One of the coolest products I got to check out at The Gadget Show Live was Sony’s latest ultra portable notebook, the Vaio P series. The device features an 8 inch widescreen and compact full QWERTY keyboard, and is powered by Intel’s Atom chip. It’s main purpose is accessing the web on-the-go, and other mobile computing, such as email, Skype, IM etc.

If that sounds like a Netbook, it’s because it more or less is, although Sony would rather you didn’t call it one, and this is reflected in a much higher price – up to four times that of a typical Netbook. For the extra dosh you get a bunch of extras, such as a better build quality – metal casing – an increased resolution (1600 x 768), which had my eyes squinting on the 8inch screen, Windows Vista Basic, and one configuration that features up to 128GB of solid state storage (similar to Apple’s Macbook Air) rather than a traditional hard drive.

Video of the Sony Vaio P series from The Gadget Show Live, courtesy of a friendly chap from T3 magazine’s stand, after the jump…