VAIO designers working on x86 PowerBooks

Apple headhunting Sony designers?... OK by me, I guess, just as long as they don't follow Sony's lead on customer service. Apple has some of the best. Their CS people talked me through some sticky problems with my iBook. Sony's is located in North Elbonia, and you're lucky if you get someone who speaks something remotely resembling English. I am investigating buying an HD video camera, and while Sony makes a very good and innovative product, their rotten customer service is a big factor in this purchase.

I think that it is not a very good idea for Apple to go with the VAIO team, (They VAIO guys have nice ideas, but they seem uncabable of carrying through with them) I also prefer the design of the current Pwbook and iBooks. I am even typing this message on a 5 year old PowerBook G3 running Debian! It is more solid than my school one which is the Toshiba (Toshista in my mind) A100...

If anyone has used the 12" and 10.6" Vaios, I'm sure your just as excited as me. I have owned the TR1 - TR3A and both have been VERY solid computers. I just may wait the x505 and see what the new powerbook will be like.

Why are all the little linky things for the Weblogs Inc. Network at the bottom of these pages linking to really old stories? This one's from July 30!

By "high speed wireless", I think Bruce M might be referring to EVDO, EDGE or whatever else is on the horizon -- true nationwide high speed wireless connectivity, not localized WiFi.

I hardly see a difference between my 1.25 ghz G4 laptop over it's 802.11G connection side by side to my 1 ghz DP-G4 tower which is hardwired to my cable modem. At minimum both computers have the same 10/100/1GB ethernet connection. The at the minimum the network might give me 3 -6 mb through my cable modem If i notice anything it might be how fast a video begins playing or some multi-gigabyte download comes through a tad faster on the tower but we're talking a mere seconds, just not that significant. In theory both computers max out the broadband 3 (or greater) MB/sec bandwidth. Higher speed renditions of 802.11 wireless networks may make a difference if your laptop is connected through a highspeed wireless LAN/WAN router and you frequently transfer seriously large files, maybe. But my expereince has shown me that we're talking bleeding edge of technology where we the consumer do the bleeding, i doubt the reliability of these higher speed claims to be more than marginally better.

Tony is probably confusing Sony with Pioneer. Pioneer released rebranded Mac clones provided to them by Motorola and StarMax. Or maybe he's thinking of the Sony Trinitron technology used in Macintosh monitors.

NOOOOOO! VAIO LAPTOPS ARE BRICKS WITH CRAP BATTERIES AND PRODUCE FAR TOO MUCH NOISE AND HEAT!!!!!! THIS IS WRONG!

Way off. dual band doesn't work much better than the single because of the interferance in the 11 channel band. There is to much overlap and therefor lost packets galore. Add to that the fact that most people with cable modems can't even hit these kinds of speeds wired. These high speeds are really only needed for server intensive network traffic. therefore 802.11g is fine. Further, you aren't gonna find a media center laptop. that just doesn't make sense. you'd have to make all those connections everytime you set it up, i suppose you could use a dock, but in that case why wouldn't you just run ethernet to the dock. all in all, that kind of wireless bandwidth is just rediculously unnecessary.

steve: News to me. AirPort is single-band 802.11g, 54Mbps max. You can hardly buy one of those cards for a PC anymore. Everyone is selling dual-band solutions that use two 802.11g channels simultaneous to achieve throughput of 108Mbps. At least that's the theory. The additional overhead means you're not likely to see anything much over 90 in most cases, but still.