After Sony's unorthodox VAIO P, did you really expect the outfit's first "real netbook" to burn the house down? With Microsoft's inane hardware restrictions still firmly in place on Windows XP-based netbooks, there's only so much differentiating Sony can do, and evidently those subtle tweaks didn't exactly justify the higher-than-average $499 price tag. Computer Shopper managed to give the unit a spin a few weeks prior to its US release, and while it definitely appreciated the 1,366 x 768 resolution display, the
