Sony has announced the latest in its series of colourful laptops it hopes consumers will love, cherish and... er... treat like a real friend.

“This is a companion, not a tool,” gushed Hidetoshi Takigawa, Sony's European Vaio marketing chief as only marketing chiefs can.

The Vaio CS11 series all sport 14.1in, 1280 x 800 glossy screens, Intel Centrino 2 technology, 802.11n Wi-Fi and, for the top-of-the-line models at last, Nvidia GeForce 9 series graphics.

Sony's Vaio CS11: brown-ray disc?

Expect hard drive capacities of up to 320GB and 4GB of memory as standard, though as the machines come with Windows Vista Home Premium, they can't access more than 3GB of it.

Sony also said some members of the CS11 family will incorporate Blu-ray Disc combo drives - optical units capable of reading BDs and burning DVDs.

While the CS11 line's predecessor, the CR family, has coloured lids, Sony's extended the addition of colour to the new notebooks' palm rest area, screen bezels and other, ahem, "exposed inner surfaces".

Lipstick laptops

Unquestionably aimed at lasses rather than lads, the CS11 series will be available in a choice of black, red, pink, white and brown lippy-like colours.

Sony didn't say when chicks will be able to pick up their mobile companions, or how much they'll have to pay for the privilege.

Sony Vaio CS series photo gallery

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