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Sony VAIO VCC111 Chromebook passes through FCC, Chrome OS flies its flag
Wondering if Chrome OS has a future? Wonder no more. After Samsung and Acer ushered out Chromebooks of their own following Google I/O 2011, it looks as if Sony's planning to usher in one of its own prior to this year's gala. The VAIO VCC111 has just found its way into the FCC's database, signaling that there's only a minimal amount of time before this here machine is cleared for sale on US shelves. So far as we can tell, this is the first significant proof that Sony was (or is) dreaming of involving itself with Google's cloud-centric operating system, with the user guide clearly explaining the boot-up procedure for a "Chrome OS," and the keyboard clearly resembling that seen on the Series 5 from Samsung -- in other words, the Chrome-ified row of hot keys and an omitted Windows key. Judging by the photos, there's also a headphone port, microphone jack, HDMI socket, SD card reader, a pair of USB 2.0 connectors and an 11.6-inch display. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for more; given where it's at, it shouldn't be long before Best Buy's database picks it up.
Sony's budget-friendly VAIO VGN-NR160E laptop gets reviewed
Sony sure got the price right with its new NR Series VAIO laptops, and the folks at Laptop Magazine seem to think the company got quite a bit else right as well, with them bestowing their Editors' Choice award on the VGN-NR160E model. Winning the laptop the most favors is, of course, its $829 price tag, which buys you a 15.4-inch WXGA display, a 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB 5,400 rpm SATA hard drive. They were also especially impressed by the laptop's battery, which lasted 2 hours and 19 minutes in their DVD rundown test and a full 3 hours and 41 minutes during their general productivity test. On the downside, all the "crapware" pre-loaded on the laptop resulted in a drag in performance (removing it boosted the PCMark05 score by 139 points), and they were also somewhat disappointed by the laptop's lack of 802.11n capability. That only proved to be enough to knock a half a star off the five star rating, however, which would seem to make this laptop a fairly solid bet for anyone looking to keep things under the $1,000 mark.
