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Design and Ergonomics (Note: the design is identical to the UX180P, and so this section uses some of the same descriptive information from our 180P review). Even after 9 months on the market, the device is still pure eye candy. It's sleek, innovative and incredibly small. It turns heads. The curvy-back with ergonomic grips make it feel really good in hand though it's thick— the thinnest part at the middle measures 1.27" and the hand-grips areas are 1.5". The controls are intuitive and easy to use. Par for the course with Sony, you don't get printed guide that tells you what everything is, but you do get a PDF manual. Use this device for 5 minutes and you've figured out what all the buttons do, and you're enjoying how they lay in just the right places to reach easily and how they improve on the device's overall usability.
What do those controls do? On the left you'll see a larger button up top with a smaller button directly below. These are the left and right click buttons, as on a mouse or trackpad. The textured square control on the top right is your mouse control, similar to the IBM eraser stick (two spare textured covers come with the unit). It's pleasant to use, accurate and responsive. Since the device has a touch screen which responds to the stylus and your finger, the mouse button is a secondary control. Just below the mouse button you'll find zoom buttons which enlarge the on-screen image but don't actually change resolution on the fly (it's a quick-use visual aide only). The power slider is on the side, and it has a hold position so it doesn't accidentally power up in your briefcase or purse. Conversely, you can lock it on so you don't accidentally power it off when watching a movie or listening to MP3s. That said, it's pretty hard to accidentally move the power slider when using the UX. A useful scroll button lives below the right/left click buttons. Hold it down while using the mouse to scroll a page rather than move the cursor. And below that you'll find Sony's launcher button which launches (and dismisses) their Application launcher (more on that later). If you press and hold the launcher button, you'll activate Sony's touch command which allows you to do things using on-screen gestures with the stylus. Alternatively you can turn off gesture commands and use the Windows standard right click feature in its place, You may customize the buttons as you see fit, should you prefer them to do other things. The power jack, docking port, 3.5mm stereo out and mic in jacks are on the bottom, and the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot is on the top. The UX380P's single USB 2.0 port is on the left side (3more ports are on the docking station), and the camera button (launches the camera app and takes shots) is on the top right side. Given its placement and the device's handheld nature, it feels like a traditional shutter button. Both front and back cameras work in Skype which is handy if you want to show your video-conferencing buddy something that you're looking at.
Bottom edge. The Sony UX380P's thumb keyboard is certainly much better than nothing, but we won't claim it's an ergonomic delight. The backlit keyboard has almost no travel and very little tactile feedback. Despite this, I found it fairly easy to type correctly but you don't have the feeling you're getting it right with no feedback. Since the UX is wider than a BlackBerry or Sidekick those with short thumbs or smaller hands may struggle to reach the middle keys. The blue backlighting turns on when you hit a key and remains on for a few seconds after the last key press. It's bright and easy to see in the dark, though the backlight is fainter toward the edges. Despite its small size, the keyboard has a dedicated number row, Control, Alt and Windows Start Menu keys as well as up/down left and right keys (with embedded page up/page down, home and end functions when you press the Fn key). Everything is in its normal place— no swapped period and comma keys, no strangely located tab key. Good. The only thing missing is a right shift key, which is annoying. Soon you'll discover that Sticky Keys (part of the Windows accessibility features) is your best friend. With Sticky Keys on, you don't need to simultaneously hold down the shift (or Alt or Control) keys and a letter key. Press the shift key, then press the letter you desire (very handy for initial caps in a sentence). The Sony has a caps lock key.
Horsepower and Performance We found the UX180P to be very usable with Windows XP, and the UX280P even more so thanks to the memory bump from 512 megs to 1 gig. The UX3xx series got a modest CPU speed increase from the 1.2GHz Core Solo the the 1.33GHz Intel Core Solo U1500. The SSD (solid state drive) in the UX390N offers a small speed boost in some operations and the Windows Experience score for the SSD hard drive is 5.2 vs. 3.7 on the convention hard disk in the UX380. But Vista Business feels a bit slow on the UX3xx series, albeit faster than the OQO model 2. Our fresh UX380N took 1.5 minutes to boot into Vista (to the point where Windows Sidebar loaded and the machine was actually ready for real use), with the UX390N being faster to boot (though it's slower to resume from hibernation than the UX380N). Waking from sleep takes about 20 seconds on the UX380N, not an instant-on PDA but bearable given the computer's full-blown Vista power. Once Vista completely loads, MS Office 2007 runs fine, as do IE, Firefox and other Net and productivity applications. They aren't blazing fast, but they're certainly usable. Photoshop is a bit sluggish, Dreamweaver runs with reasonable speed and some less demanding games run passably though not admirably. Keep in mind this is a palmtop computer and not a 17" desktop replacement though.
