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Could Sony’s Ultrabook Don A Bargain Price?


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Sony’s Viao T Series Ultrabook will come in 11″ and 13″ variants, will be styled in magnesium and aluminium, and has a feature-set common to the Ultrabooks on offer at present. Inside is 4GB of RAM, 320GB hard disk drive (although Sony talk of an SSD variant) and a Sandy Bridge Intel Core i3 processor, which is worrying since the next generation of Ivy Bridge processors are just around the corner.

Like its Ultrabook siblings it’ll feature Rapid Wake technology–allowing it to boot up within 1.5 seconds from standby–and offers 9 hours of usage on models featuring an SSD drive.

It is abundant in connectivity, featuring HDMI, VGA and RJ45 network ports, in addition to a SD/MMC media slot. This slew of ports has been incorporated into a body that weighs 1.6kg and is 17.8mm thick, giving it a leg-up on lesser-equipped rivals.

Looking over its spec sheet it’s hard to see what would differentiate this ultrabook from the others available, unless Sony is in the middle of a price driven strategy.

Recently Sony took over its Sony Ericsson mobile operation and launched its flagship Xperia S at a price point that was significantly cheaper than its rivals ($579). Although a good phone, it featured today’s technology–just like their Vaio T Ultrabook–and its price reflected this. Perhaps the same sound logic is finally being applied to its price-inflated Viao division.

Samsung tried this strategy in their smartphone and TV division some five years ago, and look at the reigning leviathan now.

We’ll have to wait until Sony confirms the Viao T’s pricing, but we do expect it to hit Australian shores in June. Fingers crossed it’s under the $1,000 price point.