14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most famous laptop series ever released is Sony's own VAIO line. Its SZ series of mobile computing systems sports now a new family member: the all new Sony VAIO SZ6. The new laptop includes a series of improvements and additions over the older models: "13.3-inch LED back-lit display, hybrid hard drive, carbon fiber casing and a dash of Santa Rosa goodness" according to the news site SpicyGadget.
The SZ6 has an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 processor with a running clock frequency of 2.4GHz that is part of the Santa Rosa mobile platform, so at least from the point of view of the sheer processing power available, it can be considered a "top notch" laptop. But the good surprises do not stop here as the entire laptop weighs only 1.8 kilograms and it is packed in a small form factor. For those users that do not demand the latest and most powerful mobile processors available, there are cheaper VAIO SZ6 models that come with the T7500 or T7250 processors that still pack a lot of power for a smaller price. Unlike the older models from the SZ family that were equipped with the discrete graphics card, Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 (an older card that was beginning to show its age and limited power in the newest 3D applications), the new Sony VAIO SZ6 model comes with Nvidia's GeForce 8400M GS graphics unit. This upgrade was necessary when you consider that rival companies like Dell already released laptops with similar graphics solutions.
Another good point for the SZ6 is the inclusion of a hybrid graphics system, consisting of two separate graphics cards (a discrete and an integrated one), that simply allows the users to switch between the two in order to achieve increased 3D performance or respectively, increased battery life (that can go as high as six hours). Another hybrid approach is the hard disk drive, as the solid state drives as still extremely expensive and severely limited in storage capacity, which consists of a hard disk drive with a capacity of 160GB and a flash based memory of 256MB. The role of the flash memory is to help decrease boot times and to improve applications responsiveness and battery life (as a solid state drive needs only a tiny fraction of the power needed by a traditional hard disk drive).
Other features of the SZ6 include a 13.3 inch display with LED backlight technology, an internal slim DVD burner and Sprint made WiFi and wireless broadband connections alongside both "CMCIA and ExpressCard in the 13.3-inch form factor" according to the site PC210.