-January 25, 2008-
The story about Apple MacBook Air is still hanging in the air but Toshiba has already launched two new products, Toshiba Portege R500-11J and R500-11I. According to Toshiba, these laptops are the thinnest in the business and they will try their best to beat the "overhyped" MacBook Air. After Apple claimed that MacBook Air is the new innovation, Toshiba quickly made their own claim about the thinnest laptop on this planet.

Everyone compares Portege R500-11J and R500-11I to MacBook Air because both Apple and Toshiba claim that their newest laptops are the thinnest. MacBook Air is as thin as envelop, with thickness only around 0.75". Fortunately, Portege R500-11J's thickness is also around 0.76". Well, you could compare those products' thickness if you want to.

Sadly, Toshiba Portege R500-11J and R500-11I are expensive. R500-11J will be available at around $3,600 and R500-11I is around $700 cheaper than 11J. These laptops actually are very similar. Both are using the same specification and same network ports.

About the differences, the second one, R500-11I, uses Windows XP Pro and has DVD ultra-slim optical drive. Meanwhile, R500-11J uses Windows Vista Pro and doesn't have any DVD ultra-slim optical drive. R500-11J is also lighter than R500-11I but its hard disk capacity is only 64 GB (R500-11I's storage capacity is 120GB). Toshiba claims both R500-11J and R500-11I are better than MacBook Air. Below are the specifications:

Toshiba Portege R500-11J specification:

Processor: Intel Centrino Duo with Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2 GHz)
Monitor: 12.1"(diagonal) with Transflective LED. It's still rare to see 12" laptops use Transflective LED like in Toshiba Portege R500 products.
Graphics card: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Weight: less than 4 lbs
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Capacity: 64 Gigabytes
Useful For: Businessmen and people who care a lot about their laptop design.

Price: around $3,600. This is an expensive laptop although it's offering lots of features and extremely thin.

Rating: (7/10)

Toshiba Portege R500-11I specification:

Processor: Intel Centrino Duo with Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2 GHz)
Monitor: 12.1"(diagonal) with Transflective LED.
Graphics card: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Weight: 5 lbs
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Capacity: 120 Gigabytes
Useful For: Businessmen and people who care a lot about their laptop design.

Price: start at $2,800. Cheaper than R500-11J but it's heavier and still using Windows XP Pro
(you can change the operation system if you want).

Rating: (7/10)

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