Digital Trends

Because this form factor falls halfway between a PDA and a notebook, the obvious tendency is to pit this Sony against other products clearly marketed at different audiences.  While this is not a fair comparison, one cannot help but see the disparity in price per performance between the Picturebook and notebook.  Consider you can buy a more powerful notebook for roughly half of the price of this Picturebook.  Alternatively you could buy a notebook with about twice the performance as the Picturebook for approximately the same price.  It is also does not help that the next closest competitor — the PDA — is far cheaper.  At close to one third the price the Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC also offers formidable competition.  The consensus we have arrived at is that for Sony to be competitive with this product the price would have to be less than $1000.  Obviously there is fierce competition within the notebook & PDA markets causing this aggressive pricing.  If and when this reaches into this midrange form factor arena, I would expect Sony's prices to be much more comparable with their PDA/Notebook counterparts. 

Until then this remains purely a niche market.  But do not let these comparisons detract from the advantages of this niche market.  College students might find the ability to record lectures invaluable - forget for the moment that the wealthy student who might afford such a device may be an oxymoron.  And recording business meetings might be invaluable to some — providing management can be convinced that they are purchasing the device for mundane office activities rather than the evening techno fun the Picturebook appears bent towards.  For the technology purist the compromise in performance of this undersized notebook may not be considered acceptable — but thankfully there are people out there that prefer using technology for purposes other than comparing benchmarks — and to these the show-and-tell aspect and downright fun features may provide a more than adequate return on investment.