Sony Vaio FW and SR Series: First 16.4-Inch Notebook, MacBook-Style Keyboards

Two series of Vaio Centrino 2 consumer notebooks: FW is the world's first 16.4-inch widescreen notebook, meant to deliver a 17-inch widescreen 16:9 experience in a 15-incher's footprint. (The math sort of works.) It's optimized for HD and Blu-ray playback (though optional) with built-in PS3 and Vaio Home Theater PC streaming. The SR-series notebooks bring some higher-end features down to the consumer level at a decent, with an LED-backlit 13.3-inch widescreen and G-sensor HDD shock protection. Every Vaio notebook (except the BZ biz class laptops) has the new MacBook style-keyboard—though Sony says they did it first, 2003—as well as a crapware manager

SAN DIEGO, July 15, 2008 Sony today unveiled the VAIO® FW notebook—a multimedia PC that displays HD movies the way they were meant to be seen.

Part of a series, the VAIO FW notebook comes in multiple configurations, including a premium and a standard model. The premium model plays Blu-ray Disc™ high-definition content like movies in full 1080 HD resolution when connected to a compatible HDTV. It can also record, store and play back personal content on high-capacity BD media.
Weighing a little over six pounds, the FW notebook features the world’s first 16.4-inch display, which combines the benefits of a slightly larger17-inch widescreen with the smaller “footprint” of a 15.4-inch model.

Evidence mounts for August Eee PC carnage with $299 Dell E launch

Doing with a single E what takes ASUS three, Dell's mini netbook looks to be on track for an August kill sprEee. We've already seen Dell's launch timeline and specs, of course, and this morning we've got the hushed whispers of DigiTimes' "market sources" again claiming that the Compal manufactured Dell 8.9-inchers will launch in August for $299. For that price, assuming everything we've heard so far is correct, you'll get an instant-on Linux distro running atop Intel's 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 1,024 x 600 display, 3x USB, a wee SSD, integrated webcam, WiFi, and more in a 0.82-1.22-inch thick sled weighing about 2.2-pounds.