New Sony VAIOs adapt to the world of Windows 8

Along with a smorgasbord of other gear, Sony has announced a whole range of new VAIO Windows 8 ultrabooks and laptops today at IFA 2012.

They're all just a tad touch-tastic as well, with multi-touch screens being the major new feature almost across the board just in time for the launch of Windows 8, fancy that.

The Sony VAIO Duo 11 and the VAIO Tap 20 are the most interesting for us techies, but there's also VAIO ranges in the form of the T Series 13, E Series 14P and the L Series. Got that?

The Sony VAIO Duo 11 ultrabook (above) is clearly aimed at the exact same patch of shelf space as those new Asus Transformer Books, because it's a laptop which has the ability to undock from its keyboard to become a tablet.

That's distinguishable from a tablet that can be attached to a keyboard dock to become a laptop in ways only the likes of the mighty Sony and Asus can possibly establish.

Weighing 1.3kg, the Duo 11 has an 11.6-inch 10-point multi-touch display and comes with a pressure-sensitive stylus designed to make handwriting recognition proper bo'! It's out at the end of October, and we'll be bringing you first impressions very shortly in our hands on Sony Vaio Duo 11 review.

VAIO Tap 20

Meanwhile, the sexy-looking Sony VAIO Tap 20 is clearly an enormous Windows 8 tablet, despite Sony's insistence that it is in fact a "Family Touch PC". Yeah, whatevs Sony, but it is at least specc'd out with better innards than most (all?) of the other Windows 8 tablets out there.

For a start it's got a 20-inch multi-touch display, Intel Core i5-2217U CPU, 4GB memory, 1TB hard drive and other assorted features like Bluetooth and USB 3.0.

It's designed to work alongside a bunch of Sony's other new products all packing NFC tech – the idea being that you can share content simply by touching the devices together. NFC is the future yeah!

We very much like the look of it, but isn't 20-inches just a bit big? That's not to say we don't want one, of course. We just don't want to pay for one – we have a feeling it's going to be a tad pricey, see.

Release date for this definitely-a-massive-Windows-8-tablet is October, just in time for the Windows 8 on sale date.