14 DAY TRIAL // We've already talked about Sony's AMD Fusion-powered YB series notebooks a while ago and it's now time to take a look at one of its closest relatives, namely the YA series portable computing systems, featuring Intel hardware.
The reason why we've decided to tackle this topic is that, according to a report by NotebookItalia, the new YA series of notebooks has started popping up on quite a few of Sony's local European sites, including here the German, Spanish and French ones, which means that the rest of Europe should wait for it to arrive in the near future as well.
So, as mentioned earlier, while the YB Vaio notebook series was built on AMD's Fusion platform, the new YA family relies instead on an Intel Core i3-380UM CPU (ultra-mobile, low-voltage), pertaining to the Nehalem family (Calpella platform) and running at 1333 Mhz.
However, it's interesting to note that Sony's actually offering some interesting updates in the field of CPUs for the YA series, topping with an Intel Core i5-470UM unit (that, of course, comes at an extra price, of around 99 Euro).
Moreover, the device also packs 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard-disk drive (that can be exchanged for HDDs up to 500GB or SSDs in 128GB or 256GB versions), accompanied by an 11.6-inch display, all of which are packed in a magnesium-alloy chassis.
Additionally, the device also sports a 6-cell battery, capable of delivering around 6 hours of functioning time, but, of course, Sony's also offering users some much more impressive power pack versions, the level of autonomy offered by the Vaio YB reaching a maximum of 12 hours, with the appropriate battery pack.
The base price for the Sony Vaio YA series of notebooks has been set at around 650 US dollars, but from the looks of it, if you're gunning for a more serious portable configuration, you'll most likely have to cough up twice this sum.