Sony VAIO News from the Sony Open House

Sony is currently holding their annual Open House event in Las Vegas. This is an event where every single product Sony sells is on display, from baby monitors to Bravia TVs to turntables. Though there's little in the way new in regards to notebooks, there are a couple of interesting tidbits Sony announced.

Sony VAIO FZ Splash Edition notebooks

Sony is of course big into the personalization aspect of notebooks and are continually pumping out new lid designs for their various VAIO models. The 15.4" screen Core 2 Duo powered VAIO FZ is the latest to get the fashion spruce up, with the Graphic Splash Expression Collection. Now available is the Victorian lace, flora and leaf design. Check out the pictures of these laptops lined up below:

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I must say that the pink version with lace design looks like it maybe belongs in Victoria's Secret, it would match some of their lingerie collection lineup well. You can further customize these notebooks with different fonts such as Bradley Hand, Copperplate and Synchro. The notebooks Sony had on display did not have such customizations, but you can visit the landing page for the Expression Collection to see these options and buy the VAIO FZ.

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The VAIO FZ Express Collection is a limited edition with only 1200 to be sold.

Trialware Free VAIO notebooks coming soon

Sony also mentioned to those in attendance that in the next couple of months they will start offering VAIO notebooks online with no trialware installed. We of course all know that manufacturers make money by installing trial editions of software on PCs in hopes that customers will subscribe to the full editions of the software and get a kickback from the software maker. This is annoying to most of us because it takes up storage space and much of the time slows down our newly bought computers.

Here's the kicker though, right now the thinking is there will be a charge to get a trialware free edition of a VAIO. Sony says it's costing them money to make a new image without such software, and time is money, I'm sure we can all agree. Somehow I don't think customers will be sympathetic to this fact though.

 

Haha, typical Sony, you have to pay for no bloatware!

 

Well, they get paid by the companies to put the bloatware, so you have to pay for them to lose it.

I like how with the new limited edition Graphic Splash FZ, there's three different keyboard fonts to choose from as well, never saw this level of customization before.

 

rather just do a clean format then pay them.

 

Wow, those graphics on these FZs are horrible.

 

I'd be willing to pay $10 to save the hassle of doing a clean install. More than that and it's probably a no thanks. Best of all would to be not install anything, but provide disks for those that would like to load on Norton Anti Virus. Some people would do it still.

 

s a m e

 

They obviously have to lie about not receiving kickbacks, don't they? Cost them money to create a new image, my a**.

 

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While losing the Norton trial version may be good, but a lot of Sony's bloatwares are Sony's own proprietary media stuff (HP is probably not too far behind, all kinds of imaging/printing software regardless whether you have an HP printer or not). If you really want performance back, clean install is still inevitable.

 

Just noticed 0n the Sony-Asia site, as an example,
http://vaio-online.sony.com/prod_info/vgn-tz38gn_x/specifications.html

As listed as one of the supplied accessories:
Windows®XP Professional Install Disc

This is a newly introduced model for Asia. Does this mean that they are going to offer XP on newly released models in the future?

 

The XP Pro install disc is there to comply with Vista downgrade right provisions. In a nutshell, Vista downgrade right entitles the buyer of computer preloaded with Vista Business or Ultimate to downgrade to XP Pro at no additional licensing fee. Users who want to exercise their downgrade right can request media from the PC maker. Sony probably figured it was simpler to bundle the disc than handle each request individually.

Vista Home Basic and Home Premium editions do not come with Vista downgrade right.