Sony has to be in a pretty good mood lately. Not only is their Blu-ray format winning the war, but the company has managed to shrink the Blu-ray laser to a size just shy of 3mm thick. What's that mean? The technology is finally small enough for 9.5mm laptop drives (which could lead to a smaller PS3 design), but maybe even more importantly, the lasers are cheaper and easier to produce (whether or not this cost savings was included in Sony's recent $400 PS3 manufacturing estimate is unknown). Oh, and for film buffs, the new lasers can read organic dye, allowing current DVD plants to more easily retool for Blu-ray production. All in all, this is nothing but good news for everyone.

For Blu-ray, optical disk drive recording playback slimline design [Sony via Gizmodo]

Send an email to Mark Wilson, the author of this post, at mark@gizmodo.com.