Today Sony announced the upcoming release of the Vaio Nw series of PC notebooks. This new line of high-end media laptops starts at $800 for the basic model. The upgraded model with a Blu-ray Disc drive costs just $80 more. Sony has made a point of stating that these new Vaios are the first part of a new series, so we should see a greater variety of Vaio NWs come out over the next few months.

The first models announced have a high-res 15.5” wide screen monitor with Sony's XBRITE-ECO LCD technology to render movies in higher detail. These new Vaio's also have HDMI output connector, so that you can hook them up to a high-def TV and media box for a while. The NW series comes in your choice of either birch white, walnut brown, or rattan silver. If those names sound a little ridiculous to you, you aren't alone.

Sony's added in a couple of neat features to this update to their line. Both models of Vaio have a 'display off' button that you can use to turn the monitor off to save power, while still leaving the PC itself on. This way you can always be ready to boot up without constantly draining electricity to keep that big monitor lit.

There's one last cool new feature here that I really like. The NW has an “instant Internet” button that immediately launches a web browser when pushed. It doesn't even wait for Windows to finish loading. I'm going to say this right now; every laptop, netbook, and desktop ever made in the future needs this feature. No more will man have to wait 45 seconds for Windows to boot up before searching Wikipedia for that random, argument-winning fact.