CES 2009: Is Sony’s new portable a netbook or laptop?

Sony's sleek new Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC, launched this week at CES in Las Vegas, falls somewhere between a netbook and a laptop. Sony doesn't call it a netbook, but it looks and feels like one. (Click on the images for a closer look.) Its lightest version weighs just 1.4 pounds, far less than most netbooks. It's also less than an inch thick. Shaped like a business envelope, it'll slip into a jacket pocket or purse. Its keyboard is just 12 percent smaller than that of a typical standard laptop, Sony says. It's got built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And it uses an Intel Atom processor similar to the ones found in most netbooks.

Despite its small size, it differs in several ways from netbooks we've seen, such as those from Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Its $899 price tag is two to three times theirs. And that's just for the low-end configuration, which includes a 1.33GHz processor, 2GB of memory, and a 60GB hard drive. (For hundreds more, you can get a solid-state drive with up to 128GB of storage.) It has no touchpad; instead, you use a "stick" to move the cursor. And it uses Windows Vista Home Premium or Basic, while netbooks nearly always run Linux or Windows XP.

The Lifestyle has a few nifty features, like an instant-on function for playing music and viewing photos. The LED-backlit display has a widescreen resolution of 1600x768 so you can fit more on the screen, though at that resolution words and numbers are tiny (you can zoom in to temporarily enlarge them). And a utility button arranges multiple open windows for you to help compensate for the small screen.

GPS technology is built in, so you don't need a 'Net connection to locate the nearest coffee shop or get directions. Sony claims the Lifestyle gets 4 hours of battery life (we'll let you know how it does when we test it). There's also a larger-capacity battery that Sony says could last up to 8 hours.

So…netbook or laptop? You decide.

—Donna Tapellini