In the race to create a notebook  that has no weight at all, Sony has taken the lead. On Thursday, the electronics giant unveiled what it described as "the world's lightest notebook," the Vaio X. The model was first shown in September at a European trade show.
Weighing in at a lithe 1.6 pounds -- and that's dressed, with a standard battery -- the Vaio X is only a half-inch thin. There's an 11.1-inch screen with a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio and LED backlight technology, 3G mobile broadband, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a solid-state drive. The notebook, designed primarily for business users, will run Windows 7 Pro and will be available next month, with prices starting at $1,300.
'A Game Changer'
Since gravity has been trumped, the next goal for a laptop is electricity. The standard battery lasts for up to 3.5 hours, but a super-extended-capacity battery can keep the
Vaio X in juice for up to 14 hours.
Sony Senior Vice President Mike Abary said that "it's one thing to make a notebook thin," but the inclusion of "industry-leading battery life and wireless WAN" means the X Series is "a game changer."
For Sony, the Vaio X's extremely thin profile is an opportunity for elegance. The laptop's body is built of seamless brushed aluminum and carbon fiber, with a perimeter featuring grooved edging. The model is offered in black or gold, and the keyboard is designed to offer a "comfortable typing experience," he said.
The X also offers a multi-touch touch pad, which allows the user to zoom in and out, rotate items, flip through photos, and scroll vertically or horizontally.
Sony notes that the Vaio X's touch pad is "commonly associated with touch-enabled smartphones." Andrew Hanson, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, pointed out that, as "notebook computers are becoming more like mobile devices," and as mobile devices get more powerful, the distinctions between the categories are getting fewer.
The Competition: MacBook Air and Dell Latitude Z
Hanson predicted that the mobile-device categories will remain separate, but the X's similarities to its mobile relatives don't end with touch pads or weight. The Vaio X, for instance, features GPS, enabling a user to type "restaurant" and get turn-by-turn directions to the nearest one.
Hanson also pointed out that Sony's technical specifications indicate only that the processor is a two-GHz Intel processor, although there has been speculation by industry observers that the new laptop would use one of Intel's Atom processors, such as the Atom Z550. If so, that would be another tie-in to smaller mobile devices, which have more commonly used the Atom chip.
But Hanson noted that, even if the Vaio X bears some of the attributes of smaller mobile devices, its key competitors are the other leading, thin notebooks -- Apple's MacBook Air and the Dell Latitude Z.
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