A look at the most exciting gadgets of CES 2009

Sony has always denied any intention of producing a netbook, but the Vaio P — billed as a 'lifestyle PC' — has had commentators in a quandary.

Introduced at CES, the Vaio P has many of the qualities of a netbook — the low-powered Atom processor, small screen, light weight and solid-state storage option are examples — but a couple of features set it apart from the standard 'netbook' crowd. One is its use of Vista rather than XP or Linux, but the greatest difference must surely be its price. At a starting price of £849, the Vaio P will cost more than twice as much as rivals such as Samsung's NC10 or the Eee 901.