Toshiba reveals R500 sub-notebook with 128GB SSD

Toshiba has extended its Portégé R500 sub-notebook family with a pair of new models that both pack in 128GB of solid-state storage. The R500-12P and R500-12Q are both based on Intel's 1.33GHz ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo U7700 processor, 2GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory and said 128GB SSD. Both squeeze a multi-format DVD writer into …

[Stephen]

Is it just me

or is it only low powered laptops that are getting these SSD drives?*

Don't get me wrong SSD's are far from perfect (still too small and too expensive) but the benefits can be worth it. I can understand the drive for some laptops (lower power consumption) but how about some built for speed with these things? Just a thought...

*If there are high powered laptops (aimed at the masses) with these please post link :)

[b]

128Gb SSD?!

cooool!

that's the biggest i've seen on a production machine..

hurry up and make them bigger and MUCH cheaper please!

[James Bryant]

sub-notebook???

I think by any definition this is a notebook, not a sub notebook.

[Peter Woods]

sub-notebook?

How can this be classed as a sub-notebook? It's basically inch thick A4 sized; about double the size of an eee and about the same as most standard notebooks.

OK, so you can get some stupidly big notebooks, but normal ones are about this size!

Even Paris is confused!

[Darren Lovell]

@ Stephen

Dare I say it, Dell do offer SSDs as an alternative, albeit with an £800+ premium over the standard 250GB, with some of their laptops but I'd imagine that the insane premium you have to pay for SSDs is the reason why most manufacturers don't offer them as an option - they might think the market for SSDs is too small to be profitable at present as the performance benefits of SSDs are arguably outweighed/negated by the cost over conventional drives for most people.

[Paul]

size and weight

the r500 initially feels like a toy because of its weight, but when examined more closely seems pretty solid. we have a few of them at work and they are very very nice. expensive though. like the Sony TX and TZ, the great thing is that apart from the power adaptor, everything is built in - usb, wifi, bluetooth, DVD-RW, proper VGA connector, PCMCIA etc. very sexy, buy me one and I'll let you come and drool over it!

Paris? I'll let her be photographed on the beach with it!

[Nexox Enigma]

SSDs in small laptops

I think the SSDs are going into the ultra portable laptops because the market has demonstrated many times that people can charge a whole lot for features that make them more portable. Increased durability and battery life with lower weight are far more valuable in a small notebook than the average Dell Latitude. I think a lot of manufacturers realize that SSDs aren't yet ready for a full market release, and are waiting until the specs come up some more and the price goes down. I expect we'll see more mainstream SSDs in the not-too-distant future.

[Anthony Green]

Small ???

I'm more than peeved at the small font that reghardware.co.uk articles are reproduced in - whereas ALL the other sections I read are in a decent sized font !

Dammit, why should everyone have to strain their eyes !!!

[Scott Mckenzie]

Hmm..

...will it enable the R500 to handle more than 2 apps at once yet though, we have one here and it's great as an ultraportable for Outlook or viewing the odd spreadsheet etc, but once you have a few things open you may aswell make a cup of coffee each time you move the mouse.

Slate the Air as many do, at least it has a proper processor in it... oh and i shan't mention the screen rigidity too much as it's clear an SSD won't have fixed that either :(

Shame cos it looks great and is very well specced other than the processor :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it though !

Hey guys.. wanna buy this r500 124 coz of good specs. Heard few bad things and wanted an opinion please:

1. Toshiba bad customer service.

2. It gets uncomfortably hot under the left hand.

3. Very slow with multiple applications.

4. Batteries last 2 hours only if using WMP and working on an excel sheet.

Thanks.

[Dangerous Dave]

i bought one of this....

series for one of our users who goes abroad a lot (having lugged an HP NX series around, on and off trains and planes myself, i understand the need for a small and light machine).

I managed to find one with XP on it too from Insight.

Nice laptop but strewth how much crap do Toshiba pre-install on their machines nowadays?! I've been strictly HP (Business notebooks, so no pavillions) for the past few years, and HP's come with a fair amount of junk installed but tosh really do take the cake. The system tray took up about a third of the taskbar! 3 system tray icons that all deal with me turning the volume up and down, is that really necessary????!!!!

After a thorough msconfig session and tidy up it now runs pretty well, though i'm not entirely sure how long it's going to last as the screen flexes when you move it, so build quality is yet to be proven

It seemed the only option as the small HP's were megabucks at the time, and even the cheapest of those only came with core solo chips. I hate Vaio's with a passion so they were not even considered.

At least it came with 3 year warranty....but when my user accidentally snaps the screen in half i doubt that will be covered