Laptop Thoughts: Toshiba Portege R705 - Innovation and Performance for $800

"Stuck on the Toshiba Portege R705's magnesium alloy palmrest is a shiny sticker celebrating the company's 25 years of "laptop innovation." Now, we're the first to hate on the plethora of decals that festoon Windows laptops these days -- and this one also deserves to be peeled off and tossed into the garbage -- but the sticker actually happens to speaks volumes about why the $800 R705 is such a big deal."

Toshiba is celebrating 25 years of making great computers by introducing the R705, a 3.2 pound ultraportable laptop listing for $800 exclusively at Best Buy. The R705 sports an Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB storage, an optical drive, Intel's wireless display technology (also called WiDi), a 13.3-inch 1366x768 display, and a battery that Toshiba claims will last 8.5 hours.

Is this system as good as early reviews seem to say? Yes, with several small concerns: cooling of the processor during cpu-intensive activity; battery life only half of the time claimed (4+ hours); keyboard (keys) a bit small; trackpad left and right mouse buttons could be raised up; and some viewing angles less than optimal. But overall, great build quality, great performance, and feature-rich for the price.