Laptops from Sony are known to be the coolest looking laptops in the market. The VAIO Mini with its slim and sleek design can fit into your pocket as the TV ad suggests. Hence, it has gained the label of being a “Ultraportable Lifestyle PC” rather than an ordinary notebook. Even Apple is known to borrow some design concepts from VAIO. So we thought of having a go at it and understand is it all smoke or really a fire that burns. VAIO is equipped with Intel Z520 Atom CPU with 1.3 GHz clock rate, 2 GB RAM and 60 GB Hard disk with 4200 rpm and a mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 Chip. The system comes loaded with VIsta. The CPU is quite economical and hard disk rotation speed seems to be quite below standard. Thanks to Instant On operating System Xross Media Bar, it is booted in minutes.
The Model is available in four different colors which Sony calls Ebony Black, Ivory White, Volcano Red and Forest Green. You should take care of the high quality finish which is prone to fingerprints and it also needs to be protected against damage through a transport bag. You can feel a little annoyed at this. The edges of the case are well and cleanly ground, the corners are cleanly rounded. The display is securely held in place with two small hinges. There is no unpleasant creaking noise when handling the case.
The display resolution is very sharp with a maximum of 1600X768 pixels on the screen. But with small screen area everything looks tiny with on that high resolution. There is not much to complain about viewing angle stability. It has a lithium ion battery with 2100 mAh which is able to run the system more than 4 hours with energy saving mode. Under load conditions it can run more than two hours. Expect a three hour run in normal load without power socket being needed to be connected to it.
