Last week brought us the MacBook Air, which is no doubt impressive as far as looks and size go. However, even if you upgrade to the SSD kit with a faster processor, it still leaves much to be desired. My biggest complaints include the lack of an optical drive and the limited ports to be found. If I’m going to spend that kind of money on a notebook it needs to at least have an optical drive and an ethernet port. After the latest announcement from Toshiba, I can say with some certainty that I would pick their Portégé R500 over the Air any day of the week.

The big news from Toshiba is that their R500 will now include an internal 3G HSDPA chip that will let you access the internet almost anywhere (with the appropriate subscription of course). The notebook will have a 1.2GHz Intel ULV Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a 12.1-inch screen. It will come in two flavors, the lighter 1.7lb which will feature a 64GB SSD drive, but lack an optical drive, this will set you back $3,658. The slightly heavier (2.2lb) version will net you an ultra-slim DVD burner and a 120GB 5400RPM HDD for only $3,000.

Source: DailyTech