【英语科技】轻薄高速的东芝新款笔记本电脑

For all the excitement about tablet computers, the traditional clamshell laptop still rules. In fact, the computer industry is working hard to make it smaller, lighter and sleeker.

There have been two broad approaches to this task. One, exemplified by netbooks, has been to shrink the footprint of the machine, so it's lighter and cheaper. But this has meant cramped keyboards and screens, and generally wimpier processors and battery life.

The other, pioneered by the MacBook Air and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 series, has been to preserve a standard 13-inch screen, a roomy keyboard, and standard processors for decent performance, but to pare thickness and weight. But this has meant much higher prices.

Now Toshiba, long known for making thin, light, laptops, has introduced a standard-footprint machine that is thin and light -- and uses the latest Intel processors, with generous memory and storage, and strong battery life. Yet it costs much less than the MacBook Air and X300, with the tradeoff being a bit more bulk. I've been testing this model, which is called the Portege R705. Despite a few drawbacks, I like the R705 and can recommend it to consumers willing to pay higher-than-netbook prices for a speedy, standard-size, but easy-to-tote laptop with good battery life.

The R705 is the sole consumer model in a new R700 line mainly aimed at corporate customers. Toshiba sells it online for $890, while Best Buy's site has it at $800. That is about double the price of a top-of-the line netbook, but the R705 is much more powerful than a netbook and is much cheaper than the MacBook Air, which starts at $1,500, or the ThinkPad X301 (the latest in the X300 series), which starts at over $2,000.

This new Toshiba has a solid construction, despite feeling very light in the hand. The bright, vivid screen is sturdy, and the roomy, well-spaced keyboard is firm, with a large space bar, delete key, tab, backspace, shift and arrow keys. The touchpad and buttons also are generously sized.

The R705 is thicker than the MacBook Air, at just over an inch thick versus about three-quarters of an inch for the Apple. It's also thicker than the ThinkPad in some places and thinner in others. At three pounds, it's about the same weight as the Apple, though it's slightly lighter than the ThinkPad. Unlike the Apple and like the ThinkPad, the new Toshiba has a built-in DVD drive.

It has a much better selection of ports than the Apple, including three USB ports instead of one. It also has three ports missing entirely on the Apple: a built-in Ethernet port; an HDMI port for direct, high-definition connection to a TV; and a memory-card reader. (The ThinkPad has three USB ports and an Ethernet jack, but no memory reader or HDMI.)

The Toshiba sports a big 500 gigabyte hard disk and 4 gigabytes of memory to power its 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. The Apple and Lenovo have 2 gigabytes of memory and a maximum storage capacity of 128 gigabytes, though both offer solid-state drives versus the standard mechanical hard disk on the Toshiba.

The R705 has better battery life than the MacBook Air or ThinkPad X300 series. In my tough battery test, where I disable all power-saving features, crank the screen to full brightness, leave on the Wi-Fi and play a continuous loop of music, the R705 got four hours and 29 minutes of battery life. The MacBook Air racked up three hours and 24 minutes in my test, and the X300 just three hours and five minutes.

I estimate that in more-normal use, the R705 could last 5 1/2 hours on a single charge -- an impressive figure, though short of the company's eight-hour claim. There is an Eco button, which switches the machine into a low-power mode to get more battery life.

In my tests, the new Toshiba speedily handled common software, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, Apple's iTunes, and the Firefox and Chrome Web browsers.

The Toshiba has some other benefits. It uses the latest Intel Core processor --
albeit the lowest-end version -- and incorporates an Intel technology called Wi-Di which wirelessly beams whatever is on its screen to a TV, via a $100 adapter. It also has a couple of nice Toshiba software utilities, including a handy Bulletin Board program for organizing files and another called ReelTime, which lets you quickly find recently used files by date.

So what about the drawbacks? Well, for one, it has a relatively low-end integrated graphics chip. It stuttered repeatedly while streaming high-definition video from the Web, even on a very fast Internet connection. I found scrolling on the touchpad to be a bit jerky. And its start-up and restart times were relatively slow, approaching two minutes. Also, the R705 lacks Bluetooth connectivity. Finally, it includes an obnoxious, prominent add-on program from Best Buy that's basically an ad.

Still, overall, this is a very nice laptop whose light, thin body hides a pretty powerful computer.

