Toshiba's new ultraslim ultraportable
One of the few laptops that has really grabbed our attention with eye-catching industrial design this year is the Toshiba Portege R400, a slim convertible tablet we saw back in January. The just-announced follow-up, Toshiba's Portege R500, is even more impressive.
We got a chance to play around with one of these a few weeks ago, and it was literally one of the thinnest, lightest 12-inch ultraportable laptops we've ever seen. It's got all the requisite ultraportable features, from an indoor/outdoor backlit LED display to a superthin 7mm DVD drive--similar in some ways to the 13-inch Dell XPS m1330 that leaked yesterday.
Some highlighted specs of the system, which will be around .77 inch thick and weigh just 2.4 pounds, include:
How do they cram all that stuff in a laptop less than an inch thick? According to the company: "To achieve this ultracompact foot print, Toshiba utilized its proprietary High Density Mounting Technology process to create a miniature motherboard with dual-sided component mounting." In other words, the system is built around a custom miniature motherboard.
According to the press release, even more exciting developments are coming later in the year, when the company claims: "In the third quarter of 2007, Toshiba plans to further reduce the weight of the Port?g? R500 Series to 1.72 pounds, effectively creating the world's lightest wide-screen 12.1-inch notebook." We'll believe it when we see it, but hopefully that means a move to SSD hard drives.
Depending on your configuration the Portege R500 runs around $2,000, and should be available to order starting today.
New York native Dan Ackerman, a former radio DJ turned journalist, has written about technology and music for publications including Spin, Blender, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. He hosts the weekly Digital City podcast and the New York edition of Editors' Office Hours. Dan's new album, Tales Out of Night School, is available now. E-mail Dan. 
"*Lightest model configuration of 1.72 lbs is based on a 64GB solid state drive (SSD), a 3 cell battery and no optical disk drive. The Portégé® R500 with the solid state drive will not be available until the end of July 2007. Weight may vary. See Weight Legal Footnote at www.info.toshiba.com."
I'm so jealous. Drool....
I think you meant to say "light" instead of "small". The lightness will only make it lighter to carry. I didn't say it'll make it easier to carry because I find smaller things easier to carry... and at around 1kg, a few grams more or less won't make much of a difference.
Looking at the specs, this should perform quite alright. But at 12" it's not really your secondary computer or your primary one... so something better than the dual core 1.2GHz, Intel's 950 graphics, and the single RAM slot would be nice. I'm not sure if the mechanical HDD on this is a standard 2.5" type but if it is, then the advantages of going for the 64GB SSD are not as obvious as it would be compared to a 1.8" (mechanical) HDD.
Also, in case anyone overlooked this due to CNET's reference to R500 as being the successor of R400, R500 is not a tablet! And did CNET say it's more expensive than the R400 because Toshiba's site is saying that the R400 starts at $2600 and the R500 at $2000?
I'm a bit reserved with the R500, in addition to having the previously said concerns, because of the screen resolution. I think these companies can easily fit a screen with a much higher resolution at that size. Some will argue that higher resolutions will only make things harder to read, but it's not really an issue since you can adjust font and icon sizes and Vista does a very good job at this (over XP).
Anyone in the market for this sorta notebook should check Sony's TZ and G series notebooks.
Some other key points about Toshiba's R500...
-Option for Lo jack anti-theft (Yup if you lose it, they can actually find it for you.) This is the first laptop I know of that has this.
-Finger Print reader - Full SuperMulti drive , and as you mentioned an awesome battery life. The build quality is superb too.
Seriously recommend this for you guys who travel a lot. I absolutely my R500!
I finally got a R500 from http://www.softchoice.com. It took them a while to get it, but they did. The machine is really nice. Light, pretty fast, long battery. The keyboard is a bit mushy on one side. Also, I've had to install the "common module" several times. It seems that they get unregistered or disconnected easily? I'm not sure why, but every once and a while the all the toshiba custom buttons don't work and I've got to run that little script again.
Still, It's a great little laptop.
The other company has already cost me an additional $500 in attorney fees. Stay away from FirstWorldTech.
http://www.wood-life.ru
- by denn70 March 13, 2009 5:14 AM PDT
- http://www.i-survive.ru
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