This is awkward. Netbooks were the talk of the town for a long time until Android tablets and smartphones decided to take over most of the headlines. It’s a possibility that the clamor surrounding these devices has more to do with the novelty than anything else. Smaller sized notebooks without the somewhat delicate touchscreens do manage to exert a strong sort of pull over those seeking portable computing in conveniently small packages. There will still be a noticeable number among us who’ll go back to tapping on their netbooks after reading our review of the Sony Vaio VPCW115XG. We could say almost certainly that those who’ve ditched a netbook for a tablet will no doubt get busy with the touchscreen after doing the same. It all comes down to how manufacturers pit the devices against each other since both cannot be expected to share the same amount of popularity in the future.
For our part, we regard tablets and netbooks with almost equal reverence when it comes to computing on-the-go. It all depends on whether you want to drift about familiar territories on a smaller keyboard with the former or explore the uncharted touchscreen estates with the latter. We’ve always been unable to make up our mind on this aspect and so we’re dipping into this review with four main expectations in mind. Netbooks ought to be reasonably good-looking, embed comfortable keyboards, last long on each dose of battery juice and profess to be a total stranger when it comes to performance lags. The exterior attributes come into play in the form of a smooth coffee brown shell interrupted by a silver hued battery compartment and the Sony Vaio logo. The entire device weighs around 1.1kg and fits into an enviably sleek chassis measuring approximately 267.8mm x 27.5mm to 32.4mm x 179.6mm in dimensions. It can also be grabbed in shades of pink and white.
On the left edge sit a VGA port, a mic in, a headphone out port, a side vent and a DC in port. The right side of the netbook is dotted by a couple of USB ports as well as one for Ethernet LAN. We spotted a wireless on/off lock switch, a MagicGate slot, an SD card card slot and a power on/off switch as we ran our eyes along the front edge from left to right. The coffee brown theme spills into the display’s bezel and trackpad area too. The rest of the deck seems to give this Vaio a tougher attitude with the uniformly dotted dull silver outer frame and similarly shaded keyboard. The device is bundled in with the Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP 3 OS, just around 1GB of RAM, 160GB of hard drive storage and the Intel Atom CPU N280 which speeds along at 1.66GHz. On the top bezel sits a Motion Eye webcam for video chatting and the 10.1†widescreen offers resolutions of up to 1366 x 768p as well as an option to adjust the 3D settings as part of the graphics properties. The screen is of the pleasing crisp non-glossy type that can be viewed from a variety of angles without too much difficulty. We loved it.
Most netbooks are never actually built for sharing entertainment with others if you take the screen size into consideration. Maybe that’s why the sound emanating from the speakers on the front base can be comparable to the kind of noise audibility characteristic of hospitals or those dangerous lab environments where a startled twitch could cause a radioactive disaster capable of transforming normal human beings into superheros. On the other hand, the quality of audio played out through a pair of headphones destroys any complaints about this drawback at one fell swoop. Listening to music or watching videos with the help of headphones is an experience which can claim to be extremely pleasing to the visual and aural senses on the Vaio VPCW115XG. Although netbooks are not really meant to handle heavy multi-tasking, we were barely harried by performance lags even while accessing two to three applications simultaneously. The Intel Atom CPU is invariably up to the job when it comes down to powering the device during those multi-tasking sessions.
Unfortunately, Sony’s managed to throw a spanner or two into the works with the keyboard and battery life. The keyboard is not made for the heavy-handed user by a far throw in spite of the fact that it’s supplemented by an adequate-sized touchpad with well defined right- and left-click buttons. The keys offer very little joy in the form of tactile feedback due to the lack of dip so that touch-typing is almost impossible on the keyboard. We would have appreciated larger buttons which were higher by 2mm at least on this chic baby. All these factors worked hand-in-glove to slow down out typing speed by around 20% to 25% as compared to our desktop keyboard, though some may call it an unfair comparison. The space allocatable to the keys doesn’t seem to be an issue since each button is marooned on the keyboard with around 2mm of estate surrounding it. Another problem is the battery which jogs along quite amiably for some time before puttering to a stop after 2.5 hours or less of average use. It’s funny seeing this happen since no less than nine options are provided for battery management including Vaio Ultimate, Optimized and Maximum. To be just, the Li-ion battery is indeed cited to run for around 2.5 hours while an optional long lasting battery is alleged to be on its way to the Sony Style store.
Pegged at Rs. 29,000, the Sony Vaio VPCW115XG just about hit the mark between average and good on our scorecard. And the under 200GB of HDD capacity could fall short for many users. At the same time, it’s not your run of the mill netbook even if it does under-perform on the battery life aspect as placed against similar offerings by manufacturers such as MSI or Acer. The device gets high ratings when it comes to the appearance and lag-free performance. It receives a 7 out of 10 on the rating scale after the pros and cons are weighed against each other.
