Toshiba Portege R835-P81 13.3-Inch LED Laptop - Magnesium Alloy Casing in Blue

I was looking for the previous model Toshiba Portege R835 P70 for some time. After reading all reviews on portable lightweight laptops, I was sold on it. i5 2410 processor, 4GB RAM, and ~3lb weight were great specs. I recently noticed it had been discontinued and there was no apparent replacement on Toshiba's website. That was until Toshiba magically quietly added this new, updated model to their website last week. The Portege R835 P81 takes an already stout laptop and makes it that much better! Now it has an i5 2435 processor rated higher and 2 more GB of RAM (to a total of 6GB). While it only has a 640GB HDD at 5400rpm, it starts up quick and gets going. I love that it's so light weight and makes my life a ton easier in my day to day operations running my business. I needed portability since I spend the better part of my day meeting clients at homes and businesses, and this laptop does the job. I looked into Macbook Airs, Samsung 9 series etc., but nothing beats this... Read more

Update: 1/13/11
This will be the last update. My girlfriend and I broke up and she returned the laptop to me because she doesn't feel comfortable having it anymore. I've sold it on Auction on Ebay for $680.00. This is still a great laptop and I'm truly disappointed I will not get to see it again. I'm thankful for all the positives feedback I've been receiving about this review and I'm very happy to help out. As you can see, the reviews are growing slowly for this laptop so you should feel very confident you won't be disappointed in this laptop.

As for my girlfriend and I, we're not talking anymore and she's gone ahead and purchased her own new laptop, a Sony.

Update: 11/21/11
There was a few problems regarding wifi on this Toshiba where it wouldn't connect to networks that require a password within the browser (workplace or school network where it required your id number/username). We tried using an external wifi adapter via USB and it turned out it... Read more

I'm an IT professional and have used tons of laptops. This Toshiba laptop is very light compared to the macbook pro 13'', and has good battery life. Build quality is also good. However, it has some major drawbacks -- its hard drive, BIOS, and customer service.

The stock hard drive is 5200rpm which is on the slow side. Besides, Toshiba put lots of redundant software on top of windows 7. The result is that starting windows and some apps takes a long time. One resolution to fix the slowness is to get a SSD to replace the slow hard drive. Now here comes the 2nd drawback -- its BIOS.

The SSD I purchased is very fast and supports Sata III. However, the BIOS only supports Sata II which forces the SSD to work at a much lower speed. Note that the Intel chipset built in the laptop does support Sata III; it's just Toshiba's BIOS disabled the Sata III speed. This issue applies to the whole R835 series and has been discussed a lot online. Many people have complained to... Read more