August 20th, 2009
Sony's 11.1" Vaio TT meets its maker; are premium mini laptops doomed?
The “world’s smallest Blu-ray notebook” finally bit the dust today.
Sony’s 11.1-inch, 2.87-lb. Vaio TT ultraportable laptop was taken from the SonyStyle site, and according to reports, it won’t be coming back.
The laptop offered 7.5 hours of battery life, Intel Core 2 Duo processing, Intel GS45 graphics, an ambient light sensor on its TFT display and the room for a dual SSD storage setup. Maxed out, this laptop could cost more than $4,000 — an impossibility for a market segment that’s overrun by cheap, thin, light ultraportables and even cheaper Netbooks.
So the question remains: what will come of the miniature, fully-featured laptop?
In a tough economy, do consumers no longer want to shoehorn the high-performance components of a 17-inch laptop into an 11-inch form factor (and pay the price accordingly)?
Have we reached the end of an era for the “guns blazing”-style spec sheets for small notebooks?
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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