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When Sony released the Vaio P, it was sure to point out that the Vaio P was not a standard netbook.  Sony, like Apple, hated the “race to the bottom” that is the netbook market.  It stubbornly pushed the Vaio P as a small laptop; while it was nice looking the device, it had a bit of a learning curve and ran sluggishly with Windows Vista.  That was before Sony stared posted big losses.  Now it looks like Sony is finally willing to take on that race to the bottom.

Sony’s real entrance into netbook market comes in the form of the Vaio W.  It looks similar to any other Vaio laptop just in a 10-inch netbook size, though if you take the Sony Vaio graphic off the cover you’d be hard pressed to tell which company produced it.  It comes complete with standard netbook specs, 1.6 GHz Atom, 1 GB RAM, 160GG HDD, Bluetooth, etc. 

The only change from the norm is the screen which boasts 1366 x 766 resolution compared to the normal 1024 x 600, making it theoretically capable of showing 720p video full screen without any zooming.  In true Sony fashion, the SD card slot also accepts Sony’s propriety MemorySticks, which should surprise nobody.

While it’s not surprising that Sony is actually entering the netbook market, it would have been nice if it tried to push the Vaio W further.  Sony likes to be a luxury brand, similar to Apple.  It normally doesn’t follow the rest of the industry until it’s ready, or it can make it just a but nicer.  The Vaio W doesn’t really do anything different, and for the price of $500 all you’re really getting is the Sony brand and a slightly higher resolution screen.  This would have been a nice netbook about this time last year, but now it just looks like a money grab.

Read [Wired]