’s CES. Sony teased us with visions of a computer that would fit in our pocket. While the device is certainly small, I don’t think it is a realistic pocket machine (even the flash ad on sony.jp seems to agree). My three year old Sony VAIO UX [Portal page] is more pocketable, which is why I was somewhat baffled when they released the P which isn’t even close by comparison. Here are several pictures from Engadget China poking fun at the pocketability of the VAIO P that I chortled at. I find the one with the desktop to be particularly funny. First shot is official from Sony of course.