Toshiba R500 looks appealing to Mobile01

Remember that two-pound Portege R500 notebook from Toshiba? I just caught this review over at Mobile01 and I’m even more impressed than before. This is the 12-inch notebook that weighs just under two pounds; a tad more if you want the 7mm optical drive in it. If I were looking for a small non-Tablet notebook, the R500 and perhaps the Sony VAIO TZ would be on my short list. The R500 offers both an LED backlight and a transreflective screen to help save battery life: with enough outdoors light, you can turn off the backlight completely.

I actually started laughing out loud when I saw the screenshots from the Toshiba ConfigFree utility; this is the application that helps you configure your wireless connection and shows all of the hotspots around you. That’s not the funny part since it’s quite useful. I was laughing because the app looks nearly identical to what it was on the Toshiba e805 Pocket PC I had back in 2003! Hey, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Looks to me like Toshiba has included just about every possible feature and function I’d look for; there’s even the 64 GB SSD option coming soon. Hmm…about the only thing I see missing is an integrated WWAN option; for some folks that’s a must.