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Sony finally admits NVIDIA chips are borking its laptops, offers free repair
Last summer, while Dell and HP were busy pinpointing and replacing faulty NVIDIA chips in their notebooks, Sony was adamant that its superior products were unaffected by the dreaded faulty GPU packaging. Well, after extensive support forum chatter about its laptops blanking out, distorting images and showing random characters, the Japanese company has finally relented and admitted that "a small percentage" of its VAIO range is indeed afflicted by the issue. That small percentage comes from the FZ, AR, C, LM and LT model lines, and Sony is offering to repair yours for free within four years of the purchase date, irrespective of warranty status. Kudos go to Sony for (eventually) addressing the problem, but if you're NVIDIA, don't you have to stop calling this a "small distraction" when it keeps tarnishing your reputation a full year after it emerged? [Thanks, Jonas]
Sony's 17-inch VAIO AR with Blu-ray meets Penryn
Check it Blu-ray on-the-go fans. Sony just gave the Penryn bump to their VAIO AR series of media laptops. Sweet, powerful, 2.5GHz of cool running, long lasting, Core 2 Duo T9300 processing and 512MB of NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT graphics now at the heart of this 17-inch, 1,920 x 1,200 resolution lappie. Your $3,300 pre-order should be greeted by a Jan 29th ship date if you're lucky.[Thanks, Zainuddin Z.]
Sony brings late Core 2 Duo love to VAIO F TV and AR
Man, just when we thought everyone who would announce a Core 2 Duo upgrade had announced -- well, almost everyone -- Sony comes along with a bump to their Sony VAIO AR and VAIO F TV. The AR (pictured on the right), you'll likely recall, is their 17-inch, Blu-ray totin' powerhouse with a burly 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 at the heart and terrestrial digital TV tuner now included standard. The F TV, then, is the 15.4-incher with variety of tuner options for terrestrial digital or analog broadcasts and comes maxed-out with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5500, 2GB memory, 160GB disk, dual-layer DVD burner, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and of course the ability to record TV. A well spec'd AR will cost ya ¥400,000 or about $3,436 while the top-end F TV will demand ¥250,000 or about $2,147. On sale in Japan starting October 7th. [Via impress]
Sony announces Vaio AR laptop with Blu-ray
Part two of Sony's minor attempt at viral marketing -- which just brought us the Vaio UX Micro PC -- is Sony's new Vaio AR series of laptops with 17-inch screens and an option for a Blu-ray drive. The specs aren't much of a surprise, with that 17.8-inch 1920 x 1200 display leading the charge, accompanied by a 50GB Blu-ray burner, internal TV tuner, HDMI out, and 256MB GeForce Go 7600GT graphics (check our prior coverage for the rest of the juicy details). The good news is that beyond this $3500 model, there will be a "stripped down" version for $1800 that lacks the Blu-ray and TV tuner, but still does the WMCE thing and houses that ginormous 17-inch display.
