It will fit into any bag, even some deep pockets, and is the size of a standard business envelope, less than 20mm thick. It is the Sony Vaio VGN-P15G pocket PC, a delight for people who like to stay connected while travelling and a guaranteed eye candy. It packs a punch too, with a 1.6 GHz processor and 2GB RAM as well as Windows Vista OS.

Sony doesn’t refer to it as a netbook, but the fact is that this new Vaio is smaller and more compact than the likes of Dell Mini 9 and Asus Eee PC, but still has an eight-inch widescreen and a keyboard far better than its competitors. It is undoubtedly an engineering feat, as the clamshell laptop, weighing less than 600 grams, has all features of a regular laptop except the touchpad.
The touchpad has been replaced by a joystick in the middle of the keys. But the tiny trackpoint navigation is a put off and does create a lot of difficulty in fine controlling — it will take a lot of getting used to. However, the mouse buttons are intact and placed at the front of the machine.

Net surfing is this netbook’s USP, but the pointing stick will drain you of your energy if you are a mouse person. The ultra wide LED backlit display of 1600x768 resolution easily displays the width of an entire page and makes browsing smooth. This also means the text size and icons are small and a strain on the eyes. Working on documents is easier as you get to increase font size. The battery life, however, is just three hours, not much considering that people buying the P-series wouldn’t like to be tied up to a power plug.

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