Sony VAIO Hybrid with GPU dock and Chrome OS Tegra 2 ultraportable tipped

Sony is believed to be readying two new notebooks, including a VAIO Hybrid PC with an intelligent docking station, and a Chrome OS VAIO based on NVIDIA's Tegra 2. According to Sony Insider's sources, the VAIO Hybrid PC will, on its own, be a relatively thin Core i7 machine complete with Intel WiDi, SSD storage, HDMI and a 1.13kg weight, along with Intel Thunderbolt just like Apple's new MacBook Pro.

Battery life from the ultraportable is expected to be 8 to 16.5 hours, helped by the absence of an onboard optical drive. However, when you're back at your desk, the docking section will have an AMD Whistler-XT 1GB GPU, Blu-ray burner, HDMI and VGA outputs, ethernet and USB ports, in a unit weighing around 0.68kg (so you could, feasibly, carry it around with you as well).

As for the Chrome OS machine, that will have an 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 display, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage courtesy of a memory card. It will run NVIDIA's Tegra 2 processor and have WWAN and WiFi from the outset, with Bluetooth and GPS enabled later in its lifespan. Dimensions are 298 x 215 x 19.9 mm and the ultraportable tips the scales at around 1kg. OS is a combination of Google's web-centric platform and some custom VAIO software, and the launch is tipped for summer 2011.