Sony has long been a reluctant player in the netbook space. A few years ago when everybody and their kid brother had already brought 7 to 10 inch netbooks with sub-$400 price tags and Intel Atom chips to market, Sony took a different path and introduced the $1000 Sony Vaio P mini-laptop with a super-high resolution display and a super-sluggish…

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Here’s what I love about Chinese electronics knockoff artists: They’ll try things that no Western company would ever even dream of. Case in point: a Sony Vaio W knockoff from China which doesn’t just look a bit like Sony’s 10 inch netbook — it even has the Sony Vaio brand name plastered all over it. You can tell someone’s not…

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Last week we heard that Sony was launching a special edition Vaio W netbook with a Billabong design. Billabong is an Australian company that designs gear for surfers and skateboarders, and last I’d heard the netbook would only be available in Australia. But it turns out Sony has decided to offer the distinctive looking mini-laptop in the US as well….

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The Sony Vaio W netbook may bear Sony’s high end Vaio brand name, but it’s not really all that much of a looker. The design is pretty much par for the netbook course, with a 10 inch display and chiclet-style keyboard. But the company plans to launch a special edition Vaio W in Australia soon that has a bit more…

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The folks at Wireless Goodness spotted FCC listings for two new Sony netbooks last night. There’s not much information about the PCG-51311L or PCG-51411L at this point, but the drawing of the laptop’s underside makes it look an awful lot lke a netbook — or a notebook with an enormous battery. Wireless Goodness also notes that the computers use the…

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Several US retailers have started to stock the latest mini-laptop from Sony. In Europe, the new model is called the Sony Vaio M, while in the US it appears to be part of the Sony Vaio W series…with a not-so-easy-to-remember model number: Sony VPCM111AX/W. Fortunately you don’t really have to remember the model number. there are two easy ways to…

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At first glance, the new Sony Vaio W Eco looks almost exactly like the Sony Vaio W 10 inch mini-laptops the company has been selling since mid-2009. But the Eco series which Sony introduced in early January is different from earlier models in one major way: The case is partially made from recycled materials. In fact, 20% of the plastic…

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Last week Sony introduced an updated version of its Vaio W netbook line. The new Vaio W Eco Edition will feature Intel Atom N450 processors, GMA 3150 graphics, and eco-friendly features including a plastic case made partially from recycled CDs. This week, a new Sony netbook hit the FCC web site. It’s not clear whether this is the same model…

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The Sony Vaio W has never been one of the cheapest netbooks. Initially launched with a $499 price tag and a 1366 x 768 pixel HD display, Sony was clearly trying to set the Vaio W apart from the crowd. Now the company has found a new way to do it, by introducing the Sony Vaio W Eco Edition which…

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13The Sony Vaio W is a nice looking netbook with one feature that really sets it apart from most other mini-laptops on the market: a higher resolution, 10.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display. The problem is that the netbook’s 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU and integrated graphics have to work a bit harder to pump out graphics to every…

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[/caption] At first glance, the Sony Vaio Mini W and Toshiba Mini NB205 have a lot in common. I mean, sure, all Intel Atom powered netbooks have a lot in common. They typically have 9 or 10 inch screens, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drives, and run Windows XP. But these two models also have chiclet-style keyboards and a choice…

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Over the past year or two, I’d kind of gotten used to writing sentences like “Apple and Sony are the only two major PC makers without an entry in the netbook category.” But Sony had to go and change that formula earlier this month with the introduction of the Sony Vaio Mini W. Sure, Sony refers to the W as…

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