Sony's four new VAIO ranges
It’s not surprising that Sony got voted the coolest technology brand around (poor old Sanyo)
– when they come up with a new range of laptops that look this hot, it’s
safe to say they deserve the praise. Three upgraded lines and one new one are out, designed
to appeal to particular groups for the sake of marketing neatness. The
City Executive can look forward to using Sony’s slick little VGN-TX2,
which, at just 1.24kg, is apparently the lightest subnotebook in its
category. It’s got an 11.1-inch X-Black widescreen, backlit with LEDs
and it comes in three colours – black, white and limited edition blue
(which you’ll have to get through Sony Style)
The Digital Home Enthusiast
gets the desktop replacement VGN-A600, designed for multimedia use,
with an 80GB hard disk space. It’s got a 17-inch high-resolution
widescreen display, incorporating dual lamp illumination and X-black
technology. An Entertainment Docking Station provides the A600 with even more multimedia-friendly features, with an S-MASTER
digital amplifier and desktop speakers. There’s also a built-in analogue tuner and
MPEG encoder for watching and recording TV shows.
Apparently, the VGN-FS400 is designed for the "Games Guru" – PC gamers who want something reasonably slim and portable. At 2.9kg, you’re not going to want to lug it about daily, but the magnesium chassis does manage to fit in a Double Layer
DVD+/-RW drive. A 15.4-inch screen, with dual lamp
illumination and X-black technology, is on board, while the top of the range model combines a Pentium M740 processor and an
NVIDIA Ge Force 6400 graphics card with 128MB turbo cache technology, which should see you alright on the gaming front.
Family types get the new FE-Series. It’s got a camera, headset and microphone built in so you can get chatting on Skype and do a spot of video conferencing. It’s got Intel’s latest dual core processor and an NVIDIA
GeForce Go 7400 graphics engine and a 15.4-inch high resolution X-black screen.
The TX2, A600 and FS400 also have an Automatic Luminescence
Sensor, which adjusts the screen brightness to best suit the ambient
light.
