The new Sony P Series is by no means an innovative product. Years before the newly launched Sony Vaio VGN P15G , Sony developed and sold the Picturebook series Vaio VAIO PCG-C1XS laptop.

Unfortunately, the trend of Netbooks hadn’t caught on then. Much like the consumer demand for gas guzzling cars in 50′s in USA, the public screamed for laptops armed with more CPU power, RAM, HDD, Durability & Expansion possibilities. Weight be damned. Price be damned. Heat be damned. Power consumption be damned.

The Asus Eee PC Series of netbooks ushered a bold new trend of low powered, low cost and low maintenance computers designed to perform one or two tasks only; but with minimum fuss.

Thanks to some really clever marketing and timing in the market, anticipation alone decided that Asus’s product was a winner from the word go. We don’t expect our Music players to do the dishes, so why should we expect an Internet gadget to do Photoshop?

Quite unfortunately though, as more and more manufacturers crowd the netbook market, in an effort to outdo each other, they have started diluting the concept and started cramming mainstream notebook components in these dinky machines.

Sony’s new offering is certainly no exception. Built to look more cheeky than it’s 8 year old offering, the current netbook offers more of the same. If the ad is anything to go by (svelte lady shaking her hips while her netbooks keeps slipping out of the back-pocket), even non IT savvy customers will instantly notice the design flaws.

Deep inside the netbook, a mashup of disjointed components and stratospheric pricing will probably mean that for a while; this netbook will remain in the domain of the elite, where the bling matters more than brawn. The netbook will command a premium price and go from 100% to 30% of value in flat 2 years.

Article of interest:
A pictorial guide to the subtle differences between small, cheap laptops