A lot of users look for a notebook that has a small profile, can be brought anywhere, comes with the latest hardware, and is pre-installed with the latest software. And while some people can only afford to shell out a little more than a thousand dollars for a notebook, there may be some who would spend a fortune just to get their hands on the latest notebook around. One of these top of the line notebooks that came out recently is Toshiba's Portégé, a 12.1-inch notebook that weighs a little more than 1kg and measures only 19.5mm.
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When we first removed the R500 from its box, the first thing we noticed is its lightweight construction. This silver notebook sports a Toshiba logo upfront and is one of the first notebooks that uses magnesium alloy casing. Despite the company's claim that this material is robust and durable, we feel that there may be some users that may find the R500 to be a little bit on the ‘fragile' side because of its unique construction.
Found on the unit's left side of the R500 are two USB ports, a volume control dial, a headphone and microphone jack, a FireWire (IEEE1394) port, VGA-out, and a DC IN port. Besides this, users can also find an SD Card slot, optical disc drive, PC Card slot, a wireless communication switch, a USB port, and a LAN port on the unit's right side, providing users with a multitude of ports. Despite all of these connectivity options, we were quite disappointed with the fact that Toshiba only provided an SD card reader for this unit instead of those multi-function card readers, making it limited in a way.
