The Toshiba Portege R500-S5002 is an ultraportable that doesn’t make you give up anything.
Cool Yule rating: 5 stars $2,150
Price:
Description: Finally, an ultraportable that doesn’t make you give up anything. This baby has all the good qualities you expect from an ultralight. It weighs a measly 2.4 pounds, and it’s only 0.77 inches thick. But you’re not sacrificing features or functionality. The R500 sports a 12-inch LED backlit display, which even has an “indoor-outdoor” button, so you can work outside without glare. Yes, they squeezed a CD drive into it. No, the keyboard doesn’t feel cramped. Yes, you get a full 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, Bluetooth, 802.11a/g/n, a PCMCIA slot and Gigabit Ethernet. Battery life is decent. There’s even a fingerprint reader.
Of course, nothing is perfect. The Portege did feel a little toasty in my lap, and it seemed a little sluggish at times in terms of opening, closing and switching applications. I’m not sure if that’s related to Windows Vista, but, hey, you can never go wrong blaming Microsoft. Overall, this is a light, powerful portable that’s well suited to the heavy-duty demands of an enterprise user.
