Details of what is said to be future VAIO notebooks from Sony have turned up online and if they turn out to be true, we have a couple of rather unusual and intriguing products to look forward to from Sony later this year. Apparently Sony is not only working on a Chrome notebook powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 SoC, but also some kind of hybrid notebook/desktop solution which is said to feature support for Intel’s Thunderbolt interface.
The Google Chrome OS model is interesting in more than one way, as Google’s on Cr-48 notebook is using an Intel Atom CPU, whereas apparently Sony is going for an ARM based Tegra 2 SoC from Nvidia. We’re not sure how demanding Google’s Chrome OS is, but 1GB of RAM seems a bit on the stingy side, but might very well prove to be sufficient. We doubt that this will be upgradable, although this wouldn’t be impossible, just improbable.
For storage Sony has gone with 16GB of eMMC memory which is an embedded type of memory that doesn’t quite offer the performance of an embedded SSD such as the one on offer from SanDisk, mainly due to the different interface used for the Flash memory. Other features include an 11.6-inch display, Wi-Fi of some kind, a regular notebook size keyboard said to be similar to that on Google’s Cr-48 notebook and finally it’s said to feature both a GPS and Bluetooth functionality, but neither will apparently be working from day one. The notebook is said to be weighing in at around 1kg, yet offer up to 8h worth of battery life.
As for the hybrid PC, well, here things get complicated. The notebook part is said to feature an Intel Core i7 CPU, an SSD and Intel’s Thunderbolt technology. This means that it’ll have a mini DisplayPort connector, although it’s also said to have an HDMI port and support for Intel’s second generation WiDi technology. It’s meant to weigh a mere 1.13kg yet offer 8h battery life, although this can be extended to 16.5h presumably via an optical battery solution of some kind.
However, this is said to be only half of the system, so if that wasn’t impressive enough, Sony will be offering an add-on unit which presumably connects via Thunderbolt and is said to feature a Radeon HD 6700M series graphics card with 1GB of memory, a Blu-ray drive, a further HDMI port, a D-sub connector, Ethernet port, USB ports and presumably a mini DisplayPort connector, although oddly enough this isn’t mentioned specifically. This units weighs in at 680g although presumably it’ll be some kind of dock that you’d leave at home most of the time, hence the duplicated ports.
It sure sounds like Sony will have some interesting toys coming later this year, although we’d expect the hybrid PC to be quite expensive while the Chrome OS notebook might be the cheapest notebook yet from Sony.
Source: SonyInsider
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