I Dream Of Sony Tablet

If you read tech news you also would have read that Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s CFO, has recently said “Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad but it’s a space we would like to be an active player in.” Basically it means watch out iPad, Sony has an ace up its sleeve.
Imagine a company that is one of the biggest movie studios, one of the biggest music studios, one of the biggest game studios and also one of the worlds largest electronics companies. Take all those things and chuck them in the blender with a pinch of book store and comic store (which they already have) and you get what can be an amazing tablet PC opportunity. If Sony was to do this right it would be more then a tablet computer, it could be a portable entertainment hub like no other.
All isn’t sunshine and rainbows though. Sony has a habit of taking a beautiful piece of hardware and crippling it. Read any product review and you will see a common theme. They will take this fantastic opportunity to beat Apple at their own game and they will find a way to ruin the experience with DRM or weak application support. The other problem is Sony tablets have a common theme and that is the Windows OS. I’ve mentioned it before, a tablet OS has to build with touch in mind and Windows never was.
What I’m praying for is much more interesting then my cynicism. Imagine a 7″ tablet which was unbelievably thin with slide out PS3 controller (sort of like the PSPgo, but with dual sticks). Then a little XMB on there and make the screen touch sensitive and you would have an almost perfect peice of hardware. Then take all the stores you support, from ebooks to games and throw them on there, or better yet, charge a monthly fee for unlimited access to all of it!
That is the dream I one day hope for from one of the biggest companies in the world. Will it happen, probably not (that is the cynicism again).

Via [Yahoo]

Say Hello To The Sony Vaio EB Series

Looks like Sony has released another model to their ever going product line up. This time it is the EB series (E = Entertainment?).
It is a 2.7KG, 15.5″ entertainment machine from the looks of it, with a off center keyboard and touch pad, and options for very powerful ATI graphics cards (both the 5470 and 5650). The EB also seems to be inspired by Skittles for colours, with options for bright green, pink and blue.
The series starts at $US799 and ships somewhere in the future. Lets hope that though we get Acer pricing, we still get Sony quality.

Via [Sony]

The PS3 Hacked..Finally!

It seems that the genius who broke open the iPhone (Geohot Verbatim),  has been spending time breaking open the PS3. How much time? He says it has taken him 5 weeks to finally break through the securities Sony had put in place.
The hack itself is just the ability to access the entire system memory, so it won’t play your downloaded games or allow home-brew as yet. His next step is to reverse engineer everything he has found, but this is definitely a step towards a completely open system for homebrewers and pirates.
3 years 2 months and 11 days it has taken, so you gotta give Sony some credit.
Via [PS3 Hacks]

Full Spec Vaio Z

The Vaio Z refresh has been known for a few weeks now (since the announcement at CES), but a few facts were still in the air. Sony Japan has now announced the Z officially with specs that will blow your mind.

The first thing to note is the new eye melting resolution of 1920 x 1080 (on the top end model). If you found the old z hard to read then this one will surely implode your brain.

It also features all the rumored bits and pieces; the Nvidia 330GT, the quad SSD (no hdd option anymore), back-lit keyboard (reference other article) and the 1.4 kg weight. Price is expected to be around the $US1899 but with the release date of  March you still have plenty of time to start saving those precious pennies (I recommend collecting cans).

Via [Gizmodo]

Sony Enters Streaming Video Market

Seems Sony has rounded up a bunch of studios and talked them into entering the 21st century of film distribution. Arriving, sometime this year, a system titled Qriocity will be avaliable on pretty much anything that runs a XMB (Vaio’s, BRAVIA’s, maybe PS3). The system will launch with hundreds of films in both SD and HD formats.

What doesn’t make sense is why it has taken Sony so long to make this happen? They already own a massive studio, and sure it might have taken some time to get 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney Pictures, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers, Universal and MGM on board, but they could have started with Sony Classics and grew.

I am hoping for a good value subscription based service, with a local mirror at my ISP and fast cinema to services. I can dream can’t I?

Via [Sony Insider]

Vaio Getting Backlit (Keyboard that is)

It seems all the over hype about how amazing backlit keyboards are
have reached an ear at the Sony Vaio development team. Their upcoming
Z series refresh is rumoured to be the first Vaio to feature a backlit
keyboard (also the first to feature quad SSD drives). All you
need now is to sell a kidney to be able to afford all that creamy Vaio
goodness (2 kidneys for quad SSD).

