Sony Australia has announced the release of a Billabong special edition VAIO W, available in Australia this June at $749SRP. The funky “Imperial Lime” colored lid has splashes of lime green, blue, and black and is the first product collaboration between Sony and Billabong. The notebook comes with Billabong content, including images and video from a new TV series featuring a selection of Billabong’s key surfing athletes. And if your wondering, the color scheme is taken from Billabong’s 2010 Summer board short range destined for retail stores in Australia this July.
Kent Tanigaki, VAIO Marketing Manager Sony Australia, said the product collaboration with Billabong highlighted the focus by both brands on the development of relevant product for the youth market.
“The average age of notebook users is getting younger as they are increasingly used in schools and universities.” Tanigaki said.
“Teaming up with Billabong, the world’s leading action sports and lifestyle company, on this new VAIO notebook is a fantastic way for us to create a product that really appears to a younger tech savvy audience. Like Sony, the Billabong name commands huge respect all around the world and the VAIO W series Imperial Lime will connect with fans of both brands. Together we chose the Imperial Lime design for our first join product because it utilizes bold colors and a story that will resonate with Billabong’s audience.”
The specs of this netbook are pretty appealing too; the Billabong VAIO W has 1GB RAM, and an Intel Atom N470, which is a single core 1.83GHz processor processor with hyper threading all on Windows 7 Starter. I have a VAIO W myself and upgraded it to Windows 7 Professional after installing 2GB of RAM. It runs the Aero theme like a dream and the display is quite crisp. It’s a shame however that the right shift key is smaller than usual which can be a minor irritant. The isolation keyboard keys are always nice to use.
Nonetheless, as I said before the 10.1 LED backlit widescreen display (1366×768) can’t play 1080P video on YouTube, but is still very strong. I can run Photoshop, Office 2010 and other applications you wouldn’t really think to run on a netbook with relative ease. It’s mostly due to the aforementioned 1.6GHz Intel processor. It also has a huge 250GB hard drive, which is really quite insane for such a small laptop.
And finally it has an Ethernet port, 2 USB ports, and good quality built-in webcam and microphone that’s useful for Skype or even recording lectures.
