Hasta La Gadget!

Glasses-free 3D on your laptop is now just a couple of brief months away. Toshiba has set loose details of its new 15.6-inch Qosmio T851, and this fella promises to not only dispense with the unstylish glasses, but to also give you 2D and 3D imagery at the same time. You’ll be able to view content in differing dimensions in neighboring windows (as illustrated above), thanks to the familiar parallax technique — sending a different image to each eye — which is here aided by the integrated webcam to track the position of your face in order to deliver the most fittingly angled visuals. There’s also integrated 2D to 3D conversion, powered by a dedicated SpursEngine image processor, with Face3D technology automatically recognizing faces and applies a “human depth template” to their features. Aside from Toshi’s obsession with faces, there’s a GeForce GT540M churning out the graphics, a Core i5-2410M processing processes, up to 8GB of RAM, and a BDXL-reading Blu-ray player. Shipping begins in July, just as soon as the kitchen sink has been fully attached.

Continue reading Toshiba Qosmio T851 can do simultaneous 2D and glasses-free 3D, arriving in Japan this July

Toshiba Qosmio T851 can do simultaneous 2D and glasses-free 3D, arriving in Japan this July originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 06:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Could Toshiba’s nameless Honeycomb tablet finally have a proper name? Thanks to a helpful tipster, we now have our clearest indication yet. Toshiba just filled a trademark application for the name “Thrive” last week and, as you can see above, it clearly describes the goods and services being trademarked as a tablet computer. What’s more, it seems that the company’s also gone on a bit of a domain name buying spree as of late, with it snapping up a number of “Thrive” variations including ToshibaThrive.com, ThriveTablet.com, ThriveToshiba.com and TabletThrive.com (none of which actually go anywhere just yet). Of course, this isn’t the first possible moniker for the tablet that’s cropped up. The name “Antares” surfaced way back at Mobile World Congress, which could account for the ANT model name we also spotted, although it certainly sounds more like a codename than “Thrive” does to our ears — and, as far as we can tell, Toshiba hasn’t attempted to register a trademark for Antares (or any other names recently, for that matter).

[Thanks, Babyfacemagee]

Trademark filing, domain names suggest Toshiba’s tablet might be named ‘Thrive’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Apple released its redesigned MacBook Air in October 2010, much was made of the switch to flash storage using a custom-built Mini PCI Express form factor SSD drive. It took a few weeks but these SSDs would ultimately be released as the commercially available Toshiba Blade X-gale SSD module, model TS128C. Now we’re seeing user reports showing MacBook Airs equipped with a second, even faster SSD with a SM128C part number — the “SM” hinting at its presumed Samsung manufacturing origins. Samsung’s SSD manages up to 260MBps read and 210MBps write speeds compared to Toshiba’s 210MBps read and 185MBps write performance. Of course, it’s hardly unusual for Apple to multi-source components. And a recent decision to source parts from Korea’s Samsung would have been a smart move to keep just-in-time supply lines fully stocked following the spate of disasters in Toshiba’s home country of Japan. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way of confirming which SSD you’re about to purchase without cracking open the retail box and running the OS X System Profiler. Good luck with that.

Some MacBook Airs sporting faster blade SSDs, probably from Samsung originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 03:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inside an old 4GB PATA hard drive. Photo Walknboston / Flickr

If you yank one of Toshiba’s new Self Erasing Drives from a computer and try to use it in another machine, then it can instantly wipe sensitive data, leaving a thief with little more than an empty chunk of glass and silicon.

The SED performs a cryptographic erase on itself. Unlike a regular erase which overwrites data several times to obliterate it, a crypto erase actually just nukes the crypto keys. Data on the dive is encrypted using a 256-bit AES algorithm, and is unencrypted on the fly during normal use. Once the drive detects that it isn’t in its usual machine, it destroys its keys, making the data impossible to decipher.

This is the same tech used in smartphones to perform remote wipes.

The SED can be configured in several ways. The first I have described above. The user can also choose to have certain sections erased on every reboot, have part or all of the drive zapped if an unauthorized host tries to connect, or wipe the drive after x incorrect password attempts.

The drives will come in sizes up to 640GB, and will be ideal for laptop use, or in machines to which many people have physical access. The next version of OS X — 10.7 Lion — should have something similar, but having it built into the drive itself seems like the best idea of all, especially if you travel to and from the U.S and don’t trust the border guards (hint: never trust border guards).

MKxx61GSYG Series Hard Disk Drive [Toshiba via Computer world]

See Also:

• Padlock Encrypted Hard Drive Secures Data With Keypad
• Review: Rugged Hard Drive Serves to Protect Your Digital Booty …

Toshiba‘s thin-but-full-powered Portege R700 was such a hit among business types that the company is now designing other machines in its svelte image. Tosh just unveiled the Tecra R840 and R850 — both of which ape the R700’s slim build — along with the Portege R830, a refresh to the R700 itself. The R830 looks the same, though it has a strip on the edge of the lid that looks like it’s made of magnesium alloy, but is actually plastic — a material that’s expected to improve the signals of the the various antennae housed underneath it. And — surprise, surprise — this refresh adds a USB 3.0 port and Intel Sandy Bridge processor, which the company says should bump the rated battery life to a max of 11 hours, up from eight. Not the corporate type? The company will also sell an $889 consumer version, the R835, that has a one-, not three-year, warranty, and loses enterprise-grade features — namely, Intel’s vPro technology, a docking connector, and an ExpressCard slot.

Meanwhile, the 14-inch R840 and 15.6-inch R850 are also getting Sandy Bridge CPUs, USB 3.0 ports, chiclet keyboards and all-around trimmer silhouettes. These laptops are now made with fiberglass-reinforced casing and the same Honeycomb rib structure that made last year’s R700 sturdy enough to grab one-handed. Of the two, the R840’s slim-down is more dramatic: it’s 25 percent thinner than the last-generation Tecra M11, as you can see in the comparison shots past the break. That’s largely thanks to Intel’s Airflow Cooling technology, which rearranges all of the heat-generating components in a row and draws in cool air from outside the notebook, instead of within. And Tosh claims the battery can last up to ten hours on a charge (11 with an SSD) — a vast improvement over the five and a half to six hours it promised the last time around. Moving up in size to the R850 will get you a number pad, but not that cooling technology. But it is about an inch thick at its thinnest, a point the PC maker is pleased as punch about. The R830, R840, and R850 start at $1,049, $899, and $879, respectively, and are available now on Toshiba’s site, with the consumer-friendly R835 on sale at Best Buy and through the Microsoft Store.

Continue reading Toshiba puts its business laptops on a diet, intros the Portege R830, Tecra R840, and Tecra R850

Toshiba puts its business laptops on a diet, intros the Portege R830, Tecra R840, and Tecra R850 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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