Eight hours between charges? Yes, if the specs on Sony's new VAIO TZ notebooks are accurate.

Wired and Engadget -- yes the very same blog that briefly bit a chunk off Apple's market cap to the tune of billions yesterday -- write about the ultraportable's novel power saving features, including an optional 32 GB solid state drive (SSD) that takes the place of an optical drive. This setup allows the machine to tap flash memory for the OS and commonly used software components, only spinning up the drives when necessary.

The result, when matched with a power efficient 1.2Ghz Celeron M 443, is a machine that gets 8 hours out of its batteries. If you're in Japan on May 26, you can pick one up for a cool ¥164,800 ($1,365) for a base model (most likely without the SSD goodness).