Toshiba Kinda Claims World's Lightest Laptop
Toshiba recently announced that its lightweight Portégé R500 ultraportable laptop is now available with a 128GB solid state drive (SSD). With this new, but pricey option, Toshiba claims that the Portégé R500-S5007V is now "the world's lightest laptop with a 128GB SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive."
That might sound impressive upon first blush, but it's actually a rather hollow claim, as there are very few--if any--other 128GB SSD-based laptops on the market right now. But, we thought we would use this opportunity to proclaim HotHardware.com as the world's favorite tech enthusiast site among HotHardware.com editors.
The Portégé R500 has been around for a year or so now, but still remains one the better ultraportable laptop options on the market. A few months ago, Toshiba shaved a few more ounces off the already lightweight laptop when it offered a 64GB SSD-based version of the Portégé R500 (the Portégé R500-S5004). Today's announcement of a 128GB SSD option doesn't significantly change the laptop's weight from the 64GB SSD-based unit, but Toshiba is selling it for $2,999--which is what the 64GB SSD version of the notebook is currently selling for--at least that's what is listed on Toshiba's site as of when this story posted anyway. As the Portégé R500-S5004 also has a slower processor, expect the Portégé R500-S5004 to either drop in price or be discontinued.
Notice the ability to "downgrade" to Windows XP Professional
At 2.4-pounds, there is no question that the Portégé R500-S5007V is one of the lightest, full-function laptops available. Curiously, the gang over at CNET actually weighed an SSD-based version of the R500 at an amazing 1.7 pounds. At its thinnest section, the Portégé R500-S5007V is only 0.77-inches thick, and one inch at its thickest part. Even with such a diminutive form factor, the laptop still manages to house a 12.1-inch widescreen, LED backlit display. The Toshiba press release claims that the Portégé R500-S5007V gets "more that eight hours of battery life"; while the product specs (a PDF, here) say "7 hours, 30 minutes" of battery life. With a 6-cell, 5,800mAh Lithium Ion battery, we doubt very seriously that the Portégé R500-S5007V could even perform half as well as that--but we'd be ecstatic to eat our words if proven wrong.
The specs for the Portégé R500-S5007V are as follows:
- Genuine Windows Vista Business (32-bit version) with downgrade media for Genuine Windows XP Professional
- 1.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor U7700
- 2,048 PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM
- 128GB Serial ATA solid state drive
- 12.1-inch diagonal widescreen high brightness display; 1280x800 (WXGA) - Transreflective backlit LED
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
- 7mm, 8xDVD-SuperMulti (+/-R Single Layer) drive supporting 9 formats
- Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN
- Intel PRO/1000 - 10/100/1000 Ethernet
- Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
- 3-Year Standard Limited Warranty
