The original blue-and-silver Walkman was marketed in 1979 as the Walkman in Japan, the Soundabout in many other countries including the US, Freestyle in Sweden and the Stowaway in the UK.

Until 1999, every five years on July 1st Sony would come out with a new cassette model with new features and technology. In 1984 the Discman was launched and for years the Walkman and the Discman ruled the market till hard drive-based and flash-based digital audio players made an appearance.

In 2003 Sony’s NW-MS70D portable player got overshadowed by the iPod. It had only 256 MB of space and cost as much as a 15 GB iPod. Sony soon churned out hard drive and flash based MP3 players and finally after losing a major chunk of the market share to other companies tried to revive the Walkman brand through music-centric mobile phones marketed under the Sony Ericsson brand.

The device was built in 1978 by audio division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara for Sony co-chairman Morita, who wanted to be able to listen to operas during his frequent transpacific plane trips.

“Our new alpha cameras, lenses and accessories make it easier for new users to get the great photos they expect without the steep learning curve that DSLRs have traditionally required.

By overcoming the obstacles, we’ve made it much easier for newcomers to take great pictures with DSLRs.”

The AD-7240S’ Auto Strategy Technology, which was first seen in the predecessor series AD-7200, works like this: When you burn a DVD, the drive always reads a section of the media in advance so that the writing head can be optimally adjusted. Adaptive Self Tuning also makes the drive automatically adapts to the disc and the hardware environment in every burning process to compensate quality fluctuation.

Rajesh Goenka, VP-Sales and Marketing, Rashi Peripherals Pvt. Ltd., said, “We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our SAP, as they will be the first in India to sell 24x DVD-RW. This is undoubtedly the latest, fastest and most reliable DVD-RW available in the market to date. With this, I am sure our partners will be able to further capitalize the leadership position of Sony in the ODD business. Besides being the first 24x DVD-RW to be launched in India, I hope we will also further improve the profitability of out partners. At Rashi we believe in the best – The fastest, the most reliable and a profitable business module.”

The AD-7240S comes with a serial ATA interface. It burns DVDs in +/-R format at up to 24x speed and CDs at up to 48x speed. In DVD-RAM and DVD+R9 format, and on double layer DVD-R media, the AD-7240S writes at up to 12x speed. DVD+RW discs are written at up to 8x speed and DVD-RWs at up to 6x speed. The AD-7240S achieves up to 16x reading speed with DVDs and 48x reading speed with CDs.

The DVD Re-Writable AD-7240S is compatible with DVD+/-R, DVD+/-R DL, DVD+/-RW and DVD-RAM (Ver.2), CD-Audio, CD-ROM (mode1 and mode2), CD-ROM XA (mode 2, form 1 and form 2), Photo CD (single and multiple sessions), CD Extra, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-TEXT discs. It can also playback CD-I (FMV) and VIDEO CD with special hardware. This drive unit can also play DVD-Video with special function, such as MPEG decoder.

The DVD Re-Writable AD-7240S by Sony is available through Rashi Peripherals and its 53 branches throughout India at an estimated retail price of Rs. 1500 and comes with a 1 year warranty.

It’s worth noting that the 360 was released throughout most of Europe in November 2005, while the PS3 didn’t make it to market in the region until March 2007. Also keep in mind that Sony typically refers to numbers in the PAL region — which would also include New Zealand and Australia.

Lewis did however mention that Microsoft is “highly respectful” of its competitors and doesn’t mean to gloat. “It’s not about us necessarily fixating on Sony — we like a target to run at, and a barometer of success, and we see Sony most closely aligned to our own platform,” he said. “Therefore we intend to measure our success in some way versus what they’ve doing.”

Of course, Microsoft is fortunate that it’s not Nintendo that they deem to be closest to the 360. After all, it wouldn’t look particularly good for Microsoft to be trying to compare sales figures with Nintendo who continues to stomp both Microsoft and Sony into the ground month after month.

The Vaio P series has a instant on 20.3 cms LED-backlit screen. It has resolution of around 1600 X 768 pixels and you can view almost an entire page without the need of side scrolling. The Sony’s Xcross Media Bar allows one button quick boot options and also offers fast access to email, web and music. Using just a single touch, you can organize all your documents and arrange all the open windows side by side on a single screen. It even has a motion eye webcam, microphone, noise canceling headphones and offers battery life of around 3 hours.

It is available in colors of natural shimmer and hues of Garnet red, Olivine Green, Obsidian Black and Crystal white. It will cost around Rs 49,990 ( with VGN-P13G ) and Rs 64,990 (with VGN-P15G). Though it is a bit expensive, it is a revolutionary product and stylish too.