When it comes to launching great laptops, Toshiba always seem to develop something very special, so you could imagine our excitement when we learned of the Portégé R500-12Q. This model appeared on a few foreign sites a few months back, but it now seems as if the laptop is heading stateside under a different name. The new Toshiba R500-S5007V 12.1-inch Portege will be something very special, and the reason for that is because it is the first laptop to come with a 128GB Solid State Drive.

The laptop has a frame of just 0.77-inch and weighs in at around 2.4 pound, but do not think for one moment that Toshiba have come up short with the features on offer. The Toshiba R500-S5007V 12.1-inch Portege has a 1.33GHz Core 2 Duo U7700 CPU, which works in conjunction with 2GB of DDR2 RAM. The laptop also comes with a DVD SuperMulti drive, GMA950 graphics set, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and Ethernet.

You would think that with these features it would be a drain on the battery, but with the addition of a 128GB Solid State Drive instead of a standard hard disk, the battery will last up to 8 hours. The laptop is also very durable and has some great security features, Toshiba has incorporated EasyGuard™ Technology(4), this uses advanced encryption as well as multiple level passwords and a fingerprint reader. As the hard drive is an SSD there are no moving parts, this makes the storage device more reliable as well as more durable.

Prices for the Toshiba R500-S5007V 12.1-inch Portege start at $2,999, visit: Toshiba