Sony adds 18.4-in. laptop aimed at creative pros

Sony Corp. has launched what it calls "a new class of portable" -- a laptop with an 18-4-in. screen designed to compete with pro-level desktop monitors. The company says that the Vaio AW Series offers screen technologies never seen on a laptop, from its massive screen and full HD resolution to its 3 LED backlighting system.

The screen is designed to appeal to photographers and owners of HD camcorders, according to Sony, but it should find favor among illustrators, artists and other creative professionals. 3 LED backlighting is a technical breakthrough found on high-end Bravia LCD TVs. It uses the pure red, green and blue light emitted by LEDs to generate a superwide color gamut capable of correctly reproducing the full Adobe RGB color space. The 18.4-in. screen has a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels.

The AW-Series ships with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as well as Adobe Photoshop Elements, providing users with some of the best photo editing software tools available. Sony original software, including Image Data Converter, Picture Motion Browser and a setting plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, is included to further enhance the appeal to serious photographers.

The huge full HD display offers true 16:9 widescreen. Dolby Home Theatre audio signal processing and 2.1 channel speakers complete the mini-cinema effect, with enhanced bass from the integrated subwoofer as well as immersive surround sound.

The VAIO AW Series has an Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 processor, 3D graphics courtesy of nVidia's 512MB GeForce 9600M GT chip, and a combination of disk technologies. In a first, 128GB solid-state disk (SSD) Flash memory works together in a RAID array with the 500GB SATA drive to boost performance when working with large files, which are stored on the SSD for extremely fast access.

This story is from Digital Arts Magazine.