I mean to publish this a while ago, but I never got around to taking the photos I felt would do the VAIO P justice. Anyway…

Wednesday morning. The alarm goes off at 9AM. I wake up groggily andtake out the bacon sandwich I had bought the previous afternoon. I put on some water to boil and stuff the sandwich into the toaster oven. It’s really too early to be awake…I had gone to bed at 3AM the previous night. Soon enough my sandwich was hot and I had a cup of coffee. I checked my daily blogs and my Google front page and all. Brushed my teeth, and I looked outside. The FedEx truck was here!!! I waited outside for him to deliver my much anticipated toy.

Meet my Sony VAIO P. It’s the VGN-P530H, or the vanilla HDD model. Unfortunately, NewEgg didn’t have the SSD version. It’s been two days since I’ve had it, and I must say I’m very pleased with my choice. I’d have to be: NewEgg won’t accept returns on laptops.

Here’s the thing. You know how men have a wall full of tools in the garage? The socket wrench, the pipe wrench, the ball peen hammer, the claw hammer, the hacksaw, the wallboard saw, the list goes on. And some people may look at that pegboard and wonder, what the heck does one man need all these tools for?Each tool has a purpose. Each tool is designed for a specific task, engineered to perform that well. And that’s what the VAIO P is like. It’s not a jack-of-all-trades. This is not something you buy if you want to edit videos or play games. Rather, this is something that is very well suited to a very specific group of tasks.The VAIO P is perfect for myneeds.Taking a realistic look at my usage patterns, I noticed that the only time I used my MacBook was really during the one and a quarter hour break I have between classes. During this break, I spent 90% of my time browsing the Internet, going on forums and whatnot. I was never much of a YouTuber, so streaming video didn’t even come into play. I’d also very occasionally pop open my screenplay and do a little work on it.

So all I really needed was a nice piece of equipment with a very usable keyboard. The fact that the VAIO P had a trackpoint was even better: I always preferred the pointing stick over a trackpad. The super light, super small form factor makes it easy to take with me anywhere. It takes up less space than any other netbook out there, so that means I can carry more books (or anything else for that matter) with me if I were so inclined.

In terms of speed, yes, it is a touch on the sluggish side. But frankly, if I’m just using Firefox, I almost never feel it. Boot up times don’t matter to me: I boot it up before I leave and just put it on standby. As for the small text issue, I just bump it up manually in Firefox by setting the minimum font size to 14, but am still experimenting with that.

I’d highly recommend this to anybody who has to do light computing on the go. Weighing in at a mere 1.5 ounces, weight and size is no longer an issue when deciding whether or not to bring a laptop. I love the VAIO P. The very usable keyboard, the pointing stick, and the form factor wins me over. I’m certainly not going to be cheating on this one: I’m going steady this time.