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Sony’s new line of Ultrabooks stand apart from the competition by giving users the option to upgrade the RAM and replace the battery.

Updates to Sony’s 13.3- and 14-inch T Series Ultrabooks was display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Last Vegas,  as well as its brand new 15-inch T Series Ultrabook. The T Series laptops can be configured with Windows 8 Professional, perhaps making it an appealing option for SMBs. But the laptops lack Intel’s vPro technology, leaving out some power-on LAN and remote-access features that some enterprise IT departments rely upon.

Intel introduced its Ultrabook standard last year in an effort to improve the overall quality of PC notebooks using its chips. It enforces a slim profile, a light weight, and a minimum processing capability to get the certification, and some funding that comes with it.

The 13.3-inch T Series Ultrabook has been available since the summer 2012, but with the release of Windows 8, Sony has refreshed this model with a 1366 by 768 resolution, multi-touch screen. It can be configured with either Intel i5 or i7 processors, up to a 512GB SSD drive, and up to 8GB of RAM. Along with the above-mentioned replaceable battery, Sony’s Ultrabooks also have another uncommon feature for Ultrabooks, a full-sized Ethernet port. Keeping all these additional features in mind, it is no surprise that the Sony T Series models aren’t the thinnest or lightest Ultrabooks available.

Sony also showed a touch-screen upgrade to the 14-inch T Series. This model is slightly larger than the 13.3-inch model, and features an optical drive. But this model is not currently available in Canada.

The star of Sony’s CES notebook line-up was the new 15-inch T Series, which is coming to Canada. This model really pushes the boundaries of what should be considered an Ultrabook, but apparently still falls within Intel’s requirements, even though it sports a full numeric keypad, 15-inch 1080p 10-finger multi-touch display, and an optional Blu-ray optical drive. The 15-inch T Series has a backlit keyboard, a featured overlooked on the smaller models. It will also be configurable with Intel i5 and i7 CPUs, a variety of storage and RAM options, and will be available with Windows 8 Pro for business users.

The 13-inch touch-screen T Series is already available in Canada from Sony and other retailers, starting at $920, and the 15-inch T Series should be available “this spring”, starting at $900.