I haven’t run into a Sony Vaio P notebook here at CES in Las Vegas yet, but judging from Gizmodo’s hands-on report and photos, it’s going to be worth the effort to track it down for some hands-on time. The P is a 1.4-pound pocketable machine that has an 8-inch screen and runs Windows Vista, and while it’s far from the first attempt to cram Windows into such a tiny device–micro-Windows pioneer OQO debuted a new version of its system with an OLED screen today–I like its looks. The keyboard looks like it’s trying to reduce a standard notebook-sized design into a smaller space, which is appealing approach; most of the really, really li’l Windows machines I’ve seen have been undone by oddball keyboards. And the Vaio has a ThinkPad-style pointing nub, which makes sense on a gadget this small and eliminates the need to reserve real estate for a touchpad.
The Vaio P is due to ship in February and starts at $900, making it pricier than a netbook…but maybe a bit cheaper than you’d have guessed a gimzo like this from Sony would have been in years past.