New VAIOs Made of Carbon Fiber

Shawnzyoo noted that Sony has released their new series of VAIO TX laptops. In order to make them stronger/lighter/thinner, they are now made of carbon fiber. No plans to release it in the US yet, so start learning Korean if you want this one.

Learn Korean?

[Nuclear Elephant]

No plans to release it in the US yet, so start learning Korean if you want this one.

Are there people really walking around with the Korean version of Windows running on their laptops simply because they bought it in Korea? What's the Korean word for fdisk?

safe?

[donour]

Isn't carbon fibre both flammable as well as electrically conductive?

I'll Let Them Try It First

[Comatose51]

Carbon fiber is used fairly extensively in cycling and we've learned a few things about it. They have lower heat tolerance and abrasion resistance than metal. I'm not sure if those are qualities you want in a laptop which tend to get hot and rub against the table.

Electrical properties

[asadodetira]

I'd like to point out that using carbon fibers or nanotubes in consumer electronics has electrical advantages. Using a conductive filler you can achieve electromagnetic interference (EMI) protection or electrostatic dissipation (ESD). Other conductive fillers such as carbon black or metallic powders would work but due to the small aspect ratio of the particles they require large amounts, and this degrades the mechanical properties of the polymer. Some more infomration here http://www.patagon.8m.com/equations/cnt.html [8m.com]

Oh man...

[Shanep]

I just dropped $5k AU on a VAIO VGN-A49GP about 2 months ago. I bought it for the spectacular display (17" 1920x1200), but I am a little disappointed with it feeling a little flimsy after not much use. Even the silver paint on the palm rests is already wearing off and showing the black plastic underneath.

Metal or carbon fiber would have been nice, especially at this price point and size.

Re:I'll Let Them Try It First

[Anonymous Coward]

Early Thinkpads, starting with the Thinkpad 700c and including most 7-series models until the 770z, had carbon fibre cases as well as lids. It's strong and light, but metal inserts (like screw anchors) in carbon fibre tend to pop out easily with very little force. Overall, a well-designed ABS case is probably just as good at a fraction of the cost.

Re:TMM FP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming you are referring to this post [slashdot.org].

Just confirms my suspicions that the TMM phenomenon was really just a cabal of mods. Good riddence!

Re:Learn Korean?

[kromozone]

Most Koreans can't understand anything babelfish says. It's complete unintelligible gibberish to them. Korean->English can be equally nightmarish. Most Koreans don't follow traditional rules for word separation, so the system can't figure out where the words end. In addition, hangul uses a very limited range of pronunciation whereas as its parent language, Chinese, has a variety of different inflections. As such, each Korean character has up to 50 or 60 different meanings. I can get by with most stuff, even technical documents, but talking to a University age student on the Internet is excruciatingly painful. It's like they all use some hyper-evolved form of leet-speak where you can't use spaces.

Re:Learn Korean?

[derfel]

Hangul is not the language, but the Korean alphabet. When you say "korean characters" maybe you mean "hanmoon", the korean version of Chinese characters. These have only one meaning and are used interchangably with their hangul'ized counterparts in writing. Hanmoon are very, very similar, to chinese characters, and also generally have only one meaning each. The hangul'ized versions are produced phonetically from the pronunciation of the hanmoon, and thus are just as understandable if you're speaking. Since so many characters with the same pronunciation have different meanings, you have to understand from context, just as we do in English with words like "too" and "two".

Maybe you're trying to chat with Korean students in Chinese over the internet, which would explain your poor understanding of the Korean language...

Re:Learn Korean?

[Surt]

Likewise, when slashdot repeats a story, a lot of posters will try to repost the highest ranked posts from the previous story in an attempt to get karma, and moderating such posts redundant is an appropriate way to punish this behavior, even if such a post is the first post, or any early post.