Toshiba R500 spotted at the ‘BUX
I am sitting here at the local bean shop and I stop to stretch and look around. Sitting on top of a table about five feet away from me is the thinnest and smallest Toshiba notebook I have ever seen. It rivals the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 I am typing on right now but is just a tad wider. I have to go see what it is so of course I do and quickly discover it is the Toshiba R500 notebook. The gentleman I interrrupted is quite happy with it and says it’s a dream to travel with which is important as he does that a lot. What impresses me the most is that even though it is as thin and light and you will see it has an integrated optical drive! That blows me away as usually you don’t have that option on notebooks as thin as the R500. This is the first one of these beauties I have seen in person and I am very impressed.
After bugging the nice man long enough I went online to research the R500 and discovered it is highly configurable. The pricing ranges widely based on the configuration, ranging from $1550 for the base-level model with a 1.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, 12.1" widescreen (1280×800), 160 GB 5400 rpm HDD, 3 USBs, 1 Firewire, and a bevy of other goodies, to the top of the line $3000 model with lots more stuff including a 128 GB SSD. I am very glad I saw one of these babies in the flesh. Interestingly, the low-end model which is no slouch comes with XP Pro installed. The top of the line comes with Vista Business with a "downgrade copy of XP Pro".
Did you get to heft it for weight. It is so freakin light. And when the battery is out (as it is at J&R), it’s just about *weightless*. The thing that scares me, however, is the lack of rigidity of the screen backing. Too much flex. That screen, however, is supposed to be the best in direct sunlight. I have other pics here:
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/photo-album-digitallife-expo-2007/
Keyboard is nice (take *that*, U110!!!).
Mike, I’m going to be agreeing with you 100% on everything. I am very impressed with this and yes, it’s thin and light even with the battery installed.
What, no live shots?
Nate, no, the gentleman was trying to work on the Toshiba and on the phone and was rather put off by my interrupting him in the first place.
Did you ask about the jumping cursor issue many talk about with the R500 and general quality? These seem to be the two biggest issues that people talk about with the R500.
James so you still like the U110; seems you have been using it for a while now. Do you perfer the U110 over the P1620?
HG, I don’t prefer any device over another. I am in the nice position of being able to use several different devices so I pick the right one for the particular job. The P1620 is a great Tablet but the keyboard is too small for gobs of entry.
James, I reviewed the R500 over on Gear Diary a while back, and while it was pretty good inside, the screen was absolutely abysmal. Made my eyes strain after less than 30mins use.
Mitchell is modest and should have included that URL:
http://www.geardiary.com/2008/05/04/toshiba-r500-verdict-hmm/
I don’t know, is it possible they’ve improved the screen? Did you use it mostly outside? Indoors at J&R it looks good.
And yeah, man, is it light! (I lifted the MacBook Air about an hour earlier to today’s Portege look-see, so I could compare the two.)