Since its first foray into the personal computing sector in the early ninety’s, electronics industry giant Sony has earned a reputation of producing the most reliable and usable Intel based PCs on the market.
From the start, Sony has prided itself on the integration of data and multimedia in a package that brings them together in a cohesive, and elegant, whole. The new Sony Vaio EB series laptop appears to carry the banner forward. It’s sleek form factor of 14 X 9 X 1 houses an Intel Core i3 standard with an i5 (up to 3.3 GHz) as an option, up to 8Gb of DDR3 SDRAM, a 640Gb SATA hard disk drive, and a BlueRay/ DVD-RW/ CD-RW drive standard, all for under 6 lbs. with battery.
The first thing the user will notice are the graphics. While that may be obvious, not all computer displays are that notable, particularly on laptops. The Vaio EB, however, offers a full 1080P HD backlit LCD display with both VGA and HDMI outputs that take full advantage of up to 1GB of dedicated video memory. These features alone would qualify it as a robust home media system, but Sony ups the ante with an ATI Mobility Radeon graphics package, a BlueRay/ DVD-RW/ CD-RW drive and a feature called “Playstation Anywhere” that allows you to connect remotely to Sony’s ubiquitous gaming console. Throw high def audio and Sony’s own Motion Eye web cam in and you may start wondering why you still have all those stand alone components gathering dust on the shelf under the big-screen.
Battery life for such a powerhouse media machine was somewhat better than expected at two and a half hours under DVD load, and more than three in standard operation.
The Vaio EB also provided more than enough ports and plugs to keep anyone connected and happy with three USB 2.2 slots, one USB/eSATA combo slot, HDMI and VGA outputs, RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and an SD and MemoryStick slot.
Needless to say, the Sony Vaio EB Series is going on the list – in all six available colors (including pink!).
