Even more new Vaio laptops arriving

Hot on the heels of the just-announced 18-inch Vaio AW, Sony is dropping a couple more laptops, just in time for the holiday shopping season (although a little late for back-to-school buyers).

The NS series is a 15-inch laptop and successor to the current NR model. While you'll be able to squeeze in a Blu-ray drive for about $1,000 (think $650-ish without), the screen resolution of 1,200x800 isn't exactly HDTV-level. Intel's new 4500 integrated graphics is what makes the NS Blu-ray ready without a discrete graphics card.

Also coming soon is the Vaio CS series, already available in Japan. This 14-inch laptop has some unusual multimedia features, including a, "12-tone music analyzer that translates your music into a colorful LED light show that plays out beneath the palm rest of the PC," according to Sony's press release. We'll have to wait until we get our hands on one of these to see what that actually means in real-world terms.

The CS model will start at about $920, with Blu-ray available for around $1,070. We're skeptical enough about Blu-ray in a 15-inch laptop--adding it to a 14-inch model seems even more of a stretch, unless you plan on outputting the signal to a big-screen TV.

Both are listed as "coming soon" from Sony, but should be available sometime this fall.