Sony's intros Vaio V and RA hi-def desktops
We can't say we're really all that surprised after the R-series and the stylie X-series hit, but Sony's already working the high-end consumer hi-def editing/DVR workstation angle and the HTPC side of things, check it:
The Vaio V (pictured) will be an all-in-one 20 or 17-incher running around $2,600 backbreaking dollars for the larger,
$2,000 for the littler guy. No word on whether the V runs HD (with its WXGA display it could run 768p natively), but really, we can only see this thing being a big hit with Sony fanboys or totally cramped New Yorkers (did we just describe ourselves twice?). Especially since for all that dough you're just getting a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, 512MB
of RAM, and a DVD burner, but hey, it's already out, ya'll. Click to read on.
Their RA series updates the R, and is aimed dead at the home hi-def power user, and will run XP MCE (which, as you may remember, does HD now), have PCI Express, four Serial ATA ports, dual hard drives, dual-layer DVD burner, and largely liquid-cooled system internals (what, don?t act surprised, it was bound to happen sooner or later). It will hit somewhere between the $2,000 and $2,500 mark. It?ll be available, uh, this year, but you?re probably a little more interested in the slightly lower-level RB series, another HTPC machine that?s slightly simplier (uglier?) with reduced specs, yet it starts at $900.