-There’s one thing you need to know about Toshiba’s Portege R500 laptop: Its 12.1-in. screen is backlit with LEDs—those low-power, ultra-durable little balls of magic that are constantly right about to change the world. And an LED-backlit display means the R500 squeezes 8 to 10 hours of runtime out of a tiny, 2.4-pound, six-cell battery.

-The R500 has an Outdoor Display Button, which turns the brightness all the way down, allowing direct sunlight to penetrate the screen and bounce back off a reflective layer, effectively backlighting the display.

-8 to 10 hours of battery life applies to standard usage, with the dozens of white LEDs in the screen running normally. this is an impressive ultralight laptop, weighing just 2.4 pounds despite having an internal optical drive.

-At $2150 for the Vista-Ready model, it’s relatively expensive, but not when compared to similarly configured ultralights (1.20 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1024MB of RAM on the motherboard, 120GB of storage and integrated Wi-Fi).

-For now, though, the Portege R500 looks and feels like the perfect laptop. For now.