The Sony Vaio Duo has three CPU options: a 1.9GHz Intel Core i3-3227U base model, a 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U (can boost to 2.6GHz) and a 1.9GHz Core i7-3517U (can boost to 3GHz) with 128GB, 256GB or even 512GB SSD storage, and 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of Ram. All systems rely on the Intel HD 4000 processor-integrated GPU. This combination of hi-def meets pointy tech gives the impression that Sony’s Vaio Duo has one foot in the future and another rooted in the past. You even get a VGA port on the side, which gives some clues as to who is expected to buy it.Is this the new exec must-have machine that can knock out a presentation on the boardroom projector and slum it as a slate in the coffee shop too? Sony must hope so, and as it’s also equipped with two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and an SD/Memory Stick slot, it can easily accommodate peripherals back at the office if the point and flick fiddle factor proves wearing. Oh, and what’s this round the back? Gigabit Ethernet. Now you’re talking.
Like all these convertibles, the power button is along the edge, which is all very well in tablet mode, but a bit of a grope when waking it up from sleep as a laptop. A design compromise shows itself early on when typing, as you realise that the screen angle is fixed. Again, Sony reminisces by including flip out feet that, like keyboards from a bygone era, raise the back of the machine altering the tilt of the keys and screen at the same time.Being an 11.6-inch machine, the keyboard is a little cramped along its length, although there is a decent amount of space between the chiclet keys, which sport an auto sensing backlight. What you perhaps won’t have bargained for is that the keyboard is also cramped from front to back, or at least it feels that way as there are no palm rests here. The space that would normally exist for such has been taken up by the deckchair prop stand arrangement keeping the screen upright.As with all condensed keyboard configurations, spend any time on them and you get used to the quirks. The Vaio Duo 11’s keys are comfortable enough, if a little on the wobbly side, but I spent a day typing solidly on this machine and, repeatedly, hit the arrow keys instead of the right shift key. I was tempted to plug in a mouse too, but persevered with the TrackPoint, frequently giving in and using the touchscreen instead – it’s what it’s there for, after all.
The main problem for me was highlighting text to cut and paste in WordPad – your finger gets in the way for a start which makes it difficult to be specific. Beyond a click and TrackPoint trace, Sony’s aid for its incumbent OS choice is to use its VGP-STD1 stylus – it even has left and right click controls, but this wireless device seems to have a mind of its own. There is some proximity sensing going on here, much like on the Samsung Galaxy Note, so you don’t have to press on the screen for some tasks as you hover above with a pinpoint cursor, but it was so wayward when navigating the desktop, it was unuseable.From Monday the US retail chain will cut the cost of Sony, Acer, Toshiba, Dell and HP touch-driven laptops plus two models of Samsung's all-in-ones to shift stock.You can see the full range of discounted gear here. Best Buy’s discount will not apply to Windows 8 tablets nor to Microsoft’s laptop-tablet-ish Surface.Best Buy lowered its prices after a survey revealed that shoppers who bought touchscreen Windows 8 devices were “significantly happier” than those who bought PCs with a bog-standard display, according to the The Wall Street Journal.
“Touch is a critical component to Windows 8 from a customer satisfaction perspective,” Jason Bonfig, Best Buy’s vice-president for merchant computing, told the WSJ.In the run up to the Windows 8 release, Microsoft gave PC makers clear advice on the hardware to put into their computers to take advantage of the new operating system's features - such as touchscreens for the new finger-driven user interface. But the manufacturers resisted because they believed adding the extra hardware would make the machines too expensive and unsellable.Windows 8 then failed to shift in significant volumes over the Christmas shopping period, leaving Best Buy and other shops stocked up with unsold inventory. One senior source at a major PC maker told The Reg consumers snapped up Windows 7 PCs rather than machines running Windows 8. Tests with the stylus using handwriting recognition on Windows 8 had problems too. A grey circle would appear from nowhere and the Computer desktop icon would be selected in the middle of writing – so the text app would become inactive in the background and not fill up with the words you’d scrawled. A flat battery perhaps? Unlikely, as it worked like a charm in the full screen FreshPaint sketching app. At first I thought it was buggy, but I wasn’t scribbling hard enough – the stylus is pressure sensitive and in this domain, performs rather well, with acceptable latency.
I gave the Adobe Photoshop CS6 trial a spin to see how the pen performed. Here, the latency doesn’t appear too bad at first, it trails behind the most rapid strokes, and could sometimes get a bit tardy for no obvious reason, and this is the fully loaded Core i7 model. The latency might irk some people but not as much as finding out that the pen’s pressure sensitivity doesn’t work in Photoshop. An Adobe forum post highlights the issue which suggests somebody needs to grasp the nettle if this N-trig designed stylus is to be fully functional.With all these input options, what is difficult to get used to is the simple fact that the round pen barrel easily rolls. Put it down and away it goes, and as the detachable cap can’t be clipped to the back of the pen, away it goes too. There are lanyard holes at the end of the pen and cap but at £49 for a replacement, this sleek design lacks some basic practicalities that might help keep all the bits from getting lost.
As a tablet, the Sony Vaio Duo 11 is a bit on the chunky side, measuring up at 320 x 199 x 18mm and weighing 1.3kg. As a result you don’t get that chuck-it-on-the-bed confidence a dedicated tablet affords. However, it’s small enough to stuff into a backpack although its primarily plastic construction, again, affects confidence. How well it would survive an accidental drop? That slide and tilt mechanism looks particularly vulnerable as the screen locks into place when upright. But then again, with a push, it slides down easily enough. Perhaps it’s more likely to collapse into a tablet than suffer serious damage.That reminds me, when I first came across the Vaio Duo at the IFA show last year, I couldn’t figure out how to crack the thing open from tablet mode. You have to lift it up from the back, which is a two-handed affair and, unless I’m missing a trick, it’s pretty much impossible to manage when flat on the desk. So no matter how much you polish the screen and its large black borders, you’re almost always going to end up gazing at margins of fingerprints, but that’s convertibles for you.
If you plumb in an external optical drive and run Ubuntu 12.10 from a live CD, you’ll find the touchscreen doesn’t work... well, it did for a moment, but as the Vaio settled from this boot-up, it never became active again. The good news is that Ubuntu could identify the Wi-Fi hardware and it worked without a hitch. Even if that had failed, having Ethernet on-board this convertible at least allows for some experimentation with different Linux flavours.Talking of experimentation, the Core i7 model review sample needed a slew of updates which were dutifully applied and a nose around the Sony site also highlighted a firmware patch too. Getting to the BIOS/EFI section of the Vaio Duo is much like it is on the Lenovo Yoga – you enter it by engaging the restore partition boot up from the Assist button in the base. A number of options appear, including external drive booting, but this approach at least avoids frantic prodding of function keys to get to this level. I mention this because I tried to apply the update but it wouldn’t take.