Sony’s juice-hoarding Vaios
Sony’s new Vaio series may look like level-headed characters, but beneath their placid carbon surface there are signs of a dual persona. In addition t
Sony’s new Vaio series may look like level-headed characters, but beneath their placid carbon surface there are signs of a dual persona. In addition to the increasingly common condition known as Intel Core Duo, this show-off has two independent graphics chips.
Rather than resulting in mental collapse and a ticket to the loony asylum, the SZ-Series’ circuitry renders it something of a laptop marathon runner: battery life is an impressive six hours. The trick is the laptops’ ability to switch between a low power Intel graphics chip for day-to-day jobs such as surfing the Stuff site and an NVidia GeForce Go 7400 for power-intensive games like Prince of Persia.
Naturally, such mental prowess has resulted in paranoia in the six laptops. All of them have biometric fingerprint recognition, Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) which guard against hackers accessing your passwords – unless you use ‘god’ for everything – and impact protection for the hard disk.
Such self-protection is justified, though, when you consider the rest of the specs: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, dual-layer DVD burner, integrated webcam and a new slimmer 13.3in display with anti-sunlight X-black tech.
The notebooks are available with 80GB, 100GB or 120GB hard-drives with prices starting at £1300. They’re not out, though, until mid-March so keep an eye on Sony’s store for availability.
The Samsung laptops with two brains
