Matt Smith, Sony's desktop PC director, said the venue was chosen to help highlight the PCs digital-video editing capabilities. The PC has a 1394 port, dubbed i.Link by Sony, that allows video to be directly downloaded onto the PC by any 1394-equipped camcorder.

The new Vaio uses a 400MHz Intel Pentium II and has a 10.8GB hard drive, which can hold about 50 minutes of video footage. Other features include 64MB of RAM, a 5x DVD-ROM drive, a Matrox G200 2x AGP graphics card, an i.Link 1394 port and a 56K-bps V.90 modem. The PC will ship in February with an expected street price of $1,399.