October 1st, 2007

Video: Toshiba's sub-2 pound Portégé R500 includes optical drive, all-day battery

Posted by David Berlind @ 2:09 pm

Categories: Apple, General, Hardware Infrastructure, Mobile, Personal Technology

Tags: Optical Drive, Battery, Toshiba Portege, Video, Toshiba Corp., Notebooks, Engineering, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, David Berlind

As you can see in the attached video taped at Digital Life in New York City, I can vouch for the fact that Toshiba’s Portégé R500 sub-notebook has a built-in optical drive for CD-ROMs and DVDs. You hardly ever see this in a sub-notebook because they take up so much vertical space and as a result, if you’re a subnotebook user who wants to listen to CDs or watch DVDs while on a plane or something, you need your docking station too. But not in the case of the Portégé R500. I was quite surprised to see the drive tray pop out of the Portégé’s side bezel.

But one supposed attribute of the Portégé R500 that I can’t vouch for is it’s all-day battery. According to Toshiba’s Paul Tayar (interviewed in the video), the R500’s 6-cell lithium ion battery should last a user all day. All day? The battery in my current notebook computer (a Thinkpad T42) can hardly make it through the night. But to have have an all-day battery in a subnotebook computer that weighs less than 2 lbs. (Toshiba claims 1.7 lbs.) seems extraordinary. One key to that battery life, according to Tayar, is the Toshiba’s choice of processor: Intel’s Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage U7600 processor.

Another cool feature of the Portégé R500 is a switch that toggles the display between its outdoor and indoor modes. In other words, the display has a mode that makes it easier to see it well in the sunlight. But, if there’s one critical feature that’s missing from the R500 (in my estimation) — one that would keep me from buying it — it’s the lack of a pointing stick (or TrackPoint.. if you’re used to Thinkpad lingo). I remember back in the early 90’s when Toshiba shipped the first Portégé and it was one of the first notebooks to have the pointing stick. I know it’s a matter of personal preference. But, if you’re a touch typist like I am, moving your fingers away from the keyboard hurts productivity instead of enhancing it. Heck, I’d be first on line to buy a MacBook if it only had a pointing stick.