Portege R500, now with 128GB solid-state drive

Michelle Thatcher | Jun 18, 2008

The eye-catching Portege R500, long one of our favorite ultraportable laptops, just got a little better. Tuesday morning, Toshiba announced the US$2,999 Portege R500-S5007V, a new iteration of the remarkably thin laptop and the first portable to incorporate a 128GB solid-state drive.

To put it succinctly, we're psyched. Up to now, the biggest reservation we had about recommending solid-state drives was their relatively puny size, which pretty much required the purchase of an external hard drive to hold most of your media files--a tough expense to swallow after plunking down US$3,000 (or more) on the laptop itself. However, 128GB seems like a workable size, and because the drive represents the second generation of solid-state technology, we have hopes that it will perform a little better as well.

The Portege R500-S5007V also features a built-in DVD burner, making it a little heavier than the DVD-free R500-S5003. (The starting weight for the new model is still less than 2.5 pounds.) Otherwise, the updated Portege R500 is largely the same as its predecessors, with a 12.1-inch LED-backlit display, three USB ports, a fingerprint reader, and an SD card slot. Like its predecessors, the new version doesn't include a WWAN option, and its slim form factor still requires an ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo processor that isn't likely to win any speed races.

Nevertheless, the addition of a larger-capacity drive helps Toshiba keep at least one advantage over such lightweight, SSD-based systems as the MacBook Air and Lenovo ThinkPad X300.

Via CNET Crave

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