Weird as it may sound, I usually look at ads and billboards when I walk around town. I call it preferring to be aware of my surroundings. Well, yesterday I saw the ad for the Toshiba Portege Z830 on the tube in London, which means you can now buy it in the United Kingdom. (All prices exclude VAT)
The most basic configuration can be had for £899 ($1406), which also happens to cost $899 in the US. I am very-very disappointed every time I see a 1:1 conversion between US dollars and British Pounds. Toshiba, you probably don’t want to be doing that.
This pile of money buys you a 1.40 GHz i3 Intel processor (2367M) with 3MB of L2 Cache, 4GB of DDR3 Memory, a 128GB Solid-State Drive an Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bits version.
For just £70 more they change the OS to Windows 7 Premium 64 bit version.
£1,099 buys you a 1.7 GHz i5 CPU (2557M) with 3M of L2, 4GB DDR3 and 128 GB SSD pre-installed with Windows 7 Premium 64 bit.
The official site claims to have no data available regarding battery life, but the ad I saw stated 6 hours. That of course depends on many factors. This official site is also where you can order the ultrabook online.
Who should buy a Toshiba Portege Z830? If you absolutely must have a USB 3.0 connector, choose this ultrabook instead of a Macbook Air. Also, if you want a laptop that runs Windows only, this is your computer.
Personally, if I was to part with a lump sum of money and wanted a thin and light ultraportable for it, I would place my bets on the Macbook Air. The reason being that Apple has been manufacturing these for years and that kind of experience implies that they’ve already squashed a good portion of the bugs. There are bound to be bugs in early ultrabooks that will annoy you.
Picture courtesy of The Verge, thank you.
