Sony Vaio YB powered by AMD's Zacate

While the rest of the tech community has been focused on tablets, what I have waiting for are the release of the new AMD Fusion powered laptops. These AMD Fusion powered laptops promise netbook prices while offering laptop functionality. A little more relevant to the Philippines situation than the less versatile tablet platform. 

Last month, we saw the release of the 10-inch Acer Aspire One 522 powered by the lower powered "Ontario" and the "Zacate" in the 14-inch eMachine's eMD644. Both these laptops are priced at Php20,000 or less. We did not pay much attention to the eMachine's eMD644, well because we have not been paying attention to laptops weighing more than 4 pounds lately. So we paid little notice to the eMachines Zacate and eagerly awaited the arrival of the Lenovo x120e, which we expected to be the first ultraportable Zacate to hit the local market.

We were surprised to find that the Sony Vaio YB, powered by the AMD Fusion Zacate APU had quietly landed on Philippine shores. 

The Sony Vaio YB has a 11.6-inch high-resolution 1366 x 768 pixel resolution screen and AMD Dual-Core Processor E-350 with AMD Radeo HD 6310 Discrete-Class Graphics. This APU is good enough for a fair amount of 3D gaming as well as 1080p video playback. And yes, it has HDMI out. It comes with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB SATA hard drive.

It is a nice and compact unit weighing at 3.2 pounds and is 1.25 inches at the thickest point. Windows 7 Starter (32-bit) is preloaded. We are not sure how many cells the bundled battery has, but feedback from a user reports that it is good for 4 hours of surfing on WiFi.

Price is a bit high at Php29,999, but Sony's do for a bit of a price premium, and that is on 12-months deferred payment. You can probably negotiate for 2K or 3K off if you get it for cash. The Sony Vaio YB  is available in three colors: Silver, Green and Pink. This is something really worth looking at if you are in the market for an ultraportable.