Ok, now this laptop looks very promising as a road warrior's best friend. It's light, 2.5 pounds with an optical drive (dvd/cd burner). Read the following from notebooks.com

 Toshiba announced the new Portege R500 business notebook will have an optional 64GB solid state drive. Configured with the SSD and no optical drive, the Portege R500 weighs only 1.72 pounds, making it the lightest 12.1-inch widescreen notebook available.

The 64GB SSD is a feature many are eagerly awaiting. Some notebooks are currently offered with a 32GB SSD, which is too mall for most users. Solid state drives are more shock resistant, consume less energy and are quieter than traditial hard disk drives.

Toshiba’s says the Portege R500 is the world’s thinnest notebook series with an integrated optical disk drive; the world’s first notebook to include a 7mm optical drive; the world’s first widescreen 12.1-inch indoor/outdoor transreflective backlit LED screen; and the world’s longest battery life in a widescreen 12.1-inch notebook. That’s a lot to live up to, and hopefully Toshiba can deliver on all those promises.