Toshiba Santa Rosa Ships

Toshiba today announced final details and new models for its Santa Rosa-based notebooks as they began shipping devices to stores. Headlining the system builder's updates are three new versions of the Qosmio F45 that cater to budget users. The AV410, AV411, and AV413 all opt for a regular DVD rewriter instead of an HD DVD drive and rely on less costly X3100 integrated video; they still keep the 802.11n wireless and Intel Turbo Memory flash cache as well as the Dolby surround sound. All use a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of memory; the AV410 ($1,299) uses Vista Home Premium and a 200GB, 5400RPM hard drive, while the AV411 ($1,350) upgrades to Vista Ultimate; a mid-price AV413 ($1,310) uses two 120GB drives to offer RAID-class performance at the expense of weight. The three Qosmio updates should be available online today and will show up in retail outlets soon with slight changes.

The company has also specified full details of the HD DVD-equipped Satellite P205. Choosing the S6347 model gives similar performance to the F45 in a larger 17-inch format, dropping only the full Dolby surround processing and using a less expensive 4200RPM, 200GB hard drive. It should reach stores and online sales today for $1,450 and is supplemented by a pair of systems with slower CPUs and reduced storage for $1,000 and $1,250 respectively.

A trio of Satellite U305 models are also shipping to retail stores, Toshiba says. The 13.3-inch widescreen is only available with a DVD burner and scales both with performance and features: the basic S5097 ($900) ships with a 1.86GHz Pentium dual-core chip, 1GB of memory, a 160GB disk, and 802.11g; stepping up to the S5107 at $1,150 adds a 1.73GHz Core 2 Duo, doubles RAM, and offers both 802.11n and Bluetooth. The top S5127 at $1,399 uses Intel's Santa Rosa-based 1.8GHz processor and includes both a 200GB (4200RPM) drive with a 1GB Turbo Memory cache to improve its responsiveness. All but the base model ship with Vista Home Premium.

By Electronista Staff