A couple of days with the Sony Vaio UX-280P

The Sony Vaio UX-280P Micro PC appears to be a dream come true. Carry your laptop around in your coat pocket. Use it while standing in line or at half time at the kids’ soccer games. Wireless Internet pretty much wherever you are with Cingular’s Edge network. Sony, where have you been all my life? I HAD to have one of these.

After a couple of days of carrying this little beauty around, I was done. It was too small! I quickly realized it was halfway between an ultra portable laptop and a PDA. As it turns out, that halfway point is not an entirely pleasant one.

Rather than bore you with dribble about my experience, here’s my list of likes and dislikes:

Likes

• Screen Quality – It’s gorgeous. Exactly what you’d expect from Sony.
• Dual Built-In Cameras – Convenient for both taking videos and video conferencing.
• Connectivity Options (WLAN, WWAN, Bluetooth) – You should pretty much always have a connection.
• Processor Speed and Amount of RAM – Plenty to make this a viable day-to-day system.
• Overall Design – Feels good in your hands.
• Fingerprint Scanner – I admit it’s a bit gimicky, but this one is actually kind of handy as a password replacement.

Dislikes

• Size – It’s a little too big to be a PDA replacement, but too small to be a laptop replacement.
• Cingular Edge Connection – It’s way too slow. Especially for the money. Sony’s made a good move over to Sprint with their latest round of laptops.
• Price – I probably would have kept this around had it not set me back two large. Brings it into a point of having to be near perfect to warrant the cost.
• Battery Life – Given the bulky feeling of the device, I would have expected better than 2 to 3 hours of battery life.