Sony VAIO PCG-GRX516SP

Although they come in many shapes and sizes, Sony's VAIO notebooks are perhaps best known for being either small and ultraportable or large and multimedia-ready. No product exemplifies the latter type of system better than the GRX516SP. This massive 3.8kg beast truly deserves its 'desktop replacement' tag -- in fact, with its 35.5cm by 29.2cm footprint, if you stuck a set of legs on it, you could probably use it as a desk. All that bulk accommodates a 16.1in. screen, which is the largest you'll find on any portable at the moment. But the stand-out feature of this very well specified system is its optical drive: this is the first notebook we've seen with a built-in DVD writer - a rewriteable DVD-RW unit.