Today in London in a somewhat understated fashion, Sony released details of its latest Vaio notebook range: the TZ series, aimed predominately at the higher end of the market.

Cast in carbon fibre and sporting an Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 or U7500 processor, the TZ range features a 11.1in WXGA 1366 x 768 screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It also sports a 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, either 80GB or 100GB hard disk and integrated dual layer DVD±R/RW RAM optical drive.

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Sony, it seems, is keen to draw attention to the security and safety features built in to the new machines: a combination of fingerprint recognition and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) hardware encryption, plus the now-standard hard disk protection system that parks the drive heads to prevent damage should the device be dropped from a non-fatal height.

Weighing in at 1.19kg, they also ship with an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, Windows Vista and 802.11 a b g, Bluetooth. Pricing details however, were unavailable as was the actual date of availability.