Sony VAIO CW notebooks kick off from $799

Sony's final new VAIO announcement this week is the VAIO CW Series, a range of 14-inch 16:9 aspect notebooks available in a series of moderately striking colors.  Chubbier than the VAIO X, certainly, the CW Series uses that extra heft to slide in an optional Blu ray burner together with NVIDIA GeForce GT230M 512MB or GT210M 256MB graphics and both VGA and HDMI ports.

There's also an ExpressCard 34 slot, three USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, a couple of memory card slots, audio in/out and a webcam.  Storage is up to 500GB (there's no SSD option) while RAM is up to 8GB, and you can spec up to a 2.80GHz Intel Centrino 2 CPU.  Color choices include black, blue, white, pink and the rather fetching red shown above.

The whole thing measures 13.44 x 1.09-1.52 x 9.18 inches and weighs 5.3lbs.  The Sony VAIO CW Series is available to preorder now, priced from $799.99, and will begin shipping later in October.

Press Release:

Sony Launches Colorful New Notebooks Featuring Blu-ray Disc Technology and Windows 7 Operating System

VAIO CW Series Boasts Five Bold Colors, BD Technology and Windows 7 OS

Sony today announced the new VAIO® CW Series notebook featuring Microsoft® Windows® 7operating system.

The CW Series notebook features a 14-inch (diagonal) widescreen display with a 16:9 aspect ratio in a thin-and-light chassis. A perfect mix of performance and style, the CW model expresses your personality while letting you enjoy multimedia entertainment in style.

The notebook features an optional Blu-ray Disc™ drive so you can watch movies in stunning high-definition. It also lets you playback HD content on your compatible big screen HDTV, via the unit's incorporated HDMI™ output, for big-screen entertainment. An incorporated NVIDIA® GeForce dedicated graphics card ensures you get the best out of your HD entertainment.

It comes in five eye-catching, high-gloss colors: fiery red, poppy pink, icy white, jet black and indigo purple. The glossy finishes are splashed across the exterior while a gradient color on the palm rest provides the PC with a head-to-toe color coordinated impression.

The notebook offers a fast, easy way to produce your own high-quality home movies and slideshows. Sony's VAIO Movie Story software breaks complex movie production into three simple steps, freeing you from tedious hours spent mastering difficult and expensive video editing software.

The VAIO CW series notebook starts at about $780. It will be available at the end of the month online at www.sonystyle.com/cwseries, Sony Style® stores and at other major retailers around the country.