Back-to-School (and Business??) with a $299 Laptop?

How do they do this? A $299 laptop? Just in time for a flat-ish economic recovery (uh, hey man, it's not really a recovery) and the kids heading back to high school, upper Forms, college and university, WalMart is flogging a $298 Compaq laptop and Best Buy was flogging a $299 Acer. Why, you ask, and how good/useful/reliable could they possibly be? A fine question, we reply. Our answer is a resounding, "NUH-UH!" We've actually tried the Celeron-underpowered, slow-ish cheap-o laptops and found them, um, somewhat wanting. The keyboards, while larger than the slightly zippier Netbooks that are all the rage right now (but way too small and unresponsive for extended typing), are merely a larger version of the generally sucky Netbook and cheap laptop mushboards - fine for surfing and email, but awful for note-taking, report writing and other important education-like stuff and work. The three best and most reasonably priced school and small business laptops we've seen (and, more important, tried) in the more quality-realistic price range of US$600-$1200 will take the bumps & bangs of daily use, speed everything along, ease some of the stress of long hours of typing, and provide a a screen that won't burn your eyes out during hours of concentration, and with even a slight amount of care will continue to work just fine for the next couple of school years. Beat the rush at Amazon.com. They're the Compaq Presario CQ60Z, the Toshiba E105-S1602 (everybody's best buy it seems) along with the superb Toshiba L300, the Apple MacBook Pro, and last but not least the Dell Vostro 1500. Why wait? Stick a crowbar in your wallet and lever out enough cash to buy the kid a decent laptop. It's got to be done and, believe us, we share your pain.

Toshiba Announce Four New Portégé Models

Toshiba Canada unveiled four new Portégés; the ultrathin Portégé R600, which has a Core 2 Duo CPU, 2.14-pound shell, a nine hour battery life; The Portégé A600 which has almost the same specs, but also has a GMA X4500 graphics controller; the Portégé M750- a Tablet PC which features their excellent twisty screen and finally the Tecra R10, which features a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo SP9400, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 200GB 7,200 RPM hard drive and the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 150M GPU.

Toshiba's SCIB Gets 90% Charge In 10 Minutes

Aving.net have released a story about a new battery from Toshiba which can purportedly achieve a 90% charge in around ten minutes. Toshiba unveiled their prototype of the Scib battery (Super Charge ion Battery) during CEATEC 2008.

Toshiba Announce 256GB SSD for Laptops & 32GB SSD for Netbooks

Toshiba have shown their new 256GB SSD Drive, which features a 120MB maximum read and 70MBps write speed which is done via a 3.0Gbps SATA interface. This 2.5-inch drive measures just 3.0-mm thick. Toshiba also announced new 8GB, 16GB and 32GB SATA based flash modules for the netbook market. Although slower than other SSD's the price should make them attractive.

Toshiba Unveil Netbook Concept

Toshiba's has revealed a prototype for a netbook type product which will have a 5.6" touch screen display, Microsoft Vista, a 64GB SSD, GPS chipset and an Intel Atom processor. From the way the device looks, it will be in a different class from units like the Eee PC and other netbook type products.

HD-DVD Retired

Toshiba finally pulled the plug on the future of HD-DVD. Toshiba stated that they "carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," ... "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality." Toshiba plan to slow down shipments of HD-DVD players with the intention of stopping them altogether by the end of March. So Blu-ray has won, but the battle may not be over yet. I for one would like to see Blu-ray succeed, even in light of increasing competition from digital downloads. For me the beauty of owning a disk is the additional content that comes along with it. Digital downloads need to offer that capability and the immediacy of playback without any kind of wait.

Death Of HD-DVD?

Many tech sites are reporting/speculating on the expected death of HD-DVD .. with recent developments such as many retailers opting for Blu-ray and content suppliers throwing their weight behind the format from Sony, it seems inevitable that Toshiba should throw in the towel. However I'm not so sure it will be an easy decision for them with millions invested in the format. I'm sure of one thing, before the dust settles, both camps are going to be sorry that they didn't listen to the lessons that could have been learned from past format wars.

Toshiba Launch 3rd Gen HD DVD Player...

The Blu-ray/HD DVD is hotting up with Toshiba launching the 'HD-EP10' at CeBIT. Launched Stateside in January as the HD-A20 this third gen HD DVD player is looking to be a very cool player ... Pardon the Pun. The EP10 can deliver 1080p content in addition to 1080i and 720p. The only problem is that many of the current so called HDTV's cannot handl this unit full capabilities.