Rumored Portégés to Challenge MacBook Air?

According to one source, Toshiba's lightest upcoming Portégé model will be just an inch thick and weigh just 1.7 lbs.

It hasn’t taken long, following Apple’s MacBook Air announcement, for other competitors to wheel out their own ultra-thin offerings – or at least for news of them to leak to Web outlets. Yesterday it was Lenovo’s rumored X300 ultra-light notebook that cropped up on Gizmodo, and more recently, the upcoming Toshiba Portégé R500 models leaked on Akihabara News.

According to Akihabara, Toshiba will release an R500-11J and a R500-11I, both with the same 1-inch-thick form factor (at the thickest portion), but with the 11J model ending up as the lighter of the two thanks in part to an omitted optical drive. This shaves weight from 999 grams on the 11l to just 779 grams (1.7 lbs) on the 11J. These specs make both notebooks significantly lighter than the 3-pound MacBook Air, but still not quite as thin, with the Air reaching only .76 inches at its thickest portion. Screen size is also smaller on the Toshiba, 12.1 inches compared to the Air’s 13.3.

Inside, both models will come configured with much of the same hardware, including an Intel U7600 Centrino Core 2 Duo processor running at 1.2GHz, Intel’s GMA 950 chipset for graphics, and up to 2GB of RAM. Built-in Wi-Fi will be standard, but more importantly, HSDPA Internet will be available as an upgrade. One notable difference will come from hard drives. The 11J will receive a 64GB solid-state drive, while the 11l gets a 120GB SATA drive.

While neither specs nor prices have been officially verified by Toshiba, Akihabara claims the 11J will sell for €2500 ($3,659) at launch, with the 11l going for €2050 ($3,000).