The Sony VAIO P Series, Netbooks the next big small thing

Tiny laptops could soon be as ubiquitous as mobile phones as computer makers continue to refine their cheap "netbook" machines with new features including touch-screens and GPS navigation.

At the 2009 CES Show in Las Vegas, Sony upped the ante by unveiling a mini-laptop with a twist, Sony VAIO P Series. It has a widescreen 8-inch display and measures 24 centimeters wide by 11 cm deep and 2 cm thick, giving it a form factor that, according to Sony, allows it to be slipped into a jacket pocket or handbag. An advantage of the wide form-factor is that the keyboard can be made slightly larger. The key pitch on the Vaio P (the distance from the center of one key to the center of the next) is 16.5 millimeters, considerably more than on keyboards used on some of the small form-factor netbooks currently available.

Every SKU has the same 1.33Ghz Atom inside (the Z series not the pokier N)—not incredibly speedy, and 2GB of RAM. The built-in 3G is Verizon only, and they wouldn't comment on a GSM version. It's based on the Intel Atom processor and will be available in North America from February for around US$900. That's for Vista Home Basic—you've gotta drop a grand to get real Vista. Otherwise, the 4 different SKUs vary based mostly on storage—60GB starting up to a 128GB SSD in the $1500 model.