1151733_isolated_laptopAccording to a study commissioned by Dell last year, over 12,000 people misplace their laptops at US airport, per week. That adds up to approximately 624,000 incidents a year!

The trend’s hotspot? LAX, featuring 1,200 absent-minded laptop owners a week. The laptops are usually lost at security checkpoints, with people trying to go through them as hastily as possible. Here’s sound advice from an airport manager, who’s probably witnessed laptop-loss numerous times:

Besides geek-squad mantras to encrypt and back up data, the tips also include some very down-to-earth wisdom: Only take a laptop if it’s really necessary to your trip and give yourself lots of time “to avoid mistakes made more likely by having to hurry. Airports are a physical and mental obstacle course.”

Amen to that.

Have you left your laptop behind? Why, where, and how?

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Design
Note: The R600 has been out for several months, we just tested their updated system with the mega SSD. So if you’ve read about the build before, you can skip down to our section on performance.

For $3,500 (as tested with 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400, 3GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel 4500MHD graphics, DVD burner, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi n), the Portege may be a bit of a disappointment right out of the box. Yes, it’s ridiculously light, starting at 2.46lbs, but that weight comes at a cost of feel. It’s plastic, and no amount of metal paint can get around that. But luckily the plastic is fairly smudge-proof and part of a “shock absorbing design” complete with “spill resistant” keyboard. In other words, the system may be more durable than a Macbook, especially with so few moving parts.

The 12.1-inch screen is technically WXGA (widescreen) resolution, though something about the system’s shape makes it look more vertical, like a 4:3 screen of yore. This is a minor point, of course, and its non-glossy screen gets just bright enough to use indoors by a window. In full-out sunlight, you can one-button switch the system into “transreflective” mode, essentially using the sun to brighten the screen. High brightness (in standard mode) is still the brightest setting, even under direct sunlight, but the transreflective setting probably uses a lot less power.
Extras, from the effective fingerprint scanner to the eSATA and SD ports, do a lot to sweeten the deal on the small, utilitarian system. And in this era, it’s straight up shocking to see an optical bay pop out of a system that’s just .77 inches thick.

Performance
The R600 runs Vista very fluidly, especially given its stature. Firefox, Windows Media Player, HD content streamed from the web—none of it will leave you waiting. But given the system’s Intel 4500MHD GPU, don’t get any fantasies of gaming.

Many will expect the computer to boot nearly instantly given the SSD—I’ve heard this expectation a number of times—but the still takes about a minute to fully load. The bottleneck here is simply not the hard drive.
How does the R600 compare to other light systems like the Macbook Air or Lenovo X301? Just as you’d expect from the specs on paper, it’s slower than the Macbook Air. But even with the same processor, it outperforms the X301.

Then you have to check out the speeds on the SSD.
Fast! This isn’t some bargain basement drive that Toshiba shoved in a laptop for bragging rights. I mean, a 512GB SSD is clearly for bragging rights, but it’s Toshiba’s biggest and fastest drive made in-house—way nicer than we see competition from Lenovo and Apple (which we believe to both use earlier gen, Samsung drives).

But what does this speed chart mean in real life? Copying a 700MB file on my Macbook Pro (with a 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive) took 35 seconds. On the R600, that same copy may have legitimately cracked the 8 second barrier. I’d like to say that I never took the speed for granted, but I totally started taking the speed for granted. Superman doesn’t bow down and thank the sun every time he avoids traffic by flying over Metropolis, so why should I be any different?
Toshiba’s 6-cell battery is rated internally at 7 hours, 32 minutes. I found that it offers 3 hours and 35 minutes of MPEG4 playback (screen maxed bright, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, performance settings normal). Our test is rigorous, and it’s pretty common for laptops to only get about 50% of their rated battery life in our real world use simulation. Of course, the computer could probably eek out another 30 minutes to an hour with less taxing processes and a dimmer screen.

I Might Buy One…In 2011
The key to remember, of course, is that the 128GB R500 ran $3,000 just a year ago. Now, their 512GB R600 is $3,500. Even with the price bump on their top tier system, Toshiba has the right idea here: Push the envelope and force the market to adapt. Keep topping the sundae with cherries and someone will be hungry enough to buy it (meanwhile those of us who aren’t will have plenty of dropped cherries to munch on).
Still, I don’t know that I’d recommend this fully stuffed R600 with full gusto. It’s simply not as beautiful as premium, small-form laptops like the Dell Adamo or Apple’s Macbook Air (side by side above), and the prices of flash storage will certainly come down (and quickly at that). But I’m glad Toshiba made the thing because, frankly, somebody needed to load a laptop with a legitimately beastly SSD first.


The huge SSD Is fast


Under 3lbs, less than an inch thick


Substantial ports and extras


For $3,500, it feels a bit like a Pontiac

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In its report entitled Keeping Notebooks Past Their Prime: A Study of Failures and Costs, J. Gold said adding two more years in the laptops’ prime usage may cost a company $1,050 per device as older, slower and less reliable machines result in productivity loss.

While the study focuses on the corporate situation, not on your Every Joe gadget user, it’s still a warning: I know that manufacturers are less enthusiastic with their support for consumers, so it’s likely multi-year warranties are totally useless for non-corporate customers. At least, that was my experience with my first Dell laptop.

What do you think?

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For instance, the basic Studio XPS 13 laptop costs $999. Here’s what you get for that price:

* A 2.0 GHz Processor (Intel P7350)
* Vista Home Premium
* A 13.3″ 1366 x 768 display, with an integrated 2.0 megapixel webcam
* DVD/CD burner
* 3GB DDR3 RAM
* 250GB 7200 rpm hard disk
* NVIDIA 9400M G
* Support for Wireless N (802.11n)

That setup won’t be able to run more demanding games like the notorious Crysis, but it’s powerful enough for practically any other task. Shop for an XPS Studio 13.
Other Deals

Dell’s also upped the ante by discounting their offerings further, as part of the current Dell Days of Deals promo, running until this June 25 (5:55 AM CDT). To paraphrase some writer: “Dell’s discounts depend on the phase of the moon, astronomical alignments, and the direction of the wind.” Anyways, here are some laptop promos that seem interesting:

* Studio 15 for $699
* Inspiron Minis starting at $299
* Studio XPS 16 laptop for $1199

Just remember the lower price comes at a price though; Dell’s reputation for poor customer service is in vogue right now. Though this shouldn’t be too much of a problem for computer savvy owners. Hopefully.

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The problem is that some people are unaware of how rude they come off, tapping away on their thumboards in meetings or even one-on-one conversations.

This is where smartphones still fall short versus laptops. For some reason, and I’ve seen this happen many times, people who use laptops to essentially not pay attention while getting things done on their own agenda come off as more polite. More businesslike even.

It’s a reality that will probably not change soon. You can tap away on the keyboard, do a little furious clicking, all while glancing quickly at the speaker. All in the name of pretending that you’re doing an activity related to the current business conversation. So long as you pretend to follow the 7 rules for using laptops in meetings I guess.

Heck, so long as no one else can see your screen, you can even dabble in casual gaming. That’s also something I’ve seen happen with my own eyes.

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