Slide Show: The MacBook Air in Perspective

Melissa J. Perenson, PC World

Friday, February 15, 2008 10:00 PM PST

Portege R500: Awash in Inputs

Whereas the MacBook Air has just a small port for power on its right-hand side, the Toshiba R500 (like the Fujitsu P8010), packs in the ports. Shown here from left to right (top): power, VGA port, USB port, and 4-pin FireWire 400, USB port, microphone and headphone jacks, and volume dial. The right side of the unit integrates an 8X multiformat DVD burner (bottom). Sharing portions of the space occupied by the optical drive: An SD Card slot (upper left of the optical drive; supports SDIO cards, too) and a PC Card slot (lower right). Also on this side of the notebook: a slider switch for enabling/disabling the integrated 802.11a/g/n and Bluetooth wireless, one of the laptop's three USB ports, and the gigabit ethernet port. With the MacBook Air, you'll be out of luck if you need to use USB and ethernet: The Air lacks a dedicated ethernet port, and requires you to use its sole USB port for a USB-to-ethernet dongle. That translates into no CD, DVD, or flash media card access while you're on a connected network.

Photograph: Robert Cardin

Recommend this story?
Vote Yes
Vote No
0 Yes
0 No
Email
Comment

Community Comments

News For Your Business

More News

PC World's Marketplace

PC World's Free Whitepapers

Laptops News

Laptops - July 25, 2008
The Portable Office: Travel Terrors Readers share tales of the worst things that have befallen them when they've hit the road with their Macs.
Laptops - July 25, 2008
Stay Cool With the MacBook Air I love my MacBook Air, but a few months back I discovered a problem that made me seriously consider giving it up. The issue:...
Data Protection - July 24, 2008
Laptop Security: Keep the Bad Guys at Bay Joe's laptop computer boasts some advanced security gizmos.
Operating Systems - July 22, 2008
Ubuntu Puts Big Emphasis on Small PCs at OSCON Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Mobile Internet Device editions of Linux are gearing up to compete with Windows on mini-PC devices this year.

Latest Expert Blogs

Glenn Fleishman on Hardware - July 23, 2008 10:33 AM
DNS Dot Bomb: Update Your Nameservers If you even suspect you have a DNS nameserver running in your company, it's critical you patch it immediately.
Neil McAllister on Software - July 26, 2008 4:35 PM
SourceForge Award Winners Announced Open source software projects took center stage at a ceremony to honor the best and brightest of free software.
Erik Larkin on the Web - July 25, 2008 12:39 PM
The Death of DRM As Yahoo says it will shut down the servers that allow transferring its DRM music, Britain considers a move that would green light unfettered music downloads for a yearly tax.

All Blogs

Featured Resources

Premier Content From Our Sponsors

Cisco Small Business Center Does your network give your business an advantage? Click here to find out...
Microsoft Servers Center Work from home? Find out how the Windows Home Server can help you.