Sony Vaio X505 Notebook Review & Rating

Sony Vaio X505 Notebook Review: Sony has done it again. The world's thinnest, lightest, and also the first carbon-fiber chassis notebook. Sony has attempted to make the ultra-ultraportable. The X505 has a 10.4-inch screen and weighs just 1.7 pounds. That makes this system very nearly as portable as a PDA. It won't fit in your pocket, but the razor-like profile will turn some heads.

The front of the machine is .4-inch thick, comes to an almost perfect point, and wedges out to a mere .8-inch thick. The X505 packs a 1.0GHZ Pentium M and 512MB of RAM, although 4MB is shared with the 855 graphics chipset. Performance specs for a unit this small is good.

Sony opted for a pointing stick instead of a touchpad, but also includes a handy optical mouse with a built-in Memory Stick reader. And with its 802.11g Wi-Fi PC Card, you have complete mobility. Battery life is limited to about 90 minutes and the port selection is adequate for a notebook in this class. It will be a long time before we see another ultraportable that's this small and works this well. The feature set is very limited, but the looks are exceptional. It may not be the best business performer, but everyone will be to busy looking at your notebook to worry about how your work is doing.