First Look at Sony's Tiny Vaio UX180p

An anonymous reader writes "MobileTechReview has posted a first look at the Sony Vaio UX180P Micro PC and comparison of it with UMPC and OQO. "When I first heard about the Sony UX series, I nearly dismissed it because I just couldn't imagine that 1024 x 600 on a 4.5" screen could ever be readable. Yes, the price is certainly another issue-- consumers don't flock to spend twice as much on a "notebook" that's less than half the size of a standard ultralight. At least not in the SUV-lovin' US. Well, happily I was wrong. That tiny XBRITE display is easily readable, despite the number of pixels squeezed into close company""

Scaling of pictures and text

[Toba82]

I know that fonts sizes are easily adjusted in most web browsers, but what about images? Do any popular web browsers offer an option to scale all images a certain amount? Without this feature, the future of very small dot pitches on LCDs looks dim.

Saw this at the Sony Building

[Reapman]

in Tokyo, and I was very impressed... my x51v PDA is just a bit smaller overall then this and only runs WM5. However it's not something u can easily stick in your pocket so not sure when i'd use it... Still I drooled over it :P

it's the keyboard, stupid

[eliot1785]

Screw the screen - can you imagine typing on this? IMHO, the "ultra-mobile" line of computers will not succeed because of keyboard issues. The tablet PC's have already dealt with that effectively by becoming "notebooks" in the real sense of the word (you write directly on the screen with a pen). UMPC's are the worst of both worlds. Just go for a small laptop or tablet if you want mobility.

Re:Scaling of pictures and text

[Anonymous Coward]

Try openSUSE ( http://www.opensuse.org/ [opensuse.org] ) with XGL ( http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl [opensuse.org] ) enabled. I got it running within about 10 minutes following this howto ( http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17174. html [novell.com] ) on my HP dv8230ca laptop.

I can scale entire apps, make them transparent, wobbly windows are cool and not to mention the cube...

Re:it's the keyboard, stupid

[dunng808]

I can't tell from the product descriptions if it does handwriting recognition, but the UX180P does have a touch screen and ships with a stylus. According to Microsoft [microsoft.com] the handwriting engine can be added, if not already there, by installing Office XP. Which are just about the only applications that can be used with handwriting recognition.

Can this thing take the place of a cell phone? Here's what I want:

• Digital ink notepad, for taking notes in meetings, classes, etc. where text recognition is intrusive.
• Ability to enter text with a pen, such as what I am writing in this post ... could be text of a mail message, for example.
• Cell phone.
• A really smart calendar that will take the system out of stand-by to announce an appointment.
• Web browser, mail client, all the usual PC stuff.

After that, I wish it could run Linux or FreeBSD and that there was something like Gnome for tablets, with a useful hardwriting recognition system available to all Gnome apps. I know, I sound like a beauty pagent contestent wishing for world peace.

Re:Apple

[mrchaotica]

What Apple needs is a 2lb, 10" convertible tablet. I'd buy that in a heartbeat!

Re:Screen Resolution

[timeOday]

LCDs become fuzzy when set to a non-native resolution.

Not inherently. By my calculation this screen has a dot pitch of 4.5/sqrt(800^2+600^2)*25 = 0.1125. A dot pitch of 0.11 mm is smaller than any CRT I've seen, so this LCD screen should scale a raster display better, not worse, than a CRT.

Target Market

[skiflyer]

Normally I hate reading the "cool, but I would never use it" posts... but I'm really curious, what do you guys think is the target market for this device?

Too small for all day computing, too big to drop in most pockets... the thickness particularly seems to be a kicker.

Anyway geek factor, very high... practical factor, I'm wracking my brain and can't think of the application.

About time!

[KlomDark]

I'm one of the people blessed with above-average vision (20/10 rather than the standard 20/20). This means I can see the individual pixels in a normal LCD monitor from several feet away. Gets annoying at times, especially anti-aliasing, which just looks to me like a bunch of gray pixels surrounding the actual letters.

However, with the new smaller pixels in things like this 4.5" 1024x768 screen (And the 17" 1920x1280 monitor in my Dell d810 laptop), I finally am not annoyed by the pixels. I have to get within a foot of the screen now to see the individual pixels. I think it rocks.

My apologies to those with lesser vision, but imagine what it would be like for those of you to look at a screen with 1/10 inch (or bigger) pixels. Yuck.

I've been hoping for this since a few years ago IBM announced their ($20000!!) monitor with pixels 1/5 the size of normal ones.

Now if we could just get to the resolution of paper! Bring back vector graphics technology rather than relying on pixels.