Toshiba introduces ultra-light Portégé notebook computer

Toshiba has announced the new Portégé R500 business notebook computer featuring an impressive 12 hour battery life, 7mm optical disk drive and a transreflective LED backlight display for enhanced screen visibility. The ultra-portable Portégé R500 weighs in at just 999grams and is only 19.55mm thick, making it the world's lightest and thinnest 12.1-inch notebook according to the manufacturer. Toshiba has also updated its retail and business notebook ranges, including the flagship consumer notebook, the Qosmio G40.

The Portégé R500 is also the world’s first notebook to leverage a Solid State Drive (SSD) in place of a mechanical hard drive with 64GB of storage. SSD is a storage device that utilizes NAND flash memory instead of magnetic media in order to offer a number of benefits over standard mechanical hard drives with no mechanical parts, no latency times to seek or access the drive, more power efficient, less noise and faster boot up and read/write speeds.

The Portégé R500 screen technology enables users to clearly see their notebook screen, even under direct sunlight. Whilst outdoors, users simply turn off the Portégé R500’s LED backlight and use the natural light of their environment to light the notebook screen - a feature that also preserves battery life whilst on the go. The display is mounted on a "floating" mechanism to provide better shock absorption and flexibility.

The Portégé line began rolling out in the US in late July with prices starting at US$1999. In Australia the Portégé R500 is available in two models with a recommended retail price of AUD$3,300 or AUD$4,125.

For more information on the Portégé R500 and other models visit the Toshiba site.