POSTED BY

Rob Beschizza

AT 11:49 AM
Friday January 16, 2009

Computers

vaio p

How to buy the badass Japan-only 1.86GHz Vaio P

vaio_p_12.jpgEarly reviews of Sony' Vaio P credit its minuscule form, high quality and general sexiness, but ding it for performing little better than netbooks half its price. It's got 2GB of RAM, so what gives? Vista, for one thing, but also the choice of an ultra low-power 1.3GHz processor.

One can ditch Vista by upgrading to the Windows 7 beta or downgrading to XP. But there's only one way to speed up the hardware: order a foreign Vaio P, equipped with 1.86Ghz processors. Dynamism will ship them direct from Japan from Feb. 12.

You'll pay a lot extra: upwards of $1,500. You'll also have to wait until mid-February to receive it. Moreover, Japanese Vaio P's don't have 3G radios or GPS. One the other hand, you'll have better HD video and gaming, and a 3-year retailer warranty.

Sony Vaio P Series Direct from Japan [Dynamism]

9 Comments

caipirina

#1 – 12:55 PM January 16, 2009

Darn, and I JUST returned from Japan .. and I saw that thing in stores ... now if someone shows me a leopard hack on that, I will seriosuly wet my pants

Brandon West

#2 – 1:15 PM January 16, 2009

You have to pay $1,500 extra for this model? Surely you mean you have to pay $1500, not $1500 in addition to the base price?

hohum

#3 – 1:19 PM January 16, 2009

@1, That's what I'm thinking! How long until we get fully functional hackintoshes out of these. I'd rather plunk out $900 for one of these (well, the inferior version), than however much a barebones MacBook costs right now (rather angry at AppleCare, and my MacBook is useless to me at the moment...)

Kenneth Extension

#4 – 2:40 PM January 16, 2009

Or you could order one from the UK for a mere $2,000 (just £1,369)... Gotta love Sony. http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/200901151217/hands-on-with-the-sony-vaio-p-series/page-2.html

jtegnell

#5 – 9:59 PM January 16, 2009

Strangely, the @ is where it usually is in the US, and not over on the right like most Japanese keyboards.

Rob Beschizza

#6 – 7:18 AM January 17, 2009

That's just the US keyboard, I'm afraid -- I could not find a pic of the Japanese one in time.

Anonymous Anonymous

#7 – 1:28 PM January 17, 2009

Sony has the most retarded return policy!

So I pulled the trigger and ordered from dynamism. I had to have the extra proc speed.

Needing to cancel my previous Vaio, I called sony (an hour on hold) and the rep told me that I could not cancel the order, nor did his "software" even let him under any circumstances do such outrageous thing. I pointed out that it was a pre-order, and that i wanted to buy a different model. The rep kindly told me to read the Terms and Conditions on the Sonystyle site.

Whenever anyone points you to "Terms and Conditions", they are informing you that they are about to fuck you over.

So after pointing out how dumb this policy was, and how I was trying to buy different model, he eventually gave me an RMA. So they'll ship it to me in Feb, and I'll promptly return it.

Sony also sent me a shipping label that expires in 14 days. It will expire before the Vaio even gets here.

Isn't this a huge waste of time, money, and energy? Is this moronic or am I missing something?

OM

#8 – 1:19 PM January 18, 2009

...That's Sony for you. The Marketing goons at Dell back when I worked for them had a complete breakdown of all of Sony's RMA and returns policies, and split them into three columns: scams we'll never pull, scams we'll implement, and scams we're already doing. To Dell's benefity the "scams we're already doing" column was smaller than the other two, but the middle column was the larger of the three.

fishyswaz

#9 – 4:49 PM January 18, 2009

The price of $899 from Dynamism isn't all that bad considering the barebones model is selling here in Japan for ¥79,800 (or $877 @1/19 rates).

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