Hasta La Gadget!

Toshiba and GQ have teamed up to auction off limited-edition notebooks designed around celebrities’ lifestyles. The celebrities involved are Hines Ward, Joe Perry, Omar Epps and Rainn Wilson.

All bias for The Office’s Dwight shoved aside, my vote goes to Rainn Wilson. He was the only celeb in this event to design his own notebook (above), according to a Toshiba spokeswoman, and it looks ludicrously hysterical. The other three celebs’ notebooks were designed by Toshiba.

The notebooks are being auctioned off on eBay until Friday. Each celebrity lists his chosen charity on Toshiba’s website.

Photo: Toshiba

(Thanks, Kelly!)

Alright, we’re not too happy with the Natural Selection moniker implying that being a celebrity is somehow a marker of evolutionary prowess, but we’ll forgive Toshiba this one time. The Japanese company has recruited a quartet of famous folks to help promote its wares with limited edition laptops painted to their specifications. Aerosmith guitar legend Joe Perry, the no less mythical Rainn Wilson, Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward and his coach Mike… oh wait, that’s Omar Epps, have put their own personal stamps on a selection of Toshiba’s latest 505 laptop models from the A, P, M, and Qosmio X series. These will be auctioned off on eBay starting this Friday, with all proceeds going to charity. Any more questions before you start the bidding? No? Good.

Toshiba Natural Selection laptops get celebrity paintjobs, good causes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boy, do we have a nice slab of data for you to sink your teeth into today. The 3-year service history of more than 30,000 laptops has been pored over, analyzed, and reduced to gorgeous comparative charts, which you know you’re dying to know more about. We should note, however, that the service was provided by SquareTrade, whose primary business is selling extended warranties, but that shouldn’t completely prejudice us against reaching conclusions on the basis of the presented facts. Firstly, netbooks have shown themselves to be on average 20 percent less reliable than entry-level laptops, which in turn are 10 percent more likely to break down than premium machines. In other words, you get what you pay for — shocking, right? The big talking point, though, will inevitably be the manufacturer comparison chart above: here ASUS and Toshiba (rather appropriately) share the winners’ spoils, while HP languishes in the ignominious last place, with more than a quarter of all laptops expected to suffer a hardware fault of some kind within three years. So, does your experience corroborate / refute this info? Keep it gentlemanly, okay?

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Laptops

Laptop reliability survey: ASUS and Toshiba win, HP fails originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS has already gone public with its plans to jump past Dell to become the number three PC vendor by 2011. Naturally, with fierce competition from all sides, the Taiwanese PC maker isn’t going to achieve this by simply slapping the Eee logo onto everything it can build; acquisitions are the key to that kind of rapid growth. So it’s no surprise to hear Jonney Shih, ASUS chairman, listing Toshiba’s PC business amongst its possible targets for acquisition according to the Commercial Times. After all, Toshiba’s estimated 5% global marketshare is enough to bring ASUS within wrastlin’ distance of Round Rock, Tejas. In a shocking admission by Shih, talks have already begun but the results are not yet finalized.

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS courting Toshiba in bid to become top-3 PC maker? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Backside illumination may sound like something a proctologist would use in a poorly-lit examining room, but it’s actually a re-imagining of the CMOS sensor that brings the photodiodes closer to the action, thus delivering brighter images from smaller packaging. OmniVision and Sony both have their takes on the tech and now Toshiba is putting it into a 14.6 megapixel sensor for cellphones and compact cameras. The company claims light absorption is boosted by 40%, resulting in bright pictures despite the high-density 1/2.3-inch sensor. Early production will begin before the end of the year but manufacturing lines won’t start firing en masse until sometime next summer, meaning yet another dark and murky winter of dark and murky pictures.

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

Toshiba launches 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor with backside illumination for cellphones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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