Previously known as the Video Audio Integrated Operation notebook, the VAIO has been cleverly rebranded as a Visual Audio Intelligent Organiser, now brought “closer to you” in the form of 3 spanking new series - VAIO Z Series, VAIO SR Series and VAIO FW Series.

An isolated keyboard for smooth typing even with manicured cuticles, pulsing power indicator light to give the laptop ‘life’ and the ability to choose between stamina and speed are indeed awesome features.

Wow. But these features seem a tad familiar, don’t you think?

That’s because Apple already combined all these neat features in one machine a couple of years back. They called it the MacBook.

The sad part is, Apple did it better.

	Reinventing the Wheel What Sony has done with the 3 new ranges of VAIO laptops is to present a myriad of interesting and innovative but useless or used features. Isolated keys on the keyboard? Ladies have already been liberated from getting their long fingernails stuck between keys after laying their dainty hands on the sunken keyboards of MacBooks when they were released in May 2006.

The pulsing light of the power button is even more embarrassing. Apple put this in the iBook G3 in, read – July 1999. So much for an “iconic design”.

Being able to switch from a power-guzzling NVIDIA GeForce notebook graphics processing unit to a slower Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD when there are no power sockets nearby sounds cool at first.

But when UrbanWire tried to switch from “Stamina” to “Speed” mode on the VAIO Z showpiece, the computer told us to quit all running programs first before it could do the Hybrid Graphics switch.

“We improved the system. Previously you had to reboot the computer,” a staff member told us confidently.

That’s nice, but Apple laptops allow you to toggle between ‘Better Energy Savings’, ‘Better Performance’ and between with just a couple of clicks. You can even change energy settings when you are in the middle of editing a video, and not have to quit iMovie, tell your friend you’re gonna “BRB” on your Mac Messenger or logout of your email on Safari for that matter.

Try harder, Sony.

As the Chinese saying goes, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” While Apple made learning how to fish a lot easier by making multimedia editing a piece of cake with the iLife suite, VAIO spoonfeeds you the fish and even pre-digests it for you with the VAIO Movie Story 1.2 and VAIO MusicBox 2.0.

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