VAIO VGN-UX17GP - A Class Apart

Ask yourself this: Should computing products suit your lifestyle, or should you alter your lifestyle to suit your computing products? More often than not, the blasted machine forces the latter. Wouldn’t you rather have the Windows you’re used to and its myriad connectivity options, instead of some stunted operating system when you’re traveling? Or be able to carry your complete mailbox or your movies with you, without having to compress or decide what you’ll carry with you every trip.

A computing impracticality, eh? Not any more, with the first truly pocketable device to run a full install of Microsoft Windows XP – the Sony VAIO VGN-UX17GP. No scrimping here – you get a fully working Windows XP Professional installation, with full support for all Windows XP compatible applications (not Table Edition, so handwriting recognition is missing). Expect a few gasps as you whip out this machine in public – the diminutive size misleads most people to mistake it for a handheld gaming console. When you boot it up, the 4.5 inch (diagonal) widescreen display springs to life as you take in (with awe) that Windows can be starting up on something this tiny.

The screen’s fine – 1,024 x 600 pixels resolution does mean most users will be in for a lot of squinting – icons and text are tiny, though Sony has provided a zoom button to zoom into parts of the screen as required. The display isn’t really meant for hours of poring over spreadsheets, though you can, if necessary. It suits the occasional e-mail/web surfing.

Video however, rocks on this display, which redeems it in part. Plus, the display is touch sensitive, letting you use your finger or the stylus to navigate around like you would with a mouse.

Inside, the UX includes a 1.2 GHz Intel Core Solo processor, 512MB of DDR2 memory, a 30GB hard drive and Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics, which are adequate to run almost anything you throw at it, including the odd game. If you’re not doing anything intensive, you get two and a half odd hours of battery life – and as little as one and a half hours if you’re giving it a serious stick.

The VAIO UX is equipped with two MOTION EYE cameras, making it easy to communicate through images instead of just words. Wherever you take your VAIO UX, if there’s a scene you like, you can take snapshots or shoot movie clips and store them on the hard disk drive. It’s literally a huge album of pictures and videos that you can always carry around with you. And if you have an Internet connection you can email those images to friends and family, or upload them to your blog for the whole world to see. Naturally, you’d have a story to tell for each image, and VAIO UX makes it easy to input text with its built-in keyboard. When the need to communicate is immediate, you can count on its Bluetoo

th® technology for real-time mobile communication like VoIP for video chatting. As they say, “wish you were here”, and if go-anywhere communication is what you want, the VAIO UX is where you can find your solution.

Is this the famed laptop killer then? Not yet – while the UX is great for web browsing and viewing movies, or storing/editing pictures on the move – it has its share of quirks – including a mildly prohibitive cost of just under $2200 (Rs. 1 Lakh). Good things have always come in small packages, and this certainly is the shape of things to come.

Rating: 7/10

URL: http://vaio-online.sony.com/prod_info/vgn-ux17gp