The included docking station, front and back. The UX use Intel's 945 chipset (the same chipset used on standard Intel-architecture notebooks), has a gig of DDR2 RAM soldered to its tiny motherboard (the machine can handle 2 gigs max but Sony doesn't offer a UX with this option), and either the 32 gig solid state flash memory drive (on the UX390N) or a 1.8" 40 gig ATA100 conventional hard disk (UX380N). Graphics are handled by Intel's integrated 950GM which uses 224 megs of shared (system) memory (Windows reports 251 megs). Though the UX only manages a 2.0 score for 3D graphics, it gets 3.1 for Aero graphics and so Aero does run just fine. If you plug in an external monitor at 1024 x 768 Aero will continue to run, but up the resolution to 1600 x 1200 or higher and it turns off. Gaming on the UX isn't the challenge we expected. Newer games that aren't hugely demanding in the 3D department actually did better because they support the computer's native resolution which means the stylus works. We tested the Sims 2 and it ran fine, though not blazingly fast and most visual effects were turned down; Quake 2 and Age of Empires II (though you must use 800 x 600 resolution and forego the stylus). The UX380N managed a Windows Experience Score of: Processor: 2.9 We downloaded the latest Intel driver from Intel's web site and the 3D graphics score jumped up to 2.6! Oddly doing the same for our Vaio TX with the same Intel graphics chipset decreased speed, but in the UX's case it's definitely worthwhile. PC Mark 05 results were as follows: pcmarks: 1361 We ran the PC Mark tests with an external monitor connected, since the graphics test require 1024 x 768 resolution. While these numbers aren't up to today's fast dual core machines, they're surprisingly good for a handtop and comparable to 2 to 3 pound ultralight notebooks (other than the integrated graphics, which are a bit lower than average). The 40 gig disk drive has about 15 gigs free as shipped with Windows Vista and bundled full and trial versions of software. That's enough to store required apps, but not enough room for those with extensive iTunes video libraries to go wild. You can store movies and data on Memory Stick Duo cards, and we used a 4 gig SanDisk Ultra II Memory Stick Pro Duo with our UX. This card is fast enough for ReadyBoost, though we didn't get a worthwhile performance gain using it (and resuming from hibernation was slower). Software We used to love software bundles, but these days you get a lot of bloatware. The tiny UX even gets its share of added software and trialware you'll probably want to remove to conserve precious disk space (we gained 5 gigs by removing Norton, MS Works, a variety of software trials and SQL Server 2005 which is used by the Vaio Media Server-- which most won't use on a palmtop computer). That said, if you don't own MS Office and don't intend on buying it, the full version of MS Works 8.5 might come in handy. There's also a 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business Edition, WinDVD (DVD playback software), Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006, Sony's Sonic Stage and Image Converter, a basic edition of QuickBooks, Cingular Connection Manager and more. Networking The well connected UX has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, the AT&T wide area wireless connection and wired 10/100 Ethernet (which requires either the dongle adapter or the dock). It has an integrated Sony Ericsson GSM radio which supports GPRS and EDGE (WAN), The unit has the Intel Pro/Wireless Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG chipset for WiFi 802.11a/b/g, which is a part of Intel's mobile package. It's reliable, comes with good management software and good security support. We found the UX380N had better WiFi range than the UX180P, though the hardware is the same (the software seems to provide more power to the radio when in low signal areas). . Bluetooth behaves well (if such a thing can ever be said) and the Sony uses Toshiba's Bluetooth stack. You can use it with Bluetooth stereo headphones, GPS, mobile phones and PDAs among other things. The built-in EDGE radio supports both EDGE and the slower GPRS standard. It's strictly for data and there's no software for making voice calls. There's a SIM card slot under a tiny hump on the left side, affixed with a single tiny phillips head screw (the door must be closed securely or the Vaio will complain that the SIM door is open). So yes, you could pop your phone's SIM in there, but by the time you take out your phone's battery, remove the SIM, unscrew the door on the Vaio and pop the SIM in there you could've already checked your email with your BlackBerry or Treo. Life is easier if you can leave the SIM in there, should you plan on frequent EDGE network use. Or use your 3G Bluetooth phone as a wireless modem for better speeds (assuming the phone has Bluetooth 2.0, older versions can be a bottleneck-- the Samsung BlackJack would be a good choice). The UX is sold locked to Cingular, but we're told you can still call Sony support to get an unlock code should you wish to use another carrier's SIM card in the Vaio. Cingular's connection manager software is pre-installed and is easy to use (though it's an older version than that currently available on Cingular's web site). The UX has very good reception on Cingular's network and we got around 140k. Do raise the antenna, it gets you two bars more reception. The UX380N comes with a 30 day Cingular trial.
Size comparison: the 17" HP Pavilion dv9000 is on the bottom, then the 11" Sony Vaio TX850 with the UX380N and Moto RAZR on top.
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