Otaku Gadgets

Sony — a company that has its fingers in so many pies, it has to have a zillion fingers to do that! They are practically in every consumer and prosumer gadget category you can think of and hence, they too are going to try their hand at defeating Apple in the handheld segment. Not that sony is new to the whole handheld market (hello, PSP!) but this time they are looking at the whole hog.

Continue reading “Sony Girds Its Loins To Take On Apple In A Battle For Relevance (And Adds To A Chaotic Mess)!” »

Nowadays the All-in-one form factor PCs are drawing all the attention in desktop PC segment. Till a few years back Apple used to rule this segment with its cult defining iMac range of desktops. However, the entry of manufacturers like Sony, Dell and HP is now giving Apple a run for its money. Sony has been able to capture a large part of the high end PC segment with its premium VAIO range of laptops and All in one PCs. The new VAIO L117FX All-in-one PC is Sony’s weapon to counter the revamped iMacs that Apple released late this year. The $1999 price tag of the L117FX makes it costlier than both the iMac and the HP TouchSmart 600. However, it offers impressive performance and near perfect multimedia experience for the Windows users.

The design of the VAIO L117Fx is not much different from the previous generation All-in-ones from the stable of Sony. It offers HDMI interface and beats the competition by offering a useful PIP feature with HDMI. However, recording from the HDMI input to the PC’s hard disk is not supported. Since the L117FX is shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium, it supports a set of multi touch functions, a feature that is worth noticeable.

The VAIO L117FX edges ahead of the iMac in features by a decent margin. It can be mounted on a wall and has an inbuilt TV tuner as well. Apple still does not use Blu-Ray drive. However, the price of the iMac is more realistic from a user’s perspective. The fast quad core Intel CPU in the VAIO gives it an edge in gaming and media encoding related tasks but HP and Apple have some models that sport more powerful CPUs. The iMacs take the lead in many applications over the L117FX, though the HP and Dell models lag behind. Though the margin is not much, one should expect stellar all round performance for this sort of price.

For the users who have an ever increasing collection of HD movies and games, the VAIO L117FX is the ideal choice. Its mammoth 1TB hard drive will ensure that the users do not run out of space soon. The presence of 6 GB DDR2 RAM rules out any memory upgrade in the coming years. The 24 inch display is good for watching HD content and the color reproduction is fairly accurate.

The GeForce GT 240M graphics chip used in the VAIO L117 is a robust one and its 1GB memory gives enough juice to run the current generation games with maximum effects enabled at medium resolutions. Apart from the USB ports, this model is equipped with FireWire 400 port and a media card reader. However, no eSATA port is included with this PC. Blu-Ray playback is almost flawless on this model, though the audio is a bit weaker. The audiophiles will want to pair a 5.1 speaker set with this PC to get satisfying audio-visual experience. Sony offers a standard 1 year warranty for this product and the web site offers a lot of useful information on issues like backup and maintenance.

Here we are folks, it is Monday once again and that means going getting out of weekend mode, getting back to work and catching up with the world that has been busy as usual« over the weekend. That is why we bring you this round up every Monday to help you catch up with the most relevant news in consumer technology that has broken over the past few days, with some fun bits thrown in for added taste.

This week we have speculations about HTC making a unique netbook, Vaios coming out in more style than usual, some great iPhone apps and still more. Get over to the other side to get started.

Continue reading “Catch Up Monday: iPhone Nano Worldmode, Knocking Pics, Balloon! It Away And More” »

Sony has launched a slew of new Vaios this week and they rounded up the launching spree with new Vaio CW series notebooks. There was the highly anticipated Vaio X, that caused a bit of disappointment when it finally came out. And then there was the Vaio L that looks like a really good option for those who want a nice little HTPC package that can be their main entertainment machine. Continue to the other side for the full update.

Continue reading “New Sony Vaios: The X, The L And The CWs” »

With the 3^rd quarter of the year drawing to a close, the main gadget makers have been upping the ante it seems. They are releasing, previewing and announcing products right and left. Of the many previews and announcements that have been thus happening of late, these two gadgets really grab the attention for similar yet very different reasons. One’s extra wide and other’s extra thin.

That ‘one’ is a pimped out laptop featuring a chassis whose exterior is made out of carbon fiber. You know that really tough material that gets used in cars and vehicles a lot? Well, it is super light and super strong, to they decided to build a laptop out of it. It is almost half-an-inch thick measuring 0.55inch at the thickest. You can try and imagine how thin the screen is or you can take a peek on the other side for pictures and a video.

And that ‘other’ is a touchscreen mobile phone with one single distinguishing feature – its stretched beyond any mobile phone you have ever seen before. Guaranteed. This phone achieves a 21:9 aspect ratio through what can only be called a very interesting new form factor! Anyway, don’t just sit there. Join me on the other side and marvel at what surely is the first stretch limo of the mobile world.

Continue reading “Pimped Out, Zero-Size Laptop and Stretch Limo Mobile Phone Tease Us to No End” »

Sony is one of those companies that give a lot of attention to the appearance and the details of their laptops. Apple of course leads the industry in this (read Jobs is) but Sony is a good second in the design aspect. From their Vaio series of high-end laptops comes the well-designed and good looking Sony Vaio VGN-NW125J/T.

This laptop is equipped to handle HD content with a 16:9 screen and a 15-inch screen. Sony quality means that the experience is quite good in these regards and the price is also right for the experience that you get. At $800, Sony is probably coming down from the expensive pedestal that Vaios are usually placed on. I mean for a Vaio this size this is downright affordable. The software bundle that comes along with the laptop is also great.

There are some shortcomings as well though. Even through it is light, it has a short battery life. The size might also be a problem for some people. Want to find out how? Read on dear reader.

Continue reading “Sony Vaio VGN-NW125J/T: HD, Thin and Light with a Low Battery Life” »

Sony has been pushing their Blu Ray standard For quite some time now and it was only a matter of time before we started seeing Blu Ray making appearances in their own line of laptops. That time has come and gone. We have been witness to Sony putting out Blu Ray equipped Vaio laptops for quite some time now. The new Sony Vaio NW160J is the latest addition to other Blu Ray equipped Vaio laptops but has one major difference. It is a sub-1k laptop that also has some gaming capabilities.

The NW160J is meant to be a 15-inch multimedia laptop with some above average gaming capabilities. Although it is more expensive than similar competing laptops, it has the potential to fulfill the needs of a highly niche market. For those who want a great built quality in something that it smaller than mammoth 17” laptops, this is the perfect laptop.

Continue reading “Sony Vaio NW160J: 15-inch Blu Ray Laptop Under $1000” »

Sony has recently upped the ante on their new Blu-ray enabled Vaio. The FW480J/T is a brand new incarnation of the FW351J/H – with a better processor, better graphics and generally better everything. That leaves us with just one question – why do companies have such superspy-secret-missile-code type names for their laptops? May be naming them Dorothy and Sue are passé (not to mention sexist) but having an alphanumeric soup is just too confusing, not to mention hard to remember.

Continue reading “Sony Vaio FW480J/T: You Get Blu-Ray But Not 1080p” »