Sony offers a few minor laptop updates, finally puts the Vaio SE on sale

Sony's Vaio SE is now available to order.

It's a rare occurrence, but we do occasionally get our hands on a review sample for a product without knowing its final for-sale date. Such was the case with the 15.5-inch Sony Vaio SE, an upscale midsize laptop with both a discrete GPU and IT-friendly components (a TPM chip, for example), that impressed us when we reviewed it during the first week of September. At the time, we said of it: "At $999, the Vaio SE is playing in pretty crowded territory, and we'd put it in the same league as the Dell XPS 15z or the HP Envy 14--all upscale midsize laptops that mix high style with high performance."

As of this morning, Sony says the new Vaio SE is now officially for sale, joining the existing 13.3-inch Vaio SA model (and another sister unit, the Vaio SB, is getting some a new color option, a very un-Vaio-like red).

Among the other minor Vaio updates announced today, Sony says the multimedia-friendly Vaio F and Vaio L systems (the former is a laptop, the latter an all-in-one desktop), will now include a free software package called Sony Imagination Studio: Multimedia Edition. That packs in Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum, Soun... [Read more]