Sony VAIO SZ

While we were disappointed to not see any brand-new VAIOs emerge during CES, Sony refreshed several models with Intel's latest 45-nm Penryn chip and dubbed them VAIO Premium. The SZ, Sony's 13.3-inch thin-and-light notebook, was updated with The Core 2 Duo T9300 and a whopping 4GB of DDR2 RAM. While usually more equals better, the consensus in the benchmarking community is that there are few if any real time performance gains north of 2GB of memory outside of certain commercial applications like AutoCAD or rendering 3D video. We're still fans of the SZ, but Sony is going to have a hard time convincing us to pay for 4GB. Release: February 2008. Price: $2500.

Pros: Powerful for a 13.3-inch notebook Cons: For now, it's not worth paying for 4GB of RAM when 2GB will do