Tiny netbooks, simple video set Sony sailing through CES

It's only the first set of Sony announcements, but the product assortment at Sony's booth preview Wednesday was enough to cap the evening with something approaching nerd-vana, if you like your gadgets colorful and slightly off-kilter.

After a day of mega-announcements that quickly became paint-by-numbers exercises (environmental awareness? check! tiny netbook-looking object? check? response to Flip videocam? check!) Sony was both right on target and curiously off-kilter. Some press folk groused about having to haul out of the Venetian's meeting rooms and over to the actual show floor, but it worked for Sony -- emphasizing that all the podium talk in Vegas isn't one-tenth as interesting as getting your hands on the gear.

Two hands would just about cover the Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC, the notebook the size and shape of the sort of clutch fancy ladies might carry around Vegas nightclubs on the weekend. (Could it be a coincidence that one of the Lifestyle sleeves on display could pass as an evening bag?) Sony fought hard to keep the $900, 1.4-lb, 8" LED screen gadget from leaking to the press, and many of those who'd chased rumors about its existence in the last few months were eager to get their hands on it.

The verdict, in our too-short time with the device? If you can get the chiclet-style keyboard and trackpoint-style pointing device calibrated to your satisfaction, this could be the machine you've been waiting all your life to carry around in a jacket pocket. The fast-start Vaio Media plus interface ensures that you can interact with the thing as a mere entertainment center and yet have a terrific Net-savvy device on hand. It has 802.11 Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity right out of the box, which means that unless you're in a multi-layer Faraday cage odds are you've got net access. We liked the XBRITE-ECO crisp display, though the available resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, and 1600x768) were a bit dismaying for show-weary eyes.

The Sony answer to the super-simple videocamera trend was characteristically offbeat -- and pumpkin-colored. Sony showed two cameras in its new "Webbie" line, designed to expedite the transfer of your precious moments to the ubiquitous YouTubes.

The larger of the two is available as of Wednesday. That gadget, which looks much like what we thought of as "usual" before the Flip came along, has 5X optical zoom (or 20X digital), 1080p HD output (or standard if you like), and a predicted 80 minutes of battery life. That's today's toy; the version on the way in March slims and trims the chassis down to Flip invulnerability levels, moving away from the pop-out screen model on the earlier model. That camera, which also shoots in HD or standard, will offer 4x digital zoom (no optical) and features a swiveling lens and a removable battery -- in time and in condition for summer camp, perhaps. It'll retail for around $179.

Both gadgets are also available in silver or eggplant. Booth staff assured us that the colors were chosen after months of focus groups.

Other items on display reminded observers that Sony is ubiquitous -- for instance, not only owning the Jeopardy! TV brand but manufacturing the monitors and cameras used to to record it. (Alex Trebek is, however, forever his own man, even if he did consent to record an introduction for senior communications VP Rick Clancy. The new set, which debuts at the show, looks nice BTW.)

Sometimes ubiquity leads to peculiarity -- the sign over the living room-sized Sony Pictures kiosk, for instance, that invites visitors to "download your favorite Sony Pictures television shows here" (but not, we suspect, later back at the hotel via BitTorrent).

Sometimes it leads to nostalgia, as it did when a delighted passer-by realized that the elegant CD Boombox for iPod / iPhone has an eject mechanism for the Apple gear that works exactly the way your old cassette deck used to. (Who knew you could be nostalgic about that click-thump sound?)

There were a few misfires: For instance, the ultra-premium QWERTY-slide Xperia X1 phone might be the only object in the Las Vegas Convention Center that's harder to text on than my BlackBerry Pearl. (Your finger size may vary.) And Sony's still the only company making the case for OLED TVs right now. There are good reasons for that.

But every so often, old and new make magic -- and it happened tonight at the Walkman booth. Really, the Walkman booth.

The latest attempt to resurrect the once-ubiquitous name for music players may just have found the right form factor in the NWZ-W202BLK, most easily described as a pair of very intelligent headphones. The 2 GB player is entirely contained in the earbuds, which connect to each other through a rubbery wire... and that's it. You'll load the music via USB, use the "Zappin" button (which operates much as "seek" does on your car radio) to find something you like, and remember why the Walkman used to be synonymous with jogging and other active pursuits.

Elegant, wise design -- and, now that Sony has bowed to the ubiquity of MP3, gear that operates on your home planet. They'll go on sale in spring; pricing is currently not set.

Of course there was an environmental angle; this is 2009 and we are after all comprehensively worried people. Several competitors have announced free-recycling arrangements this week; Sony walked that road last year, as Sony Electronics US president and COO Stan Glasgow noted with only a little smugness. The entrance to the house-sized Sony booth makes the Sony Eco-Innovation claim for longstanding environmental concern, not that other firms aren't making the same case; the stated corporate goal to recycle one pound of waste material for every pound of product shipped, however, is something we're hearing only at Sony. As was the life story of the booth security guard who had a role in Casino, but that's a tale for another time...