As long as they don't learn how to design a reliable x86 notebook from Sony, I'm okay with this. Sony's notebooks are beautiful, but they're fragile, in my experience. What's needed is something with the look of a VIAO and the guts of a ThinkPad.

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Sony used to make Mac clones too, so there is probably some good institutional knowledge to tap into there.

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Is Ive and his team too busy working on anything else?

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Not really surprised to hear Apple and Sony in this one. IMHO, these companies are the only ones to make nicely designed notebooks.

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I love sonys designs for the most part. This is a great coffee table book, that I have on my coffee table. It's becoming slightly dated, as it ends with their designs for the playstation and the 16 mb memory stick, but the real interesting stuff such as their design arcs of TVs and CD players is amazing.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789302624/qid=1122816923/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_ur_2_1/103-2232234-5543000

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This makes me happy, if it's true. The Vaios are the only PC I would buy... if I were to buy a PC, that is :)

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Naturally, this would excite any mac user as we value form almost as much as function. I can't wait to see what this team comes up with and hope it's soming we've not considered before.

That being said, I can't help but cringe at the idea that even more people who know even less about Macs will be nodding at me and acting as though they're veterans simply because they dropped some new change on a new toy. Know what I mean?

I was one of the first to have the Treo 600... many of us were. Weren't those the days...? Once Palm bought Handspring, EVERYONE had to have one so now EVERYONE either has the 600 or the 6shittty. If you speak to the owners, they don't even know what they're doing half the time... they're just proud to floss their $600 phone.

I'm all for the new, but won't be so quick to return the nod...

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Sony made Mac clones? There's nothing on LEM about that...

http://www.lowendmac.com/clones/index.shtml

Or was Sony behind one of these companies?

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Penginkun,
I know Sony made mac clones because a college buddy had one. In fact, he may still have it.

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If Apple wanted to look for the best notebook designers in the industry, how about they look at the current Aluminum PowerBook team? VAIO's are craptastic in comparison to the current batch of PowerBooks.

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The VAIO's are nice looking machines, but I would rather see a Powerbook tablet option than something that looks like a VAIO.

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I'm very excited about what's coming to Apple's laptops ... mostly smaller form-factors. I love my 12" Powerbook, but it's starting to feel really heavy compared to some of the PC laptops I've seen lately. And the screen on my Powerbook is starting to seem very dim. My only big concern is that Sony laptops are pieces of crap when it comes to reliability -- my friend's died in a year and just out of warranty, and Sony basically abandoned her. She now owns a 12" Powerbook and is very happy. My dream Powerbook will have a 13" widescreen format, much higher resolution and brighter screen, at least a 160 gigabyte hard drive, boot into multiple OS's, have 2 gigs of RAM and a multicore processor, built in iSight camera, and a PCMCIA slot for adding high speed wireless (unless Apple builds it in) and ideally will also be a media PC with included front-row 2.0 and a built-in television tuner / digitizer.

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Ed Shull: All PowerBooks and iBooks have builtin high speed wireless.

I like the idea Apple seeking a way to improve an already excellent product in the PowerBook

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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