Samsung has not traditionally played a huge role in the evolution of notebooks. Companies such as Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Asus have all done noteworthy things to push the envelope, with the Adamo XPS, ThinkPad, IdeaPad and Eee PC all coming from this group. Even those who don't follow technology on a daily basis would probably associate those names with notebooks, but we wonder just how big a following Samsung has in the mobile computing sector. It's not like Samsung is a newbie in the notebook world, but they've definitely played a more "low-key" role over the past few years.

Taking all that into consideration, we have to commend Samsung on the launch of their R80 series. These machines were just introduced this month, and we have managed to grab one of the first R580 notebooks to leave the production line...