Toshiba celebrates 25 years of laptops with new Portege, Libretto models

The very first laptops started turning up about a quarter of a century ago, so it's natural that we'd start seeing some nostalgic looks back (we've seen some vintage models recently from the Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba archives). Toshiba is taking it one step further by releasing a pair of 25th-anniversary laptops.
The first is the Portege R700, a follow-up to one of our favorite laptops, the Portege R500. While that 2007 model had a 12-inch display and was one of the last vestiges of the $2,000-plus ultraportable category (before Netbooks came in and provided a less expensive small-screen option), this new version is an almost entirely different animal. It's a 13-inch model, still light and portable, but not in the same way the R500 was (especially in its solid-state-drive version).
Instead, the R700 comes in at under $1,000, weighs 3 pounds and is about one inch thick, while still including an optical drive. Unlike the latest 13-inch MacBooks, the R700 uses Intel's newer Core i-series CPUs. The magnesium alloy casing is reinforced with a honeycomb rib design, which, when we handled a demo system recently, felt much sturdier than the old Portege R500, which suffered from some serious lid flexing.
The business version of the R600 starts at $999 and includes a port replicator connection on the bottom, while the consumer version (differentiated by a blue lid) is $899, and includes Intel's Wireless Display technology, which uses a sold-separately receiver to transmit video signals to your TV.