When Sony’s VAIO W was announced, its $500 price tag seemed a bit steep for a 10-inch netbook. You did get some nice extras, though, like a 1366×768 resolution and built-in Bluetooth. It seems that Sony’s gunning for the lower-end netbook market with the recently-discovered VAIO M—a 10.1-inch affair with an Atom N450 CPU and 1024×600 screen.
Bluetooth will again be a standard feature, which is nice, and you’ll get a 250GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, Windows 7 Starter, 1.66GHz CPU, and b/g/n Wi-Fi, all at 2.86 pounds.
SonyInsider.com suspects it’ll replace the VAIO W, which almost seems like a step backwards given the W’s better screen. No US pricing or availability info yet, but if this new one’s priced anywhere near $500 it’s going to sell like coldcakes.
A UK-based store has it priced at £299, which is equivalent to about $450 but that doesn’t mean it’ll cost $450 here. I’d guess it might be priced at $399 or so—still a bit expensive.
New Sony netbook VPC-M11M1E [NotebookReview.com via Sony Insider]