Sony, once the king of electronics which recently announced that it would lay off 2,000 employees by the end of this year, has unveiled the VAIO tablet PC with a 20-inch screen, weighing in at a bone breaking 11 pounds. The “mobile desktop” to use the term lightly employs Windows 8, although the fact that it contains only two hours of battery power puts an extreme limit on its portability.
Advertised as a computer for the whole family to use, the base model is priced at almost $900 which is big money when compared to smaller tablets like Apple’s$399 iPad 2 (and soon to be $399 iPad 3) along with the yet to be proven Microsoft’s$499 Surface Tablet.
Sony isn’t using the VAIO tablet to compete in the crowded tablet market; they’re trying to create a new market. This unconventional move also lies in stark contrast to Google’s slender, 10-inch tablet to be announced at its Android event later this month.
At such a high price and weak in functionality, it seems unlikely that Sony will be able to market the monstrous tabletop PC as a legitimate alternative to a desktop system. At a certain point, bigger just isn’t better, its just bigger. Sony should gave made the tablet a shade of green and used the moniker “Green Giant”.