Is Sony going to release a new Sony P?

After all these models being announced/refreshed (Y11,S1111,F,CW,Z, and W), how come Sony didn't announce a new P series? I hope Sony will not discontinue this series, now that the PineTrail brings some more advantages. What do you guys think? Anyone heard something? It seems strange that all the series have been refreshed, except the P.

 

the P is way newer than all the other series being updated

 

Yes, but all the other manufactures announced netbooks with the new platform, so it would bad for Sony not to update the P. And the last refresh of the in October was just minor updates, like the W7 and the 2.0 ghZ cpu.

 

Patience armadilo,

I'm sure a refreshed P is coming very soon. It doesn't make sense to discontinue the P, is selling pretty well among the business world.

 

I don't know.

It would have had an interesting application, and I might have gotten one back when it arrived, if it were not for the short battery life. It was designed for mobile use in every aspect, delivering all sorts of useful features in a compact size. It just failed to deliver on one crucial aspect to being fit for mobile use: Battery life...

For most netbooks Pinetrail is not much of an improvement in terms of processing power, but it is in terms of battery life. However, the P series already has a more power efficient (but less powerful) Atom core in it than the average netbook, so the gain will be less visible on the battery life front, and more visible in processing power.

The P also isn't actually a netbook, to fit that product class it would need to be much cheaper. Besides that, it features GPS and a much better screen (resolution wise, not size of course). The P series serves quite a different market than netbooks.

This current pinetrail upgrade may actually be skipped, as Sony may be waiting for the next one, which should bring more significant improvements. Because the P is targetted at a different market this would be a viable option.

The W series is a different story. That one does compete in the netbook category. It may be more expensive than the typical netbook, but that is what you pay for quality. That however does require Sony keeps up with hardware developments.

 

I know that the P is targeted to a different market from netbooks, but the specs are the same. That's why Sony should refresh the P with the PineTrail. Even if, gives more advantage to battery life than a performance boost. I hope you are not right Solinx, I am waiting for this from October! Which is the next platform that will bring more improvements?

 

But there is a big problem with Pine Trail.

It only allows a maximum resultion of 1368 x 768.

So how will this fit to the Vaio P?

 

I am by no means saying Sony definetly won't upgrade, I'm just saying that they may not, beacuse Pinetrail as it is doesn't offer much of an improvement and they aren't really forced by market competition either.


For the P series Pinetrail would most notably provide a performance boost, as opposed to longer battery life. And it is actually better battery life that it could use most. That aside, the current Pinetrail offers are rather disappointing.

The next platform will take a while yet, but I was under the impression Intel will expand the Pinetrail platform before that, which would be within a more reasonable timeframe. Hopefully those will provide more of an improvement over the old platform.

Given its position, Sony could well decide to wait a bit longer and make a more significant upgrade to the P series.

Why wait if they are moving to Pinetrail anyway? Well, that is where the other changes come in. The change to Pinetrail in that compact case probably requires a redesign, at least internally. The change to core i probably requires some changes as well to other models. Busy times for the design team. Quality designs take time. Skipping this upgrade would spread the workload over a longer period.


As for the resolution limit, that is not a hardware limit. The limit is a limit for manufacturers who want to make cheap netbooks. If they keep to the limits, they get a nice deal. If they don't, they got to pay more. Sony will simply pay more.

 

What is the source of this information?

I have always read that the N450 hast this limit and only the D410 and D510 allow higher resolution.

 

I don't have time to look for one. But come on, the ancient integrated graphics solution in my first gen MSI Wind netbook can at the least provide a 1680 * 1050 on my external screen and I know others have used it with high resolution monitors. The N450, while a limited upgrade, is still an upgrade, not a downgrade.

It is common knowledge that Intel put strictions on the use of the Atom platform for marketing reasons, and it is simply doing the same with Pineview.

Edit: After a quick look around, the N450 may indeed actually be a small downgrade or step on the place compared to the GMA 950 in my netbook. Anyhow, if they are indeed using the GMA 500, it would simply mean the Pinetrail platform uses the same GPU as already used in the current P series. So it should be just fine irregardless.

 

Pinetrail uses the 3150 graphic card, and all the netbooks leaked with PineTrail confirm this. So, the big advantage for the P would be to take away the crappy GMA500. Second advantage (all the early reviews confrim this), is that the battery life had improved a lot, due to less energy needed and heat is also less. I think Sony is forced by the competition, just my 2 cents. When everyone else offers the N450 processor+3150 gpu+great battery life, then you can't just offer an old technology. Especially whne users of the P complained a lot about the video performance (crappy GMA500).

