Toshiba launches thinnest-ever Portégé R500

Toshiba used Taiwan's Computex expo today to unveil the Portégé R500, calling it one of the most portable complete notebooks ever. The system is one of the slimmest ever to include an optical drive, measuring 0.77 inches at its thinnest due to an ultra-thin DVD rewriter and improvements in trimming down the internal components; this comes without compromising strength, Toshiba says. The company also notes that the use of a 64GB solid-state hard drive option -- also a first for notebooks -- brings the weight down to as little as 1.86 pounds with every feature intact. The 12-inch widescreen further represents a breakthrough by using a transreflective LCD whose backlight can be switched off outdoors to use natural light and extend battery life to as long as 12.5 hours.

Coming to Japan as the DynaBook SS RX1, the North American Portégé R500 will ship in two models. A $1,999 base version ships with a 1.2GHz ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo, 1GB of memory, a 120GB conventional hard disk, and 802.11n Wi-Fi support using Windows XP Professional; a second version at $2,149 will ship with identical hardware but use Vista Business. A retail version of the XP system will also find its way to stores.

The DynaBook version of the notebook will reach stores first, shipping to Japan on June 22nd. North American buyers will receive the system in July.