Sony aims for a bigger slice of the notebook market. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Adding unique features and styling to notebook computers... .Sony's Vaio line is providing some serious competition to Compaq, HP and Toshiba. With digital movie editing and Memory Stick capabilities... the Vaio notebooks have been priced higher than the competition. Even so, last March, Sony grabbed the number one spot in revenue. Now, the consumer electronics giant has decided to compete on the price front as well. Sony's Chris Pollitt...

"We're taking our current R505 chassis, which has just hit the world by storm from its sleek, wedge-like appearance... those models typically sell for two thousand to three thousand dollars and we've got a value oriented configuration at 1499."

Buyers will sacrifice some horsepower... .settling for a 650 Mhz Celeron processor and a fifteen gigabyte drive instead of twenty. Sony is also slimming down its popular SR line...

"We are going to open up kind of the ultimate road warrior connectivity machine... we're going to be able to offer this at 999 after a hundred dollar rebate. And we have a promotion going on right now with the good folks at GoAmerica, where today, when you sign up for two years of service, we'll give you the wireless CDPD modem for free."

The only drawback we see is that two year commitment to a relatively slow speed wireless service. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.