WHEN it was first launched last year, the Portege R500 was the world's lightest and slimmest PC. It has now substituted its hard-disk storage with a 128 GB solid-state drive (SSD).
Both the MacBook Air and Lenovo's X300 have 64 GB SSDs. Unlike the MacBook Air, the R500 has a DVD multidrive, which makes it easier to load programs and play movies.
Battery life - at eight hours - is also pretty good. Notebooks with SSDs do not come cheap and that is because SSDs are more expensive than traditional hard drives.
They also store less data, for now. However, SSD prices are coming down (Apple recently dropped the price of its MacBook Air SSD) and, in time to come, capacities will also rise. SSDs have the advantage of extending battery life via lower power consumption and faster data access. And they are also lighter. Hence, machines like the R500 are emerging.
There will be more to come, presumably with even higher- capacity SSDs. But for now, the R500 enjoys the bragging right of being the first notebook with a 128 GB SSD, which is more than adequate for a notebook.
