[SINGAPORE, 31 JULY 2008—Consumer electronics firm Sony today announced three new product lines for its VAIO series of notebooks. The three are: the VAIO Z, VAIO SR and VAIO FW. All three series run on Intel’s Centrino 2 processor.

Speaking at the product launch, Hideyuki Furumi, senior general manager, business planning and strategy division, VAIO business group, Sony Corporation, said the company hoped to hit US$10 billion (S$13.57/RM32.66 billion) in sales revenue for its VAIO products by the year 2010.

Targeted at the mobile business user, the VAIO Z range of notebooks aims to optimise battery life through a switch located above the keyboard, which allows for toggling between its two graphics processors—NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS and Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, without rebooting. Users can choose between a full graphics acceleration mode and a maximum battery life mode.

The VAIO Z series weighs in at 1.48 kg and comes with a 13.1 inch LCD display and full-size keyboard.

The SR series, which comes in three colours, black, silver and pink, are targeted at what the company terms “young, style-conscious professionals”. The series comes with a function dubbed “switch”, which allows users to toggle between different operating modes with the press of a button. Selected models in the SR series also come with security functions such as a fingerprint sensor and hard disk drive protection, which secures the disk head upon impact. Sony claims the SR series weights in at less than 2 kg.

For home entertainment
Aimed at the home entertainment user, the FW series is the largest of the lot, boasting a 16.4 inch widescreen LCD display.

Selected models in the FW series come equipped with a Blu-ray disc drive, which allows users to store up to 50 GB of high definition video content on a single Blu-ray disc. High-end models in the FW series come with Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor running at 2.53GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD3470 graphics and Mobile Intel PM45 Express Chipset.

The SR and FW series will be locally available in August, with prices starting from S$2,199 and $2,499 respectively. The Z series is scheduled to be available locally in September; pricing information is currently unavailable