Convince me to buy Toshiba Portege R835

I am in market for a new laptop and waiting for back to school to start as i expect some offers at that time. I want to buy something which is lightweight and is 13.3" screen size. I already have a Toshiba satellite L300D which i bought 4 years back and is still working fine. I know that bigger screen size will mean increase in weight so i am settling on the 13.3" screen range.

I have checked ultrabooks and as of now i feel that their price is high and low capacity in terms of HDD/SSD size. Also they usually don't have full range of ports that we get in a regular laptop.

So 2 months back my office laptop went bad and had to get replaced and they gave me a newer laptop, a Toshiba Portege R700 and i was very impressed with its weight which was almost similar to many ultrabooks insipte of having a HDD (not SSD) and an optical drive too. The battery life too is good for my needs. And it is slim too (not ultrabook slim but slimmer than regular laptops).

So i have had partially decided to get a portege for my personal needs too and see that the newer R835 model (not the newest R930 series) is good. The R930 series seems expensive (above 1000 $).
Now i need some more convincing and pushing before i take the plunge on the R835. I will decide the submodel after checking the specs and i am going to buy from amazon.com only.

 

Do Toshiba Portege have 3 year warranty as stated on their portege website ? Is it true or this requires some additional payment ? Also is it international warranty ?

 

The great thing about the portege R-series is that you can put a full-sized 2.5" SSD drive into the notebook [the portege Z ultrabook can only use mSATA]. I like the porteges and think they are great [if you need a optical drive]. You may want to wait it out and see if Best Buy gets a cheaper version of the portege.

Another laptop worth checking out is the SONY VAIO S-series at Best Buy @ $900. It has a 13.3" screen [matte], 750GB hybrid harddrive [SSD cache], Bluray drive, and switchable intel/AMD 6470m graphics. My mother has this laptop and I can say it is very impressive.
Sony - 13.3" VAIO S Series Laptop - 8GB Memory - 754GB Hard Drive - Silver - VPCSC41FM/S


As for the portege Z-ultrabook [which is also great, my sister just bought one for college], they are meant to supplment a desktop. The storage on ultrabooks are lacking because they have mSATA SSD drives [which are very expensive]. Best Buy has the portege Z835 for $699 right now. It comes with a full range of ports: ethernet, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA monitor, etc... [I believe it was praised as the Ultrabook with the most available ports]
Toshiba - 13.3" Portégé Ultrabook Laptop - 4GB Memory - 128GB Solid State Drive - Silver - Z835-P330

Here's a photo that shows the size differences between a mSATA , 2.5" SSD, and 3.5" HDD. [mSATA on the left, SSD in middle [Samsung white sticker], HDD on right].



Good luck with your notebook research; I'm sure you'll make a wise decision.

 

Only the business-tier porteges have the standard 3-year warranty [they come with Windows 7 Professional]. These must be bought directly from Toshiba: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/laptop-family.jsp?family=Portege
It only requires additional money if you want to upgrade it to Express/On-Site or get Accidental coverage.

If you decide to get a consumer grade portege [Windows Home premium], then it comes with a 1 year warranty [which you'll have to pay extra for 3 years].


As for the International Warranty, it would be best to contact Toshiba directly. Toshiba USA info: Contact Toshiba

 

Thanks for the detailed reply. I can only buy from amazon since I have good amount of balance in my amazon account. Can you point me out to the Sony one you mentioned, on amazon.com? For some reason I could not find the exact model.

Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk HD

 

Sorry, didn't realize you were restricted to Amazon.
The SONY model i mentioned [as with the portege z835] are Best Buy ONLY models. [the actual SONY S-Series have a higher price tag].
I also checked on Amazon and couldn't find it.