Ian's (almost) daily recap of what spikes my interest

For anybody who is interested, here's the write-up from the Sony product
release at BED last night. This is in response to this previous post.

The product is in fact a new laptop (Windows based of course) where Sony
partnered up with Cingular to offer EDGE, where available, Wifi and
Bluetooth, integrated into the lappy. Cingular helped write the
software that allows the user to toggle using the F1 key between the 3.
This feature worked remarkably well, even after I shut the machine down
to find out where the SIM card goes. There is a little spring loaded
slot which is revealed after removing the battery. After reboot it
quickly found cingular's network and logged on.

The device is small with a 10.6 inch screen with XBRITE and optional
dual layer DVD+-RW drive which was a nice touch. It weighs 3.04 pounds
and is an inch thick, so the portability feature is nice. The keyboard
is tiny. I had a hard time adjusting from the keyboard on my x40 which
already feel slightly cramped.

They had all the attendees distributed at various beds (the place
requires lying on mattresses rather than sitting at tables) where we
each received one of these laptops to test. Then we played a silly game
where we instant messaged (using windows messenger) with characters on
various projectors and had to guess from what location they were
chatting with us from. The winner, sadly not my bed, won a sony
ericsson[ ]. The idea was to show that the people were chatting with
us from remote locations. My guy claimed to be on the jersey shore
though I'm sure he was in his office since they openly admitted the
footage they were using in the projectors had been previously recorded.

The machine is nice, purely by virtue of its size. I certainly enjoyed
the size though I wouldn't purchase it because of the integrated GSM
feature. Some guy from Cingular did a song and dance about the special
promotion they're having that gives new purchasers a free 30 days if you
sign up for a 1 year contract. The price plans are as follows:$49.99
for 50MB of data and $79.95 for unlimited. That adds up to $959.40 a
year in service charges which isn't bad if the firm is picking up the
tab but pretty pricey when returning to reality. It basically amounts
to half the cost of the laptop which, as I understand from one of their
reps scurrying around the floor, costs $2,040 for the CDRW version and
$2,[ ]. When is Cingular going to come up with plans that make
sense? That is a story for another post on a different site.

One of the other things I did while there and I forgot to clear my
history before leaving, was run a speed test using DSL reports. I
emailed the page to myself if you'd like to see it but the speed I got,
in the middle of north Chelsea, was 82kbps down and 42 up, neatly
sandwiched between "ugh" and "bearable".

Sadly I was unable to take any decent pictures using my camera, though
you can see the machine at sonystyle starting tomorrow I believe,
available for online purchase for a month before being released to
retailers. I believe the available colors are indigo, silver and red,
though I might be mistaken.

posted by Ian  # 11:09 AM