Sony's Vaio, "Video/Audio Integrated Operations" is yet another kludgey backtronym devised for making Japanese product names more palatable to the Western consumer. (See NTT DoCoMo for an even worse example.) The real reason -- which also explains why all* Vaio computers, including the one I'm typing this on, are that same lovely shade of pale purple -- is that the Japanese katakana version of the English word "violet" is baioretto (バイオレット). Since Japanese does not distinguish between "B" and "V", the phonetic Japanese spelling of the first syllable is baio, which was re-mutated back into English as vaio.

* Or at least almost all. Some of the latest Transmeta-powered Vaios are black & white, which probably has the original inventors seeing red.

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