Sony Vaio P Rip-off emerges

By: Pallab Jyotee Hazarika

This Vaio P clone is slightly bigger with a better-looking keyboard

  Shenzhen again surfaces with another popular netbook model rip-off, but this time it doesnot have to be a poor rip-off. Rui Iridium Star Digital unveiled a netbook that looks an awful like the Sony Vaio P, only it has (thankfully) larger keyboard. It also has a black and white shade unlike the Vaio P, and this particular shade of black keys on top of a white board looks very appealing. The display panel is black only though. Folks at shaizhaiben.com have got a prototype to play with they got pretty impressed as well. This netbook resembles a Sony Vaio P, except bigger and therefore a more spacious keyboard.  It’s powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, and sports a 10” 1024 × 600 display, GMA950 Graphics, 1GB RAM, 0.3 MP webcam, 160GB HDD, Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n). The 3-cell battery should give only an average life. But it weighs pretty decent at 1.16kg (battery included) and measuring 288 × 151 × 31mm.

The original Vaio P sports an 8” display and with LED backlight with a resolution of 1.600 x 768 pixels. The included processor is the Intel Atom CPU with 1.33 GHz and 2 GB RAM are built in too. The notebooks mass storage device is a common hard drive with a capacity of 60 GB, but it is also possible to order a 128 GB solid state drive.

This was not the first time the Vaio P is cloned. Recently Gemsta showed off a red Vaio P at the NBFF 2009 (The China (Shenzhen) International Netbook Industry Fair & Forum). This piece features an Intel Atom Z515/Z520/Z530 processor, Intel Poulsbo US15W chipset, 1GB RAM, 16GB/32GB/64GB SSD for storage, HD Audio with stereo output and also an 1.3MP Webcam.