The "Porsche" of notebooks?

Best Buy recently announced it was adding to its vpr Matrix line of notebooks a model that was co-designed by Porsche Design GmbH, an Austrian firm founded by F.A. Porsche.

The vpr Matrix 200A5 was designed for multimedia enthusiasts, and includes a 15.2-inch LCD display with a wide-aspect ratio (1280 by 854 native resolution). The device also includes 24/192 "digitally upsampled sound," which Best Buy says was previously only available in high-end audio equipment.

The notebook features a 2.0GHz Pentium 4-M mobile processor, 512M-bytes of DDR-SDRAM, a 40G-byte hard drive and a nVidia GeForce 4 420 Go graphics processor. The device also has two integrated USB 2.0 ports, two IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports, integrated 802.11b wireless connectivity, and Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition software. The notebook also has a combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive that lets you play audio when the system is off.

Best Buy said it has started selling the notebook at its Best Buy stores and Web site, and at Porsche Design Boutiques in the U.S. (Beverly Hills, Orange County and Aspen, Colorado). The notebook starts at $2,399. The vpr Matrix line of notebooks was created by Best Buy for its "sophisticated computer customers seeking high quality PC solutions," Best Buy says.