Sony's VAIO P super-tiny ultra-portable was announced yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to much fanfare and hype, and we were quick to get our hands, eyes, and camera lenses all over it on the show floor after the press conference. Amid a swarm of eager journalists, we pushed our way to the front and did some experimenting. Thinking about pre-ordering one? Read on to make sure it's for you, and take a gander at our product page if it's specs you're after.

We first noticed its size and weight. It was only eight inches deep and 11 inches wide, and we're told it weighed 1.4 pounds. It felt like a thin stack of paper in our hands.

We were also surprised to find that it ran the Windows Vista operating system; for the most part the VAIO P is similar to a netbook, but most netbooks use Windows XP or Linux, which need less memory to run well. With 2 GB of memory, though, the VAIO P stands up to mainstream laptops. The processor was a bit slow though: a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom CPU. It also had integrated Intel graphics, so don't expect to play any 3D games on it. We loaded a few demanding websites and desktop applications (since that's the most you'd likely attempt with a laptop like this, anyway) and weren't impressed with the performance at all. The RAM kept it from getting to bogged down with multiple browser tabs open, but the extreme-low-end processor ensured slow load times for everything. You wouldn't expect blazing fast performance on a machine this small, though.

The VAIO P didn't have a touchpad. Instead, it had a trackpoint — one of those little nubs in the center of a keyboard that you push lightly to move the mouse. It wasn't the easiest-to-use input device in the world, but it was functional. You can plug in a USB mouse if you don't like it, but you'll likely feel like the mouse is dwarfing the laptop.

The most striking thing about the design actually wasn't the size, weight, or software. It was the screen, which was much wider than even 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio displays. This unusual form grabbed our attention. It was very sharp. We weren't sure what practical purpose the ultra-wide screen served, though. At 1,600 x 768 pixels, the resolution was very high for such a small screen, but Sony could have squeezed these pixels into any shape. And since so many pixels were crammed into such a tiny screen, we had to strain our eyes to read text and follow the cursor; that was our biggest problem with the machine.

It obviously didn't play any part in our hands-on experience, but price is the other downside. Starting at $900, it's at least double the cost of other netbooks. But with 2 GB of RAM, Windows Vista Home Basic, and the high resolution screen (if you can use it without tiring your eyes), it's arguably worth it. It certainly wins points for style; we couldn't take our eyes off it. In a conversation with a Sony rep, we were told that the company is trying to employ this strategy in many of its new products, hence the new Sony Style website. He also told us that the VAIO P's built-in webcam will be turned on in stores, where it will record peoples' first reactions to the device and upload them to the web. The emphasis is on the experience, not the specs.