Hasta La Gadget!

Toshiba may be late to the netbook party, but its mini NB205 (http://tinyurl.com/mu58va) shows up with a bang.

It may have already been teased, poked and prodded, but the TG01 from Toshiba still insisted on making a big splash on its arrival to the UK and we were only too happy to oblige and join in on its launch event in London. As you should know by now, this is Toshiba’s most significant attempt to date at penetrating the consumer smartphone market, and it’s coming equipped with a battering ram named Snapdragon. Head over to Engadget Mobile for the juicy details on the UI, construction and general feel, as well as a neat stash of images and videos of the phone in action.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Video: Toshiba TG01 gets UK launch, we handle it again originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just last summer, Toshiba’s Portege R500 was the first laptop with a 128GB SSD. A year later, Toshiba’s Portege R600 is the world’s first 512GB SSD lappie. So for this one moment, Toshiba is on the top of the world.

Design
Note: The R600 has been out for several months, we just tested their updated system with the mega SSD. So if you’ve read about the build before, you can skip down to our section on performance.

For $3,500 (as tested with 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400, 3GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel 4500MHD graphics, DVD burner, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi n), the Portege may be a bit of a disappointment right out of the box. Yes, it’s ridiculously light, starting at 2.46lbs, but that weight comes at a cost of feel. It’s plastic, and no amount of metal paint can get around that. But luckily the plastic is fairly smudge-proof and part of a “shock absorbing design” complete with “spill resistant” keyboard. In other words, the system may be more durable than a Macbook, especially with so few moving parts.

The 12.1-inch screen is technically WXGA (widescreen) resolution, though something about the system’s shape makes it look more vertical, like a 4:3 screen of yore. This is a minor point, of course, and its non-glossy screen gets just bright enough to use indoors by a window. In full-out sunlight, you can one-button switch the system into “transreflective” mode, essentially using the sun to brighten the screen. High brightness (in standard mode) is still the brightest setting, even under direct sunlight, but the transreflective setting probably uses a lot less power.
Extras, from the effective fingerprint scanner to the eSATA and SD ports, do a lot to sweeten the deal on the small, utilitarian system. And in this era, it’s straight up shocking to see an optical bay pop out of a system that’s just .77 inches thick.

Performance
The R600 runs Vista very fluidly, especially given its stature. Firefox, Windows Media Player, HD content streamed from the web—none of it will leave you waiting. But given the system’s Intel 4500MHD GPU, don’t get any fantasies of gaming.

Many will expect the computer to boot nearly instantly given the SSD—I’ve heard this expectation a number of times—but the still takes about a minute to fully load. The bottleneck here is simply not the hard drive.
How does the R600 compare to other light systems like the Macbook Air or Lenovo X301? Just as you’d expect from the specs on paper, it’s slower than the Macbook Air. But even with the same processor, it outperforms the X301.

Then you have to check out the speeds on the SSD.
Fast! This isn’t some bargain basement drive that Toshiba shoved in a laptop for bragging rights. I mean, a 512GB SSD is clearly for bragging rights, but it’s Toshiba’s biggest and fastest drive made in-house—way nicer than we see competition from Lenovo and Apple (which we believe to both use earlier gen, Samsung drives).

But what does this speed chart mean in real life? Copying a 700MB file on my Macbook Pro (with a 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive) took 35 seconds. On the R600, that same copy may have legitimately cracked the 8 second barrier. I’d like to say that I never took the speed for granted, but I totally started taking the speed for granted. Superman doesn’t bow down and thank the sun every time he avoids traffic by flying over Metropolis, so why should I be any different?
Toshiba’s 6-cell battery is rated internally at 7 hours, 32 minutes. I found that it offers 3 hours and 35 minutes of MPEG4 playback (screen maxed bright, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, performance settings normal). Our test is rigorous, and it’s pretty common for laptops to only get about 50% of their rated battery life in our real world use simulation. Of course, the computer could probably eek out another 30 minutes to an hour with less taxing processes and a dimmer screen.

I Might Buy One…In 2011
The key to remember, of course, is that the 128GB R500 ran $3,000 just a year ago. Now, their 512GB R600 is $3,500. Even with the price bump on their top tier system, Toshiba has the right idea here: Push the envelope and force the market to adapt. Keep topping the sundae with cherries and someone will be hungry enough to buy it (meanwhile those of us who aren’t will have plenty of dropped cherries to munch on).
Still, I don’t know that I’d recommend this fully stuffed R600 with full gusto. It’s simply not as beautiful as premium, small-form laptops like the Dell Adamo or Apple’s Macbook Air (side by side above), and the prices of flash storage will certainly come down (and quickly at that). But I’m glad Toshiba made the thing because, frankly, somebody needed to load a laptop with a legitimately beastly SSD first.


The huge SSD Is fast


Under 3lbs, less than an inch thick


Substantial ports and extras


For $3,500, it feels a bit like a Pontiac

[Additional benchmarks from AppleInsider and ThinkPad Forums]

It’s already out in Japan and a few select countries in Europe, now Toshiba’s skinny TG01 is hitting London on Thursday, July 9th. Presumably the invite will be met with an official UK launch of Tosh’s deftly skinned Snapdragon handset with a Windows Mobile 6.1 core. Then again, it could be a lot of tech reporters eating mini triangular sandwiches slathered with pickle spread discussing the HTC Hero for four hours. We’ll let you know next week.

Filed under: Cellphones

Toshiba’s TG01 stepping out in London on July 9th originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not sold on Toshiba’s new NB205 netbook or one of its many new Satellite laptops announced earlier this week? Don’t worry, ’cause Toshiba’s just announced four more Satellite models, all of which fall under its budget-minded L Series line. Those include the 14-inch Satellite L510/L515, the 15.6- and 16-inch Satellite L500/L505, and the heavyweight 17.3-inch Satellite L550/L555, each of which pack either AMD Athlon or Turion, or Intel Pentium or Core 2 Duo processors depending on the configuration, along with integrated graphics or ATI’s discrete Radeon 3100, a 10-key numeric keypad on the 15.6-inch and larger models, a minimum 2GB of RAM and 250GB hard drive, and Toshiba’s trademark “Fusion” finish on the whole lot of ’em. Best of all, starting prices range from a reasonable $550 to $650, and all are apparently available to order right now.

Filed under: Laptops

Toshiba’s still not done, rolls out new Satellite L Series laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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