updated VAIO E Series

In early April Sony revealed a new 14-inch laptop computer called Sony VAIO E Series 14P, with the new model Sony hoped to attract consumers interested in a portable multimedia machine with style. With the 14P Sony introduced the AMD Radeon HD 7670M 1GB discrete graphics card, webcam-based gesture controls, and the new wrap-around laptop design.

This week Sony has revealed two more laptops that feature the wrap-around style and AMD Radeon HD 7000 series discrete graphics. The two laptops are members of the Sony VAIO E Series that the 14P is also a member of and their named Sony VAIO E Series 15 (15.5-inch) and Sony VAIO E Series 17 (17.3-inch).

The features

Backlit keyboards will be offered as an option with the new VAIO E Series 15 and 17. Image: Sony

Although the HD webcams built-in to the new VAIO E Series 15 and 17 laptops don’t have gesture controls like those on the E Series 14P notebook, the 15 and 17 have other cool and unique features of their own to boast about.

There is a feature called Rapid Wake + Eco which allows you to hibernate your laptop for up to 10 days in a ultra-low power draw state while still having all your open documents preserved, all you have to do is close the lid to put your laptop to sleep and open the lid again to have it wake-up.

There is also xLOUD and Clear Phase sound technologies built-in to these new VAIO laptops which allow the built-in stereo speakers to hit higher volume levels without sound getting distorted.

With both the VAIO E Series 15 and 17 you can charge devices using the laptops battery. To charge a device it has to have a USB charging cable of it’s own, devices like smartphones and mp3/mp4 players normally have these included out of the box.

A large trackpad with gesture support is included with each VAIO E Series 15 and 17 notebook. The touchpads offer what Sony calls intuitive ‘button-free’ control, which basically means there are no physical right and left click buttons on or around the touchpad to mimic those controls you’ll use special finger gestures.

In the PC features department (CPU, RAM, hard drive etc.) the VAIO E Series 15 and 17 are both going to be equipped with much of the same stuff. The two models detailed by Sony have the same 2.5 GHz (3.10 GHz Turbo Boost) Intel Core i5-2450M dual-core processor, 6GB DDR3 1333MHz memory, and 750GB 5400rpm hard drive. The models only deviate from each other in graphics, the E Series 15 has a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7650M and the E Series 17 has more video memory with it’s 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7650M.

The Sony VAIO E Series 17 will have White or Black color options, the E Series 15 will have those same options as well as Silver.

There are a few more differences between the E Series 15 and 17 models. The E Series 17 has a optical drive built-in that is capable of playing back Blu-ray movies as well as burning DVD’s and CD’s, the E Series 15 is capable of doing the DVD  and CD  end of it. Also the E Series 17 comes with a native resolution of 1600×900 for it’s 17.3-inch LED backlit display, which is higher than the 1366×768 the E Series 15 offers with it’s 15.5-inch LED backlit display.

Prices will also vary –the 17 will be more expensive– but right now Sony isn’t revealing any prices for their two new E Series notebooks. Release dates are also lacking at this juncture, but I would assume these notebooks are on the way to market as I type.

Sony VAIO E Series 15 and 17 specifications:

Model	VAIO SVE1511W1E	VAIO SVE1711V1E
Processor	Intel® Core™ i5-2450M Processor
OS	Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit (with Service Pack 1)
Memory	6GB DDR3 1333MHz SDRAM
Drive	750GB HDD 5400rpm	750GB HDD 5400rpm
Screen	39.5cm (15.5”) VAIO Display (1366×768) with wide (16:9) aspect ratio	43.8cm (17.3”) VAIO Display (1600×900) with wide (16:9) aspect ratio
Graphics	AMD Radeon™ HD 7650M (1GB VRAM)	AMD Radeon™ HD 7650M (2GB VRAM)
Optical drive	DVD±RW/±R DL/RAM	Blu-ray Disc™ combo player
Others	WLAN 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth® Ver. 4.0 + HS; USB 2.0 (x3), USB 3.0 with USB charge (x1); HDMI out; stereo speakers with xLOUD™ and Clear Phase™; HD Web Camera powered by ‘Exmor for PC’ (1.31 megapixels); Web, VAIO and Assist buttons; backlit keyboard; touchpad with gesture support, HDD shock protection
Dimensions (DxHxW)	Approx. 253.5 x 25.3-35.1 x 371.9 mm	Approx. 278.0 x 27.1-37.8 x 408.7 mm
Weight	Approx. 2.7kg (with standard supplied battery)	Approx. 3.2kg (with standard supplied battery)

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MSI's Z77A-GD80 Ivy Bridge

It's been a fairly busy day for the TweakTown Taipei team with a visit to GEIL and then we headed on over to MSI who were nearby.

We were shown a few products during our meeting, but the one that stood out to us the most was their upcoming Z77A-GD80 motherboard, which you can get up close and personal with in the video we embedded above. This board supports the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processors which if you have been reading TweakTown this past week, you know quite a bit about now.

 What's probably the most interesting feature of this motherboard is that it comes with a Thunderbolt connector. It's the first time we've seen a Z77 board with Thunderbolt onboard and that's pretty impressive. We have heard rumours around Taipei of more boards including Thunderbolt, but at this stage of the game, MSI is out in front in this department.

The chip onboard to provide the Thunderbolt supported is made by Intel, we're not exactly sure what chip it is, but it's labeled with W138TA17, if that means anything to you. It doesn't have any form of cooling (even passive), so we would assume that the chip doesn't get that hot to warrant it.

We really look forward to checking out Thunderbolt performance on this motherboard especially comparing it against the numbers we get from USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 and eSATA. Stay tuned for that in the weeks ahead!

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