尽管平板电脑的出现令人兴奋，但传统的翻盖笔记本电脑仍统治着电脑市场。实际上，电脑业正努力让笔记本电脑变得更加小巧轻薄、线条流畅。

Toshiba东芝的Portege R705笔记本电脑只有1英寸厚实现这项任务有两大类方法。第一类方法是缩减笔记本的尺寸大小，这样它就能更轻、更便宜，例如上网本。但这意味着键盘和屏幕的大小将受到限制，处理器效能和电池续航能力通常也较差。

第二类方法是保留标准的13英寸屏幕、宽大的键盘和效能良好的标准处理器，但减少厚度和重量，MacBook Air和联想（Lenovo）ThinkPad X300系列率先采用了这种方法。但这种方法意味着价格也要高得多。

现在，长期以来以生产轻薄型笔记本电脑而闻名的东芝公司（Toshiba）推出了一种标准大小的轻薄型笔记本电脑──而且它使用的是最新的英特尔（Intel）处理器，有充足的内存和存储空间，以及强大的电池续航能力。但是，它比MacBook Air和X300要便宜得多，只不过比它们稍微笨重一些。我测试了这款被称为Portege R705的机型。尽管它仍存在一些缺点，但我喜欢R705，如果消费者愿意以高于上网本的价格购买速度快、标准大小但易于携带、电池续航能力良好的笔记本电脑，那么我会向他们推荐这款机型。

在定位于企业客户的R700系列新款产品中，R705是唯一一款面向消费者的机型。这款机型在东芝公司网站上的售价为890美元，而在百思买（Best Buy）网站上的售价为800美元。这大约是顶级上网本价格的两倍，但R705比上网本的功能强大得多，而且比起价为1,500美元的MacBook Air或起价超过2,000美元的ThinkPad X301（X300系列中的最新款）便宜得多。

这种新款东芝笔记本电脑构造结实，而放在手上的感觉却非常轻巧。屏幕明亮清晰而耐用，键盘宽大匀整而牢固，上面的空格键、删除键、跳格键、返回键、上档键和方向键都很大。触摸板和按键的尺寸也不小。

R705比MacBook Air厚，前者的厚度刚好为1英寸多，后者的厚度约为3/4英寸。它的某些地方也比ThinkPad厚，而另一些地方比ThinkPad薄。R705重3磅，大约和MacBook Air一样重，但比ThinkPad略轻。这种新款东芝笔记本电脑带有内置DVD光驱，这一点不同于MacBook Air，但与ThinkPad相同。

它的接口选择比MacBook Air多得多，包括三个USB接口而不是1个。它还有MacBook Air上完全没有的三个接口：1个内置以太网接口、1个用于直接向电视传输高清信号的HDMI接口和1个记忆卡读卡器。（ThinkPad有3个USB接口和1个以太网接口，但是没有记忆卡读卡器和HDMI接口。）

这款东芝笔记本电脑的一大卖点是，它拥有500G大硬盘和4G内存，这令其预装的64位Windows 7家庭高级版如虎添翼。而前面提到的苹果（Apple）笔记本电脑和联想笔记本电脑的内存都是2G，最大存储空间为128G，尽管这两者配置的都是固态硬盘，而不是东芝笔记本电脑上的标准机械硬盘。

R705的电池续航时间长于MacBook Air和ThinkPad X300系列。在我对电池进行的严格测试中，我关闭了所有节电模式，将屏幕调到最亮，开着无线网络并连续循环播放音乐，此时R705的电池续航时间为4小时29分钟。在我的测试中，MacBook Air总共坚持了3小时24分钟，而X300只坚持了3小时5分钟。

我估计在更通常的使用情况下，R705充一次电可以使用5个半小时──这是个令人印象深刻的数字，尽管它比该公司声称的8小时要短。这款电脑上还有一个Eco键，可以将电脑转换为低耗能模式，以获得更长的电池续航时间。

在我的测试中，这种新款东芝笔记本电脑处理Microsoft Office、Adobe Reader、苹果的iTunes、以及Firefox和Chrome网络浏览器等普通软件的速度很快。

这款东芝笔记本电脑还有其他一些优点。它使用的是最新的英特尔酷睿处理器──尽管是低端版本──并融入了英特尔公司的一种被称为Wi-Di的技术，这种技术能将其屏幕上显示的内容通过一个价值100美元的适配器以无线方式发送到电视上。它还带有一些不错的东芝软件工具，包括一款叫作Bulletin Board的程序和另一款叫作ReelTime的程序，前者是一个方便易用的文件整理程序，后者可以让你按日期快速查找到最近使用过的文件。

那么，这款笔记本电脑的缺点是什么？有一个缺点是，它的集成显卡相对较为低端。当播放网络上的高清视频时，它会反复卡壳，即使在网速很快时也是如此。我发现，在触控板上滑动时有点滞涩。它在启动和重启时也相对较慢，要花将近2分钟时间。而且，R705没有蓝牙连接功能。最后，它带有一个来自百思买的扎眼而令人反感的附加程序，这个程序基本上就是个广告。

但是，整体来看，这仍是一款非常不错的笔记本电脑，在它轻薄的外壳下藏着一台相当强大的机芯。