Toshiba’s
light weight laptop heavyweight
by
Alan Zisman (c) 2008 First published in
Business
in Vancouver June 3-9, 2008; issue 971
High Tech Office column
As the weather warms up,
my thoughts turn to travel. And that means that portability becomes
increasingly important to me. First on the list: a laptop that’s
smaller and lighter than the standard seven-pound 15-inch screen models.
Apple
grabbed a lot of attention a few months ago when it debuted its MacBook
Air model. Being thin enough to fit in a mailing envelope makes for a
good demo, but to shed bulk, it also shed features – perhaps too many
for comfort. Lenovo responded with its ThinkPad X300. Like the Air, it
weighs around three pounds, but has multiple USB ports, Ethernet and
Firewire built in and a DVD drive, all features left out of Apple’s
model.
I recently had loan of Toshiba’s new Portege R500 SSD,
which is even lighter. It weighs a mere 1.7 pounds. While you can get
still smaller portable computers, they have scaled-down, awkward
keyboards and screens. Toshiba’s model offers full-sized keys, and a
12-inch 1280x800 wide-screen display. (Apple and Lenovo’s
ultra-portables both have 13-inch displays).
Last year’s
2.4-pound R500 model with a built-in DVD writer is still available. It
remains the lightest laptop with a built-in optical drive. This new
model saves weight by dropping the optical drive (though the case is
moulded as if it still contained one, complete with faux eject button)
and by replacing the standard spinning-platter mechanical hard drive
with a solid-state drive (hence the “SSD” in its name).
This
64-gigabyte drive – think of a scaled-up memory stick – saves weight
and adds durability, while also helping with battery life. But
solid-state drives are expensive. The R500 SSD lists at $2,800; last
year’s 2.4-pound models with larger standard hard drives (and built-in
optical drives) cost around $2,200. (A similar solid-state drive is
used in Lenovo’s X300 and available as an option for the MacBook Air,
each priced comparably to the R500 SSD.)
Toshiba also saved
weight with its magnesium case and by using a relatively small
three-cell battery. Like Lenovo’s X300 and the other R500 models, it’s
built around a 1.2 GHz Core Duo processor, which is not particularly
powerful (the Air has a faster 1.6 GHz processor) but it’s also not
power hungry. As a result, battery life was better than I expected:
five to six hours in power-saving mode. Without being plugged in, it
lasted an entire workday without needing recharging. (Partly, of
course, extending battery life by powering down whenever it wasn’t
being used). A larger (and heavier) battery is an optional extra.
It
has a relatively slow processor and just one gigabyte of memory. I was
surprised that Toshiba included Windows Vista. I found performance
better than I expected. With up-to-date drivers, Vista performs well,
which hasn’t always been the case.
I was also pleased that the
R500 SSD didn’t come with a bunch of pre-installed performance-sucking
unwanted programs. Trial versions of Microsoft Office 2007 and Symantec
security software were included. Users will need to get non-expiring
office and security programs.
I was less pleased with the
keyboard. Though full-sized with a solid feel, it had “\” keys beside
shrunk-down Enter and left-shift keys. As a result, I found myself
often typing unwanted slashes when I tried to capitalize or move to a
new line.
Like the X300, Toshiba’s ultra-portable includes a
fairly generous set of ports: three USB ports, a Firewire port, a PC
Card slot and a slot for SD-format memory cards. Unlike the X300, but
like the MacBook Air, there’s no built-in DVD burner; external drives
can be connected via USB. While this adds weight, it can be left behind
when not needed.
If you don’t need the DVD drive, the R500 SSD is a
capable model that comes in at nearly half the weight of Lenovo’s (and
Apple’s) model, making it the champ for throwing in a bag and carrying
down long airport terminal corridors. •