14 DAY TRIAL // Sony just announced the launch of a new series of laptops from the much acclaimed VAIO line of products. These two brand new portable computers are based on the technical specifications of the VAIO FZ190 machine, so they are pretty high end when it comes to the hardware side, but the external ''artwork'' that is proudly displayed on the top lids may drive off most customers.
The two available designs are called ''Grow'' and ''Never Stop'' and they were commissioned to the New York based graphics artist Maya Hayuk which did a really good job, developing two designs that can be easily fit into the ''weird'', ''funky'' and ''Oh, my God!'' categories.
On the inside, the two new Sony VAIO portable computers are based on the Intel mobile computing platform and both of them are equipped with Core 2 Duo T7300 central processing units that are running at a clock frequency of 2GHz and use 4MB of L2 cache memory that implements Intel's Advanced Smart Cache technology. Typically for most Intel based laptops, these too use the 800MHz frontside bus speed and their motherboards are centered around the 965GM chipset.
On the display department, the two new Sony VAIO Graphic Splash Maya Hayuk Edition machines are coming with 15.4 inch widescreen LCD displays that are using the XBRITE-HiColor technology which are backed up by the presence of dedicated graphics cards made by Nvidia and based on the GeForce 8400 GT GPU and the total available graphics memory as reported by Microsoft Windows Vista may go as high as 1023MB. Remaining on the multimedia side, the new Sony machines are also equipped with the proprietary Sony Sound Reality and integrated Web enabled cameras and microphones are available too.
Random access memory is one of the sweetest points of the Sony laptops and these two also come with a standard amount of 2GB of DDR2 RAM running at 667MHz which can be further upgraded until the 4GB is reached. A 200GB hard disk drive that uses the fast Serial ATA interface and has 4200rpm is also part of the standard makeup, just like the integrated memory card reader, Express Card slot and high speed three USB ports.
Coming with an optical disc drive that has Blu-ray support and can read and write just around any type of medium is also a good point for the new Sony VAIO laptops as well as the presence of the integrated Bluetooth adapter and the Intel made wireless networking interface which is compatible with the 802.11a/b/g/n standard. According to the news site notebookreview these two laptops will hit the market with a retail price tag of around $2,500.