Toshiba Portege R500-S5001X Notebook

Super light, small ultraportable machine

Strengths: 1. small. 2. light. 3. Include DVD writer. 4. Good assemble quality. 5. Long battery life. 6. Thin 7. Make you become a careful person... Haha, it is a good thing, isn't it?

Weaknesses: 1. Max memory up to 1.5G only. 2. Expensive but worth it. no more

Summary: In this laptop, 512MB of ram is burned on on the mother board, and there is only slot available. Although this laptop is using 945 chip set, but I tried Kingston 2GB sodimm and not working, so I only install up to 1.5GB of RAM.

I do suggest people buy a WinXP version, the WinXP runs smooth on this machine. I think the Vista will be very slow on this machine.

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WOW - all you could want in a tiny package

Strengths: Super lightweight, easy to use keyboard, good size screen with good display, large hard drive for a laptop this small.

Weaknesses: High cost, poor speakers

Summary: If you are looking for a lightweight, highly portable laptop, this is the one. Although this computer weighs only slightly more than my portable DVD player, all of the features of a full-size laptop are included. I chose to go with Windows XP to avoid the slow performance with Vista that had been mentioned in other reviews. I‘m sure I made the right choice - the speed of operation has been all that I could wish for. The keyboard is exceptional. I am used to typing on a full-size keyboard with my desktop computer but I have had absolutely no trouble with this one. Also there are a number of shortcut keys that I have found to be extremely useful. I have even found the touchpad easy to use, though I still prefer a separate mouse. I bought a Toshiba bluetooth mouse and this has been my only aggravation. I can’t get it to work all of the time. I have not had the chance to work out this kink yet, so I am not sure if it is a problem with the mouse or with the computer. As far as included software, I especially like ConfigFree. It was very easy and productive to set up separate profiles for my home and office networks. Another bright spot - Toshiba did not include all of those annoying desktop icons that seem to come with new computers to try this or that. There were just a few shortcuts that were easily deleted. As far as the screen goes, the 12.1" display is very large for a computer of this weight. The screen is bright and easily read. Movies also looked great. Because it has a brightness setting for outdoors, I was able to sit outside and still be productive. There are many pre-set settings for power management that are easily accessible with a keyboard shortcut, plus you can create and name your own settings. My one complaint is that the internal speakers are not very good. I need to have the volume set at full to be able to hear anything. Since I use headphones to watch movies or listen to music this seems like a minor problem. I did a lot of homework before buying this laptop and I think it beats every other ultra portable by a mile. It was on back order and took a month and a half to come in after I ordered it, but it was well worth the wait.

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