Feisty Toshiba punches above its weight

The Life: Super-thin laptops called ultrabooks are PC makers' answer to the rising popularity of tablet computers such as Apple's iPad.

The Toshiba Portege Z835 is close to half a pound lighter than Apple's Macbook Air.Courtesy photo

Super-thin laptops called ultrabooks are PC makers' answer to the rising popularity of tablet computers such as Apple's iPad.

Q&A: Portege bridges the gap well

What type of display does the Portege feature? It has a 13.3 inch display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixel display. The resolution is the standard ultrabook resolution but not as good as Apple's MacBook Air. It also has what Toshiba calls Resolution+ technology, which takes standard-definition DVD content and improves it so viewers get a sharper picture image that is more akin to high definition.

Are there any limitations to this Resolution+ feature? It can only be used on the Windows Media Player 12, which means it does not work for any poor-quality videos on websites on YouTube and Vimeo.

What kind of software does the Toshiba ultrabook come packaged with? It comes with a lot of "bloatware" – software you don't need. This includes face recognition and a fingerprint utility. But users may find some of its other built-in software such as its password utility, PC health monitor and recovery disc creator useful.

How did the category of ultrabooks come into being in the first place? The name ultrabook is an Intel trademark, as it is the chip maker's attempt to stimulate the market for Intel-based laptops to compete against ARM processor-based tablet computers. Intel has made available US$300 million (Dh1.1 billion) for computer manufacturers to help them to make ultrabooks.

Of late, a range of PC makers such as Acer, Asus and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have developed their own brands of ultrabooks that cost on average US$1,000 (Dh3,673), and which have high-performance computing with powerful Intel Sandy Bridge processors.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Japanese manufacturer Toshiba has also come to the party with its ultrabook brand called the Portege Z835.

But the Portege costs just $800 on BestBuy.com. Also, it is 16mm thick and weighs 1.12kg, which is close to 227 grams lighter than Apple's MacBook Air.

Despite its slim and featherweight features, the company has still managed to include two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, headphone and mic ports, plus ports for ethernet and HDMI cables along the sides of the device.

The laptop lives up to the ultrabook standard of performance too; it is able to boot up in 23 seconds, and it has up to eight hours of battery life thanks to its eight-cell battery.

Running multiple programs and downloading files from the Web can easily be done at the same time with this computer, without slowing down its performance.

However, on the down side the Portege's look and feel leaves a lot to be desired.

Its grey-on-black boxy design is rather boring and dated, and its keyboard is strangely configured, because the individual keys are seemingly spread more widely than the average laptop.

Top 5: Top five ultrabooks

1 Asus Zenbook UX21EUS$1,320 (Dh4,848)

2 Acer Aspire S3$1,090

3 Lenovo Thinkpad X1$1,199

4 Samsung 9 Series notebook 900X3A$1,872

5 Toshiba Portege Z830$800

Having said that, the keyboard does have useful features such as being what its makers call spill-resistant.

Furthermore, it has back-lighting as well, which is useful for those who (for whatever reason) find themselves having to type up documents or emails in the dark.

The Quote: "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." Isaac Asimov, US science-fiction novelist and scholar (1920-1992)

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