this laptop is amazingly light, and very small. if you put a piece of A4 paper on top of it it would be covered, its about a centimetre shorter than an A4 piece of paper in each direction. its about 2cm thick but has a couple of 'feet' at the back to ensure air gets underneath. its battery llife is also excellent, ive got 4hrs out of it using it with the DVD player, it claims 7.5 hrs, which, as usual, is a bit optimistic, according to the battery life meter ive had about 7 hrs in it, so if you werent using the optical drive or wi-fi im sure 6hrs is possible, you might get 7.5 hrs if you turned the screen light off, but you need strong light to be able to use it in this way. unfortunatley thats about it for the good points. one of the biggest problems with this laptop is Vista, which is as bad as everyone says, but is much worse on this computer due to the low spec required for the low weight and great battery life. there is only 1GB of RAM, which is the minimum required for vista, which eats up around 80% of the 1GB. the 1.2GHz processor is also stretched to manage with the new software. there have been a few minor problems with the laptop itself, the plastic bits around the hinge to the screen have started to come loose, also one corner of the keyboard can now be lifted, which, altho not a problem, doesnt give reassurance, and on one occasion the buttons on the mouse touch pad have come loose. ive only had this laptop for about 3 months. the biggest software problem ive had is the function buttons which control the brightness, sleep, mouse, hibernate etc etc have stoppped working, there is supposed to be image of all the buttons drop down from the top of the screen each time you press the fn button so you can see what they do. this has stopped appearing and all but the brightness have stopped functioning, i managed to fix it by contacting toshiba and downloading the relevant software, but it happened again so i contacted the company who provided it and they got me to do a system restore which worked for a short time, i have since given up.
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(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
There is just enough information in this review to warrant a helpful rating. I don't like the presentation of your review and I think it could have been a lot more helpful if it were more detailed. If you substantially update let me know.
The Portégé R500 is designed for people looking for the ultimate in no-compromise ... more
portability or who travel and work on the move. Weighing less than a kilogram and only 19.5mm thick the Portégé R500 sets the standard in thin and light laptops. S...
Postage & Packaging: £5.35 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...