Event Coverage

A VAIO to Lust For: Sony VAIO Spring Launch!

By Aloysius Low - 4 Feb 2010

The New Sony VAIO Spring Collection

The New Sony VAIO Spring Collection

Sony notebooks have always commanded a premium for good reasons such as great design among other traits. Its latest refresh to its notebook lineup looks to maintain that edge as it packs in the design quality that we've come to love about their series. The spring launch introduces a new VAIO E series that's all pretty with several color options, though we only spotted the White, Black and Pink designs at the event. While these three colors are available immediately, Sony may bring in the other colors depending on demand, but don't hold your breath for them.

Ms Hiroko Okada of Sony's Product Communication Group introducing the new VAIO E and VAIO Z models to the audience at the launch. She also explained the new design philosophy of the notebooks that's now standardized across the range. Expect to see a palm rest, the usual cylinder hinge and chiclet keyboards on the notebooks.
The VAIO E sports Intel's Core i3-330 (2.13GHz) processor, pretty colors and VAIO Assist functionality. Price to be confirmed.

Besides the newly minted VAIO E notebooks, the usual platform refreshes took place among the other Sony notebooks as Intel recently updated its desktop and mobile platform offerings. Among the top of our "I lust" list has to be the new Sony VAIO Z. When we first reviewed the first generation two years ago in 2008, we were impressed enough to hand it our Editor's Choice award, and the refresh packs even more punch in the form of an Intel Core i7-620M, though bear in mind that's a dual-core Intel Core i7, and not the quad-core versions. That said, the notebook sports a quad in the form of its four SSD drives in RAID 0 mode that should deliver blazing fast performance, and we can't wait to get our hands on one.

The VAIO Z is a machine to lust over, and we aren't kidding. The quad SSD drives in RAID 0 can transfer a 1GB file in 4 seconds compared to the 24 seconds on a normal HDD. It also sports an auto-switchable graphics option and backlit keyboard. Price to be confirmed, but expect it to be expensive as usual.

 S$3499.

The Sony VAIO S will either sport an Intel Core i3-330M (2.13GHz) processor, or an Intel Core i5-520 (2.40GHz) processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 310 discrete graphics and a price tag of either S$1999 or S$2299.

The Sony VAIO W netbooks have gotten a platform upgrade and will join the ranks of notebooks sporting the new Intel Atom N450 (Pineview). Some models will even come packed with a WWAN module. There are now four colors to choose from, and there's also a green eco-friendly model. Prices will range from S$899 to S$1099.

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