Laptop Thoughts: Toshiba Portege R700 Review

"The R700 is Toshiba's latest ultraportable, and on paper, it's very impressive. It uses regular voltage Core i3, i5, and i7 processors and manages to stuff an optical drive into a 3.2lb, 1" thick enclosure. The casing is all done in brushed aluminum, and the internal structure uses a magnesium alloy and features an aluminum honeycomb to dissipate heat."

Netbooks are great in that they are light, portable and offer "good enough" performance for most people. Most people, but not all. There are still a group of people who need lots of computing power, and are willing to pay the premium that ultra-light laptops command. From a strictly hardware perspective, it is kind of hard to see how ultra-lights can cost that much more, since the major difference I can tell with the R700 is the CPU and its build quality. However, I have found that with business grade notebooks, you also get business grade support. Where you might have to live without your mobile companion for weeks with a typical consumer PC, business PCs often get repaired in days if not hours.