 

Yes, the Pinetrail uses the X3150 graphic card (Santa Rosa). I don't think Sony will leave the P with the old Z550 processor and the poor GMA 500. Every 3-4 months Sony refreshes the series, so also the P should have the PineTrail update.

 

Thought so. Guess the article I found mentioning the possibility of a GMA500 was already outdated.

The Z550 + GMA 500 already has a significantly lower power draw than the N270 + GMA 950 combination. Pinetrail won't be much of an improvement regarding battery life.

As for the complains about the graphics, are you perhaps referencing to the playback of HD material?

The GMA 500 was supposed to be capable of running 1080p content. It can't do that reliably, but from what I gather neither can Pinetrail, where the line is actually drawn at 720p.

"Like previous Atom-based Eee PCs netbooks (excluding the 1201N) you aren't going to want to put a 1080p video anywhere near it, but a 720p Quicktime clip played back quite smoothly, but we had the same old choppy issues playing an HD YouTube video." http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/21/asus-eee-pc-1005pe-review/

And here is a french source about the 1080p support on the Poulsbo chipset (Z550 + GMA 500)
http://www.presence-pc.com/actualite/intel-gma500-poulsbo-33149/


The Z550 really is in a different class than the much cheaper N270 and N280. The P series isn't expensive for the fun of it

 

The P isn't going away anytime soon. Word is that Sony's cutting prices by changing to a Chinese supplier for their screens:
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Office/Notebooks_And_Tablets/Q7E3U9X7
50,000 screens were supposed to ship in December, so they may be ramping up for something interesting. Unfortunately, these are still the unusably small 8" screens. Sony, is 9" really too much to ask for?

Meanwhile, clones keep getting better: http://malata.com/en/product_detail.aspx?classid=643&id=27

Also, I don't know if this means anything, but the Korean Sony site just released a couple of new p's. Besides being maybe a hair lighter (1.31 lbs), these seem to be nothing new: http://www.lowsons.com/VaioNews/15588

 

Since the current battery life is not acceptable for me I was waiting for the PineTrail update. So it looks like it will not get an update.

 

The N280 and the Z550 are within 10 passmarks of each other. The NB205-N210 which has a N280 processor and 1GB of ram benches about the same as X with a 2ghz Z550 and 2gb of ram. Geekbench measures cpu and memory performance.

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/sony-vaio-x.aspx?page=2

 

The link that jonktatz gave is encouraging for a new P, so we have still hope.

Me too as bernd75, I was waiting for the PineTrail P to pull the trigger. Not so much for an increase in the performance, but I would like better battery life. Early reviews of PineTrail netbooks (as in this site ASUS 1005PE), show a boost of 25% in the battery life, which is very good. The major upgrade of the new platform is indeed less heat and better battery life.
For performance, I don't expect miracles...there is still an Atom there. In my opinion if someone doesn't expect that will do video encoding with it, it runs fine for web browsing, word, music...etc. In other forums as pocketables.net users report that they found some codecs to run smoothly videos as well. My only complain is the battery of the actual P. Such a device is unacceptable to run under 2.5 hrs and 4 with the extended battery.

 

Well, I actually meant the TDP performance and HD capabilities. It wouldn't really have surprised me if the N280 performed better than the Z550 in terms of cpu performance. The N270 did perform better than the Z520. But I have to admit, the extensive battery life of the NB205 turns out to be quite a surprise.

All I heard and read at the time was that it wasn't worth considering as an upgrade over the N270 if you already got a netbook, because the only difference was a slightly higher clock resulting in slightly higher performance. Since my orginal MSI Wind comes with a rather unique overclock feature, allowing the N270 to run at 2.0Ghz, there really was no point in showing any further interest in the N280. Hence I usually consider the N270 and the N280 as pretty much the same thing. Perhaps that is a wrong thing to do.

 

Maybe I will just grab the P that is available now..Even if Sony announce a refresh, will it have a chinese low cost screen? What is Sony cooking?

 

Ugh I don't recommend anyone getting the Vaio P. The overall performance is horrible and the GMA 500 video processor produces stutters Youtube a lot. I've had the Vaio P for a month and sold it for the HP mini 110 which is about 3 times less in price and feels like 30 times more in usefulness. If you are going to get a netbook from Sony, you are better off getting the W.

 

Maybe this is a good thing. If the P had a lower resolution I probably would have bought one already. 220 DPI makes this product even more niche than it already is.

 

Seems like not only no new P in the CES, but maybe Sony will disconinue this series:

http://www.pocketables.net/2010/01/no-sight-of-the-vaio-p-could-be-curtains.html

I hope not! Already is a dissapointment that Sony didn't refresh it in the CES, they don't even show it anymore?

 

Someone else did see the P at CES, as appears from the comments of that blog.