Next Vaio P: Suggested improvements

SONY should make a very important change in the Vaio P keyboard: The right shift key should be made larger and more well-located, especially more separated from the arrow keys.

Even with a keyboard of this relatively small size, I should be possible to make such a better keyboard layout, like the one of the T-series, for instance. (Furthermore: Samsung NC10 and LG X110, for instance, has this much better solution concerning the right shift key and the arrow keys (the arrow keys being more separated from the rest of the keyboard and located in a more "grouped" fashion, even though these machines of course have larger screens and keyboards).

It should be mentioned that more users of the Vaio P have made very similar comments and critizisms (and constructive suggestions to make it better) regarding these aspects of the keyboard. To site a few, from the Pocketable Forum:

”rakh1” 03-21-09 would like to change among a few other things:
“larger right shift key”

And “MathProfJohnson” makes the same very important point about this very annoying aspect of the keyboard in his post of 04-28-09:

“Keyboard- heaven, except one major issue. The small shift key keeps getting me. I am continuously hitting the arrow up key without realizing and so I am having to fix my typing, a lot.”

Summary about the right shift key of the Vaio P: It is too small, too close to the arrow keys and too surrounded by other keys, especially the “up arrow” key.


A change of the keyboard in line with these suggested improvements and in the near future with Windows 7 will, I am certain, make the Vaio P a much more useable machine, and with hopefully also a litte reduction in size, to make the unit more fit in the pocket - just being a bit more pocketable, the result will be of greater interest to many road travellers.

With the present footprint, now you need to think about - or consider - to take the Vaio with you on your way out of the door or not, while one would take a slightly smaller sized machine, like a larger cell phone or communicator, more automatically in the pocket while on the road. This is a small, but important difference for many of us.