Join the community and start enjoying the benefits:
* Total cost includes estimated tax and shipping in the continental US. Prices and availability are subject to change by merchant without notice. Sales taxes and shipping costs are only estimates. Please check with merchant for details.
05-22-08
Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks
Strengths: Ultraportable computer at 1kg with sufficient performance. Nice LCD, WiFi, Bluetooth, SD-slot, everything I needed. Not the optical drive that I do not need. Only 2.2lb despite vendors claim 2.4lb.
Weaknesses:Gets quite warm, maybe sometimes hot (only on the left side). Omission of traditional modem. Ugly bump on the lower left part of the computer to accommodate 2.5-in HDD.
Overall Evaluation: I upgraded from my faithful workhorse Portege R100 that has started to show some aging after 4 years. So my thought is in principle relative to R100. Therefore what I write here should give some idea of what to expect if you are making similar transition.As I wrote above, the screen is nice, clear and crisp, but very fine, maybe too fine. Therefore it may be stressful to the eyes after long use. While I was switching back and forth between R100 and R500 to move the data, setup, etc., the screen on R100 looked much bigger and was actually easier to read.The weight is 2.2lb (1kg), less than what most vendor claims in the spec, 2.4lb (1.08kg), probably because this one doesn't have the optical drive. This is substantially lighter than R100+extra battery (around 1.4kg). With the standard unit, the battery life is around 5 hours, a bit less than what you get from R100+extra battery.The computer DOES get hot, and the air from the fan (on the left hand side) is pretty warm. I will need to be careful not blocking the vent. After using it for a week and a half, I noticed the sticker at the bottom of the computer saying: CAUTION PC base and palm rest can become hot! ... :-)There are 3 USB ports on the sides of R500, which are not blocked by the port replicator (2 on left, 1 on right). This means you have a total of 7 ports when docked to the port replicator. However, since they are on sides, they stick out to sides, so make sure you don?t have anything on your desk interfering with what you'd stick in to the ports (such as flash memory sticks). From R100, the keyboard layout was modified to more conventional one, particularly INS, DEL, Windows and Menu. The keytouch feels slightly differently from R100, maybe slightly smaller stroke. I think is pitch is very similar, if not identical, which is one of the reasons that I chose this. The gap between the function keys and other keys is gone, and I still mistakenly type some of the fn keys while I type. I guess I eventually get used to it.The touchpad may need some practice. It is larger than that of R100, which itself is a good thing. But it is shifted to the right, and extends all the way to below the right end of the spacebar or the M key, so my right thumb is stressed when I use scroll function of the touchpad gesture (which I use quite a lot). The right end of R100's touchpad is under N key, so it is about 20mm different. In addition, the root of the right thumb comes so close to the touchpad, moving the cursor unintentionally while typing. This could be solved from mouse control panel, by checking "disable tapping during key input" and set the delay to the shortest, etc, etc. It took me almost a full day to figure this out. I think this should be the factory default setup for this computer. A lot of fussing with the control panel is necessary, at least for me. This was no at all necessary with R100.There are some rooms for improvement with this laptop, but I think Toshiba did a good job to come out with this, so I give it a 5-stars, but with higher resolution, I would have given a 4.5-stars, just because of the touchpad that is offset to the right. (For the designer's sake, it should be mentioned that it is positioned at the mechanical center of the computer, but the home position of the keyboard is toward the left of the computer, making it feel like that the touchpad is shifted to the right.)
Today's Most Popular Computer Hardware