Via [Engadget]

The Coming Year

Merry Christmas Everyone. Now that is out of my system I would like to look ahead at the year coming.

What will be the defining technology? What breakthroughs will be made? What will be the ultimate lust machine?

This is a hard one for me to answer personally. I am a laptop man, and love the all in one devices, such as smart phones and tablets. I am interested in CES in January and the release of the i3 and i5 Intel processors coming out (and hopefully a new Sony Vaio Z based on it). I am interested in the evolution of Android devices, new Blackberries and Windows Mobile 7. I am interested in emerging green energy and their evolutions.

What you say? No iPad/iTablet/iSlate?

Before you string me up for not being an Apple Fanboy, I want to explain why. Apple are not a hardware company. Sure they make laptops and other devices, but it is usually other companies tech with their own interface. Sure their interfaces are the best (I agree they are simple to use and flow better then most), but they don’t really push the technology envelope very often. The Apple Tablet will be cool to look at and do flashy things, but ultimately it will do exactly what you imagine it will do (good video player, bad E-Book reader).

As the year comes to an end, I am looking forward to seeing something game changing in the coming year.

Powerful VAIO VGN-SZ791N Gets Reviewed

Unfortunately I don’t get to do reviews here, I just can’t afford the toys. The people at PCMag aren’t as unfortunate. They have got their hands on the damn powerful VGN-SZ791N, and they really liked it. They gave it a hefty 4.5 out of 5 circles. It even earned the Editor’s Choice branding. Unfortunately, even the best can’t run Crysis, with a lousy frame-rate of 6 at 1024×768.

For the compete review, click over to PCMag.

Is The PSP Phone A Good Idea?

People have a misconception about the current state of technology. There has been a move of the last 50 years of trying to put as many things into one device as possible. An example could be the clock radio (which works well) or the Gas Powered Toolbox (they took stupid and added danger to it). I think the hype surrounding the PSP Phone is a good example of how  merging devices could quite possibly work if made correctly, but chances are will fail horribly.
How many people reading this own a mobile phone with a camera? Do you also own a digital camera? Chances are you said yes to both, and with good reason. 1. Why would you take pictures with your phone when you know they will turn out crap (fixed lens, with tiny pinhole to let light in)? 2. Your phone has a rated 5 hours of talk time. Now remove the battery life required to use you camera frequently and what do you have? You have a phone with shitty pictures accompanied by shitty battery life.
What has all this got to do with the marvellous PSP Phone? The PSP gets like 3-5 hours depending what  you are doing on it (videos or games). Add the phone functions to the mix and it will cut it down considerately. You sit on the train, play your PSP Phone, then make a call to work saying you are running late, then message that girl from the club who said if you come 10 feet from her she will call the cops, and what you are left with is not much battery life. That doesn’t even include the pirated Lost episodes (or Scrubs if you have taste), and your music library (which is completely legitimate).
It seems to be about the device that do everything. Your mobile can already play games, and surf the net, watch videos and play music. When you actually watch your battery disappearing you will understand what I mean.
There are a lot of points I can use to further display a distaste for the PSP Phone, but I would miss the positive possibilities of the system. The PSP Phone could say, feature some incredible battery, OLED screen and a Cell processor that together will bring you a new generation of mobile goodness. The chances of that happening are about as high as the chances of Hillary Clinton becoming the next President (won’t I look silly if she wins).
Sony are talking about doing the iPhone thing with the touch screen that can change depending on function. Has anyone tired running emulated games on an iPhone with touch screen controls? Utter crap is all that can be said for it. How do you emulate a joystick on a touch screen, without giving you big freaking blisters?!.
The PSP can’t sacrifice anything more if it wants to compete against Nintendo. If it loses screen size, it will fail. If the controls get any more acquit it will fail. If the games take longer, run slower or look worse, guess what will happen? It will fail. Keep them separate, and sit with me while we watch N-Gage fail once again.

DualShock 3 Is Coming To US In April

The title pretty much says it all, except the date, which is April 15th. Ohh, it will cost $US54.99. Now what do I write to make the article more informative and fun? I got nothing, sorry people.

For more info (like you need more), click over to Kotaku.