What a monstrosity: The Sony Vaio VGX-TP1
It looks like a Mini Mac and a cake box of CD's mated one night and made this?thing/abomination
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http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...llivingsystemx
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Vinea
Product Description
Light up your living room with the power and panache of the remarkable VAIO® TP1 Living Room PC. Boasting an innovative design, this spherical, elegant PC delicately incorporates personal computing into your living space through a single HDMI™ cable. Easy to use and setup, the TP1 PC is packed with the latest hardware technology including an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor, Windows Vista™ Home Premium operating system and a massive 300GB4 hard drive. Enjoy your favorite live and recorded TV and movies or surf the web190 from your couch with the immersive Windows® Media Center experience that lets you navigate your content on screen, all controlled by a matching keyboard and remote control.
Does Sony know what "spherical" means? -- I think you mean cylindrical.
I honestly don't think this looks too bad. It would have been a little nicer had Sony used a slot-loading media drive, but whatever. Other than the obvious look, this is what the Mac Mini should be -- come on, Apple, get on it! And no, I don't think that appleTV is good enough! Do you notice that the wireless keyboard has a track-pad? Very good idea.
Does Sony know what "spherical" means? -- I think you mean cylindrical.
I honestly don't think this looks too bad. It would have been a little nicer had Sony used a slot-loading media drive, but whatever. Other than the obvious look, this is what the Mac Mini should be -- come on, Apple, get on it! And no, I don't think that appleTV is good enough! Do you notice that the wireless keyboard has a track-pad? Very good idea.
Except that it costs $1600, which means it's competing with the iMac at the price point.
It would be great if Apple could hit those specs at $600, but that's not going to happen. I do wish they'd make the damn thing slightly larger so they could use full size parts and get better performance at their price point.
The "must be smaller even it impacts performance and price" thing with the Mini is far and away my biggest gripe with Apple's line-up at the moment.
The iMac has an excuse, at least, and the lack of a mid-size tower is an obvious hole that can be debated one way or the other (not going there! not going there!), but the Mini is just dumb.
Has anyone calculated how much bigger it would have to be to accommodate a proper HDD and possibly a video card?
Except that it costs $1600, which means it's competing with the iMac at the price point.
I don't like the design much but I have to say that in some areas, Sony's designs top Apple's. I saw this in a store recently:
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...y=VD+LA+Series
If that doesn't show, google for the vaio LGC-LA1. It doesn't look that great in pictures but up close, it makes the iMac look very cheaply made. I think they are around the same price as the iMac too. No chin and no white plastic.
I don't like the design much but I have to say that in some areas, Sony's designs top Apple's. I saw this in a store recently:
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...y=VD+LA+Series
If that doesn't show, google for the vaio LGC-LA1. It doesn't look that great in pictures but up close, it makes the iMac look very cheaply made. I think they are around the same price as the iMac too. No chin and no white plastic.
Sony does great industrial design of the "professional" look, unfortunately their quality control and commitment to usability are lacking.
Personally, I don't think the iMac looks particularly "cheap" just because it's made of plastic; and even if it did I would prefer the lack of insane elaboration that Sony is prone to.
I think they are really just run by their engineers, who never saw a "feature" they didn't like.
I don't like the design much but I have to say that in some areas, Sony's designs top Apple's. I saw this in a store recently:
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...y=VD+LA+Series
That one's not bad. I think that the iMac looks a bit more refined, however. The Sony has a few elements that just make it look like some lab-creation of Dr. Frankenstein: take one of our LCDs, a web-camera, and in-lay them together in a piece of the local hockey rink's plexiglass.
To be fair, I thought that Apple's old studio display and iMac G4 designs weren't that great either.
If only it ran OS X...
If it only had a video card better than a 950...
Vinea
If only it ran OS X...
The Mini one or the iMac style one? I was thinking that about the iMac style one myself because given the choice and the fact they are the same price, I'd be inclined to get the Sony one. But one practical advantage the iMac has is it can swivel on its base so plugging stuff in the back isn't as tricky.
Another thing is that I would take Sony's keyboards over Apple's anyday? When will they give up with those pieces of crap?
If that doesn't show, google for the vaio LGC-LA1. It doesn't look that great in pictures but up close, it makes the iMac look very cheaply made. I think they are around the same price as the iMac too. No chin and no white plastic.
The chin is not really a big deal, since it's positioned below the viewing range of anyone taller than 4' 8" / 1.5m. The Sony iMac copycat has extra width and depth in place of the chin. I have an iMac, and I don't think it looks or feels cheap either: it's very solidly built, and the polycarbonate frame is 5mm thick: the industry norm is 3mm.
If anything looks cheap, it's the silver-painted plastic in the Sony. At this point, silver-painted plastic screams Taiwan ODM.