Of course it had to happen sooner or later, but we're a little taken aback that someone at Sony had the temerity to slice open a newborn Vaio TT and put it on display -- in a booth at CEATEC, no less -- for the whole world to see. Righteous indignation aside, the thing is pretty impressive, especially considering that without the Blu-ray drive it would only be about half the size. We have one more pic for you after the break, and be sure to check out our look inside the Z series while you're at it.

[Via Sony Insider]

Sony's 18.4-inch Type A VAIO laptop was already impressive enough when it made its debut in Japan earlier this month, but it looks like the slightly revised VAIO AW just announced for the UK has now taken things one step further. Of course, there's not much room to upgrade that 1,920 x 1,080 18.4-inch display, but you can expect to get a slightly speedier T9600 Core 2 Duo processor and, most notably, a 128GB SSD drive that's joined by a 500GB SATA drive in a RAID arrary, something Sony describes as a "world's first." Also, it looks like prices for this monster actually start at a fairly reasonable £999 (or just over $1,700), but you can pretty safely bet that any "world's first" features will demand a hefty premium.

As should be clear by now, any talk of a successor to a still relatively new game console should be taken with a hefty grain of salt but, if word from Japan's Impress is to be believed, it looks like we could possibly be getting a clearer indication of what might be under the PlayStation 4's non-existent hood. Apparently, unlike the massive shift from the PS2 to PS3, the eventually PS4 will be a decidedly smaller leap, with it relying on a slightly speedier (and, likely, 45nm) Cell processor but not a completely new architecture. That would let Sony keep the cost down considerably while also easing development for the console since, by then, developers should finally have a handle on the PS3's hardware. To further cut costs, Sony is also said to be considering a switch from the speedy Rambus XDR memory to more traditional DDR3 memory, which could apparently be tied directly to the processor to cut down on latency. Or the PS4 could be powered by a pink slime that feeds on negative energy, you never know.

[Via Electronista]