We’ve been gawping at Sony’s new Vaio E laptops. Sleek, sexy, and with a feature technophobes the world over have been waiting for: a panic button. Actually, it’s an “assist” button, but you catch our drift.
The Assist button does exactly what you’d expect, popping up a menu of handy hints, either steering you through simple fixes, rolling back to factory settings or giving you contact details for Sony’s Vaio tech-heads to fathom a problem over the phone.
It’s a smart idea, and sits alongside two other buttons: Web and Vaio. The Vaio button brings up Sony’s media browsing software with a single press, while the Web button does something altogether more spectacular.
Shut the Vaio E down, and the Web button fires up a browser without booting into Windows proper. Sony says this minimalist browser, which runs on top of Linux, won’t let you save data, but will eke out the Vaio E series’ battery up to three times longer than using Windows to hop online.
Check out the Sony Vaio E in our gallery above. It’ll be on sale next month.
Out February | £TBC | Sony
[...] Sony Vaio E series: PC with a panic button Sony Vaio E series: PC with a panic button Shut the Vaio E down, and the Web button fires up a browser without booting into Windows proper. Sony says this minimalist browser, which runs on top of Linux, won’t let you save data, but will eke out the Vaio E series’ battery up to three times longer than using Windows to hop online. [...]