Toshiba announces their ultraportable notebook Portégé R500 Series. Further advancing the company as a world leader in mobile innovation, the new Portégé is the world’s thinnest notebook series with an integrated optical disk drive. Not only the thinnest, it also provides the longest battery life of a 12.1″ widescreen notebook. With the addition of the integrated 7mm DVD-supermulti drive the system measures only .77″ thin and weighs only 2.4lbs, making the Portégé R500 Series Toshiba’s ultimate ultraportable mobile computing solution.

The 12.1″ display incorporates an indoor/outdoor transflective LED backlight display to provide an image which is rich in color with superb quality. To achieve its compact size, the notebook uses High Density Mounting Technology to provide a miniature motherboard with dual-sided component mounting to acheive reduce size and enhance overall functionality. Also incorporated into the R500 series is EasyGuard technology which provides HDD protection and a spill resistant keyboard.

Recommended configuration for the Portégé R500-S5001X is priced at $1,999. Specs include preloaded Windows XP Professional, 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor U76007, 1024MB SDRAM memory, 120GB HDD, 7mm 8x DVD-SuperMulti drive, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, Intel Wireless WiFi 802.11a/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.0.

Plans to further reduce weight of the Portégé R500 series to 1.72lbs are expected in the third quarter of 2007. To acheive the reduced wieght the R500 series will adopt a 64GB solid state drive, which will additionally improve system response, reliability, and durability.

Via: Toshiba