Sony Launches New Vaio P Netbook With Windows XP Inside

Japanese manufacturer Sony has announced a refresh of its netbook killer device, the Vaio P, with a new version called the P50 which comes with Windows XP Home SP3 instead of Windows Vista.

Available in Japan as from June 6th, the netbook will be available in apple green, gold champagne, white and pinkish-red for as little as $895. No words as to a distribution calendar in other territories.

The P50 comes with an Atom Z520 CPU running at 1.33GHz, 1GB RAM, a 80GB spinning hard disk drive, a 8-inch screen capable of displaying 1600x768 pixels (ed: who the hell will use this resolution?) complete with Bluetooth, WiFi, 3.5G compatibility, SD card reader and 2 USB slots.

The memory is apparently not upgradable but you can swap the CPU for a beefier 2GHz model and replace the hard disk drive with a 256GB SSD one. The laptop's WAN will also work during instant-on mode, courtesy of Sony's XMB interface.

In other Sony-related netbook news, users will now be able to configure a Sony Vaio P ultra portable laptop (a netbook by any other names) with a CPU running at up to 2GHz and 256GB SSD. The onboard memory still remains at 2GB and it will still use Intel's GMA500 (no nVidia ION).

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