Toshiba may usurp Apple and Dell for thin PC title

Toshiba plans to claim the crown of the world's thinnest and lightest 13-inch notebooks, a leak may have revealed today. The system would use a full-power Core i7 processor but would use exotic cooling and construction to get as thin and light as Apple's MacBook Air or Dell's Adamo XPS. It would use a system known as "Mountain Blaze" to lower heat and would be made out of a unibody, honeycomb structure that would keep it stiff even at its thin dimensions.

The system's aimed-for 2.4-pound weight would come about by using the company's 512GB SSD as an option, according to Vietnam's VozExpress; a standard system would be heavier as it would use a conventional 500GB rotating drive. Toshiba's planned thickness wasn't mentioned, but the existence of a 2.6mm (0.1in) thick LCD would be key to the design.

As a technology showcase, the unnamed PC would also be the first notebook to use Toshiba's SCiB batteries previously found only in hybrid cars. As used today, the ion battery can recharge to 90 percent of its capacity in 10 minutes and is more resistant to the usual extremes of temperature or shock than a normal lithium-ion cell. The battery packs also usually last up to 10 years, or twice as long as Apple's current 5-year packs.

The ultraportable would ship sometime in the summer and is expected to have at least three main configurations, with the starter model using a 2.26GHz Core i3 and 4GB of RAM and higher tiers upgrading to a 2.4GHz Core i5 and a 2.66GHz Core i7. Pricing isn't known but is likely to skew towards the high end.

If completed as expected, the system would be a minor breakthrough for computers as it would defy the usual requirements of ultra-thin systems. The MacBook Air currently uses Intel's low-power Core 2 Duo S to reduce some power but still preserve some level of performance. Dell's Adamo XPS shies away from performance altogether and uses an ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo to achieve its goal.

By Electronista Staff