Notebook Computer Ratings

If you have been following the past two articles, then you probably know about what notebook is this article. Toshiba Portege R500 follows the steps of its siblings, Portege M750 and Portege A600. Toshiba A600 is considered to be the entry level notebook for the Portege family. It features a solid built, nice design, and good features for a 12 inches entry level notebook. Portege M750 is the pearl of the Portege family providing so many excellent features. In hardware language, the M750 comes in six basic configurations, which vary mostly within the hard drive used, the dual core processor included, and the display's usability.


<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
Also, the common features of all these six M750 models are powerful enough to surpass a 16 inches notebook. Another excellent features that M750 sports is the convertible feature. You can transform your 12 inches notebook in a 12 inches PC Tablet. What about the R500? Although the whole Portege family is about ultra portability, the most portable, until now, model in the Portege line is the R500 model. Also it is the safest in terms of protecting the data stored on the hard drive. It is the most ultra portable Portege because it was built with one and only purpose: to get through a full day work without recharging the battery. I am going to present this feature later when I am going to write about the battery. Long story short, until then, Portege R500 sports a solid state drive (which saves power). At first glance you might not notice, but Toshiba Portege R500 is all about business. In design department everything looks run in the family.

Therefore, you will be happy to know that R500 has a silver aluminum lid. Is not a aluminum MacBook unibody but is a high quality material. It rejects fingerprints, and resists to minor scratches. The only plastic feel material you are going to find is on the left and right side of the R500 body. You get no flex from display, no squeaks, no nothing; everything is perfectly build. The overall built not only looks solid, but feels solid.

Once you open the R500 you are going to find the same excellent quality. The only two non silver finishes in the Portege R500 are the glossy black frame surrounding the 12 inches display and the metallic Toshiba logo on the lid. The keyboard is similar to the ones found on the M750 and A600, sporting 85 keys, and a sound volume control dial. The keys have good sizes. The only key that are somewhat small are the Fn keys. The space between them is sufficient, and you can easily write more than a couple of hours without feeling any discomfort.


The keys provide good feedback, and do not offer any flex when pressed. Under the good quality keyboard you get the touch pad (classic no multi touch features), which provides an excellent time response. Under the good sized touch pad you get two buttons, and in the center of these two buttons R500 sports the biometric fingerprint reader. Toshiba suggests you replace the old password with your fingerprint for securing your notebook. I honestly suggest you to use both. For a better security just use both password and fingerprint to lock and unlock your R500. The two control buttons that centered the fingerprint reader are: Toshiba Assist button and Toshiba Outdoor Display Switch. All the ports and slots are integrated either on the left side or on the right side of the R500.

Both front and back side lack of any ports. On the right side you can find the DVD Super Multi + / - R drive supporting nine formats, such as CD ROM, CD R, CD RW, DVD RAM, DVD ROM, DVD R, DVD RW and others. On this side you also get the Ethernet port, memory card slot, and 64 pin docking connector. On the left side Toshiba added the charger pin, three 2.0 USB, RGB monitor out port, microphone input port, headphone output port and others. The Portege R500 has a height of 0.77 inches to 1 inch, wide of 11.1 inches, deep of 8.5 inches; the R500 weights about 2.4 lbs. The connectivity is ensured by the Intel PRO / 1000 - 10 / 100 / 1000 Ethernet, Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965 AGN with 802.11 a/g/n profile, Secure card slot with SDIO compatibility, and the version 2.0 Bluetooth with enhanced data rate.


Toshiba equipped the R500 with a 12.1 inches diagonal widescreen high brightness display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels (WXGA). This display is trans reflecting and features a LED backlight. This screen offers great visibility in direct sunlight. The R500 display delivers great vibrant colors indoors and outdoors. Toshiba included in all the R500 models a Mobile Intel 945 GMS Express Chipset and the Intel Core 2 Duo processor U7700 with 1.33 GHz, 2 MB L2, 533 MHz FSB with 64 bit. Also available on all R500 models is the 2048 MB PC2 5300 DDR 2 SDRAM. All these features are quite great, and the whole package is completed with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 256 MB graphic memory. All these specs will be sufficient for you to watch movies without any gaps.

Even if Toshiba says that the R500 can run games, the reality is different. Don't expect to be able to play any real games, maybe old 2D games and low quality old 3D games. Toshiba offers two models for the R500 Portege. At a closer look you will see that the only real difference between the Portege R500 S5006V and the Portege R500 S5007V is the hard drive. On the S5006V you get a 160 GB serial ATA hard drive with 5400 rotation per second, while the S5007V brings a 128 GB Solid State Drive (SSD). This means only one thing.


Toshiba Portege R500 competes directly against Apple MacBook Air. A solid state drive is a smaller, faster and tougher version of the old hard drive. Because is free of moving parts, and is four times tougher than the normal hard drive, the solid drive consumes almost 50% less power than the classic drive. Another great feature of this new technology hard drive is the safety it provides to your data saved on your notebook. If R500 senses a fall or a kick, the solid drive freezes all activity and saves your business and personal data. This technology is great, especially because solid state drives can now provide up to 512 GB. A big drawback of this technology is the price tag. For example, the difference between S5006V and S5007V is about $1000 (remind yourself that the only difference between these two models is the hard drive offered). Toshiba ships the Portege R500 with Windows Vista Business 32 bit version.

The R500 also packs other software like Toshiba Cong Free, Toshiba Assist, Toshiba Disc Creator, Sun Java 2 Runtime Environment, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Google Desktop, Google Picasa, Microsoft Office Ready, Microsoft Office Professional 2007, and others. Toshiba ships the R500 with a 5800 mAh Lithium Ion battery with six cells that should provide 7 hours and 30 minutes battery life. It is not exactly a full day work battery life, but it does the job better than any other competitors. Overall, Toshiba Portege R500 is a great notebook, providing good features like the shock absorbing design, hard disk drive protection, good tech list and a good battery life. The R500 model starts from $1.399 and goes up to $2.299 price tag for the solid state drive configuration.