toshiba portege r100 reviewNow this time Toshiba introduced new Toshiba’s smallest laptop, the Toshiba Portege R100, recently got a boost in the form of a faster Pentium M processor and a larger hard drive. These new parts are still housed in the same superlight case that barely breaks 2.4 pounds. As with any company producing ultraportables, Toshiba cut some design corners to keep the case so slim.

The Toshiba Portégé R100 is a fixture in the ultrathin-notebook market, a 2.4-pound machine only 0.7 inches thick that just happens to have a full-size keyboard. It’s so light, in fact, that you’ll be checking your bag to make sure it’s still there.

The Toshiba Portege R100 weighs only 2.4 pounds and is .65″ thin, which is thinner than some PDAs. It measures 11.3″ wide by 9.0″ deep, making it about the same size as a US letter size pad of paper. That puts the Portege firmly in the ultralight and slim class of notebooks, and this is about as portable as notebooks come. The Sony Vaio TR2A also competes in the truly subnotebook class, and is significantly smaller in terms of width and depth, but is quite a bit thicker. That thickness does allow for a DVD/CDRW drive, which the R100, like most true subnotebooks, lacks.

Toshiba Portege R100 uses a Trident CyberBlade XP4-32 video subsystem with 32 megabytes of dedicated memory for its frame buffer. This DX8.1 part is good for a laptop in this class. Most slim notebooks that I have come across use Intel’s integrated video that is part of the 855GM chipset. The only other unit that I know of in this class with what I would term a good video chip is the IBM X31 – but its 16-megabyte RADEON Mobility is getting old and will not perform as well as the Trident. Trident’s video card assets were bought by XGI and it is unclear what kind of driver support one can expect for this part in the future. The latest drivers from Toshiba are getting a bit dusty, but this seems to be par for the course when talking about laptops.

In terms of connectivity options Toshiba Portege R100 has done a remarkable job squeezing in both 802.11b WiFi, 10/100Mbit wired Ethernet and a 56k V.90 modem. There are also two USB 2.0 ports, a D-SUB for use with an external monitor or projector, a single Type II PC Card slot and a slot for SD/MMC memory cards. There is also integrated sound and connectors for both headphones and microphone.

Toshiba Portege R100 ugradeted in two ways: first with just its primary battery, then by adding the bigger battery. The latter setup greatly increased the battery life, but the difference in mobile performance was negligible. Even with two batteries running, the Portege R100 barely beat the Sharp PC-MV14 with just one battery. The Sony VAIO PCG-TR1A, also on one battery, smoked the competition–most likely because it had twice the memory of the other notebooks. For a system with its specs, the Portege R100 performs well running office and content-creation applications.

Configuration:-

# Motherboard chipset    Intel 855PM
# Processor speed         1GHz
# RAM                          256 MB (max 1280 MB)
# Hard drive                   40 GB
# Card Reader               SD, MMC
# Ports                         VGA (monitor) port, 2 x USB 2.0, dock connector, microphone jack, headphone jack, RJ 45 and RJ11rt
# Ethernet                     10/100
# Built-in devices           SD card slot, wireless (802.11b or 802.11a/b)
# Modem                      56K data/fax
# LCD technology          Poly-Silicon XGA TFT active matrix
# Diagonal screen size   12.1 inch
# Wireless LAN             802.11b                                                             toshiba portege r100 revieww
# Operating system       Win XP Pro
# Battery type(s)           Lithium-Ion Polymer battery

Toshiba Portege R100 Reviews:-

# Trustedreviews Review:-  The touchpad is a different matter, sadly this is not as good as the keyboard, but it’s not terrible for its size. The main problem is with the buttons as they are unresponsive and somewhat hard to click.

# Reviews.cnet Review:-The Toshiba Portege R100 is a very light, well-designed laptop, but like many ultraportables, it suffers from abbreviated battery life when running off its primary cell.

# Mobiletechreview Review:- No included optical drive means you’ll need to spend more money on a drive so you can install software. Make sure to get the Toshiba PC Card DVD drive that will boot the Toshiba if you ever have to re-install the OS using the recovery CDs. I’d like to see 512 megs of RAM standard on this unit— after all, it does have Windows XP Pro and a fast processor, why skimp on the RAM?

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