Sony Vaio W series Opinion (Atom n450 build)

This is too short to call a review, I just want to throw a small opinion out there after having a little time with this machine.

So, the machine in question is Sony Vaio W, color brown, purchase from Newegg (newegg.com).
Quick Specs:
Atom N450
Intel GMA 3150
1 GB RAM
250 GB HDD
6-cell battery (~7 hour battery life)
10.1" 1366x768 LED backlit screen, glossy.
2x USB, 1x Audio out, 1x Audio in, 1x Ethernet, 1x VGA out, 2x various flash memory slots (check manufacturer website).
Weight ~3 lb with battery.


Notes on physical aspects:
- Netbook has overall rounded design and the grey/green portions look better and not as cheap as in the pictures. Brown shell is smooth, not glossy, and only catches a little bit of grease from hands.
- The 6-cell battery sticks out from the bottom. This lifts up the body to make it more comfortable for typing, but comes at the cost of not being as easy to store. I have yet to find a netbook sleeve that fits this thing.
- The build is sturdy comparing to the only other netbook I touched - Lenovo S12. It is not as solid as full-size laptops, but neither does it have the ridiculous weight. Flex on the screen is very mild, keyboard has no flex at all, and neither does the body. The battery sits tightly, so touting it around in the bag does not seem likely to raise issues.
- Keyboard is chiclet design, and a nice one at that. While the keys are small, when I put my hands in proper typing position, I can type close to my speeds on Thinkpad (~100 wpm). The resistance is enough to be felt but not enough to force my hands to slow down (which is an issue for me on MacBooks). Right shift key is small, which makes it somewhat annoying - but the other things like space bar, which you'll see other reviews complaining about, is easy to get used to. You merely have to get used to keeping your hands in slightly different position when typing.
- Touchpad is nice and large (S12's touchpad by comparison was pretty sad, and that is a 12" machine). The buttons work well and are quiet, touch response is fairly accurate if you tune it more appropriately (lower acceleration and reduce sensitivity - on default settings it flies around the screen). Scroll works well and is not causing problems - although the scroll are is unmarked. Once again - it is an area where you get used to it with a little conscious practice.
- Heat has not caused me any issues, the laptop gets it share of warmth but nothing burning. I don't feel any heat on top at all, only on the bottom when I turn it off to put it away. Admittedly, it is not summer yet.

Notes on the differentiation point: Screen
- The screen is awesome. High resolution LED screen of this size that makes photos look grand, browsing experience pleasant, and offers width to put all programs in comfortable size so you do not have to scroll excessively. And on top of that it is just plain higher quality than...most full-size laptops. This is really a serious step up from what netbooks generally offer.
- Gloss can be annoying, I can see my own reflection in it fairly well when sitting in the sun. But I can also read the text on the screen through my own reflection, so the brightness keeps up with the need.

Notes on hardware:
- Nothing to brag about here. It is here, it works. It sometimes makes low clicking sounds, sometimes you hear the fan. The hardware is typical netbook of 1st/2nd quarter 2010, so you can go read professional level specs for this.
- Sound card: This ismy own pet peeve, I use rather high quality in-ear monitors for listening right now and hate manufacturers who have noisy audio cards. Sony did well - the noise level is minimal with music off (very slight hiss), and the tone is clean and clear. The output is not the loudest, but it is more than enough to drive me to deafness. Don't try using something like Sennheiser HD600 with it, but all consumer-level headphones and earphones will work perfectly. (For reference, I use Westone 3).
- Speakers suck. Quiet, weak in the mids, I am not going to mention bass (since there is none to mention). Enough said.

Overall performance notes that are more interesting:
- I spend about an hour using Windows 7 Starter on this thing. I bought it because I needed a separate machine to run Linux on, as I use a much more powerful machine for normal use. I installed Ubuntu NBR - which worked out very well. It took about an hour to do everything, completely from this machine (downloaded Ubuntu and created bootable drive using W7S, booted from flash drive, let Ubuntu install itself, was done before breakfast). Almost everything worked out of the box, including wireless which is general issue with getting Ubuntu running, and all function-keys. The only function that did not work is suspend/hibernate. I did not put any serious work into this yet, although the fix is supposed to be easy. I ran into a problem with screen flickering when the brightness is set to max under Ubuntu - which actually is max as per some variable, while one lower than max is the highest output for the screen. So you can just go change the power settings to have default brightness one click short of max and everything works well.
- Under Ubuntu I get following pleasant benefits on this thing:
- I can easily run 20 tabs on Firefox without issues. I often run 7-10 programs, and this machine keeps up just fine.
- The overall operation even with mild visual programs seems to be fine. This won't run PS-level programs, but Google's Picasa was no trouble.
- Boot-up speed is under one minute, shut down is about 10 seconds. This is one of the reasons I did not bother much to get suspend working - this is fast anyway.
- Open Office runs very well (I am used to running it under Windows 7 where it is finicky. Here it is smooth and snappier than MS Office).
Video, flash and such:
I had no issues with HD on youtube, but i have not tried 1080op video files since the screen does not support them anyway. Running alot of videos at once (for preload) causes some lag.

Battery life:
Between 5 and 7 hours depending on intensity. I get a bit more than 6 when doing work (browser, text editor/open office, pdf viewer), and listening to music.