Exploding Dell laptops get all the press, but that doesn't mean other honest, hardworking laptops can't get their 15-minutes of fame if they play their pyrotechnics right. And who better than Sony to produce an exploding Vaio featuring one of their very own infamous power cells? Today's story comes from Shawnee, Kansas where firefighters were called after the Vaio burst into flames twice. The first incident, which happened while the computer was idly charging, was quickly snuffed by its owner's fire extinguisher, but after the laptop burst into flames a second time a few minutes later, the fire department was called in. By the time the firefighters arrived they found the persistent Vaio on the driveway out front, fully contained by the fire extinguisher and its soul already ascending up to laptop heaven. So what's it going to be Dell, are you going to sit back and let Sony beat you at your own game, or do you have a triple explosion planned to take back the crown?

[Thanks, Jason Taylor]

We already saw an official Sony preview of the VAIO R series desktops last month. Now in addition to announcing their AR laptop and UX micro, Sony completes the hat trick by coming clean with full specs on their Type R desktops. At the top of the heep is the RC72 Blu-ray spinnin' model which maxes out with Intel's top of the line 3.6GHz Pentium D960 processor, up to 3GB of DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT graphics with 256MB of VRAM, either a 20-inch DVI-D (HDCP) 1680 x 1050 display or 23-inch 1920 x 1200 DVI-D sans HDCP display, and 2 freakin' TB (4 x 500 giggers) of SATA disk to record television from the included terrestrial analog or digital hi-vision tuners. At the moment, these are announced in Japan only but we're sure a US press release of the similarly spec'd VAIO RC300 series with NTSC/ATSC tuners is just around the corner. Don't worry, we have time since these won't be dropping for Nippon until about mid-June.

[Via Akihabara News]

We've already heard of Sony's plans to pack a Blu-ray drive into one of their Vaio notebooks by the middle of the year, and that looks to be coming to fruition with this new AR11S 17-incher. A tipster gave us this ad clipping from the UK, and the details look pretty solid, as does the laptop's design -- if only a little bulky, which we suppose is to be expected. From this ad and from looking around a bit, the laptop looks like it will have a 2GHz Core Duo processor, dual 200GB HDDs, a TV tuner, 1920 x 1080 WUXGA 17-inch LCD, NVIDIA's GeForce Go GT 7600 256MB graphics, Bluetooth, WiFi, dual S-Video out, and Windows Media center. We're not quite sure why the ad lists the laptop as "Full HD (1080i)" when the LCD is capable of 1080p, and after Sony has so clearly stated that "True HD," at least, is 1080p. The bigger story, literally, is that the laptop will weigh in at a hefty 8.4 pounds, and cost an even heftier chunk of change: $3732. It's UK bound for now, but crazy price or not, we hope it makes it over to the US by mid June if only as a reminder of the incredible bargain that is the PS3.

[Thanks, Gaurav]