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Toshiba is rolling out a number of notebook introductions on Tuesday, with the Qosmio X875 and X875 3D the latest among them. The flagship notebooks are meant for gamers and/or video editors as well as other demanding users. They get Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M GPUs with 3GB of dedicated video memory.
Toshiba has introduced a new gaming notebook, the Qosmio X870. The device features a 17.3-inch display with 1920x1080 resolution and 3D capabilities, powered by Intel processors and an unnamed NVIDIA GPU with 3GB of dedicated memory.
NVIDIA picked its GeForce LAN 6 tourney to unveil the second generation of its 3D glasses hardware. 3D Vision 2 helps cure a common weakness of 3D by producing a twice as bright picture and improving the color saturation over traditionally washed out 3D video. The lenses are also 20 percent larger, immersing the gamer more in the image, and are made of softer materials that fit better with headphones.
Toshiba on Tuesday prepped the launch of its glasses-free 3D Qosmio notebook for the US. Americanized as the F755, the 15.6-inch notebook should reach the US on August 16. Pricing starts high at $1,699 but outfits it with a quad 2GHz Core i7, 6GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive, and a GeForce GT 540M for the crucial video component.
Toshiba has introduced what it says is the first glasses-free 3D notebook, the Qosmio F750 3D. The 15.6-inch notebook uses the webcam to adjust the lenticular display based on a user's face and position of the eyes. It tracks the user's head movements to maintain the effect as the owner changes stance.
NVIDIA was the first to start off its Computex unveilings in earnest late Sunday by launching two notebook graphics chipsets and 3D glasses. The GeForce GTX 560M headlines the group and is designed to bring high-end gaming to moderately sized notebooks without hurting battery life. Its 192 processing cores, 192-bit memory bus, and 775MHz core clock speed give it enough speed to play games at 1080p, but as the first design with Optimus live graphics switching from major PC builders, it should still provide reasonable battery life by dropping to Intel video with less demanding tasks.
Toshiba has claimed a technology breakthrough with the first notebook to have a color-changing shell. Its Qosmio T750 uses a technique developed by Touré Meihan, known as Picasus, that shifts the color from blue to purple depending on the viewing angle. While similar to the effect of chameleon paint on cars from TVR and others, Picasus doesn't rely on metal at all and instead uses several polyester laminate layers, each of which in turn has thousands of nano-sized layers to create a metallic, shimmering look.
Toshiba has demonstrated a new 3D display panel that eliminates the need for users to wear special glasses. The technology, which is featured in the company's prototype Qosmio notebook, reportedly overcomes viewing-angle problems by tracking the user's eyes with a webcam and compensating for the change in position.
Toshiba today upgraded the Qosmio X500 to take advantage of NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 460M. The upgraded 1.5GB graphics chip gives a significant performance lift over the 360M and better helps drive the 18.4-inch display. Among the boosts are native DirectX 11 game support and better GPGPU tasks.
Toshiba staked out a first in the PC field today with the dynabook TX/98MBL. The 15.6-inch system not only stands as Toshiba's first notebook with a 3D-capable display but the first anywhere to play Blu-ray movies. A combination of a 120Hz LCD, a GeForce GTS 350M with 3D Vision support, and a special version of WinDVD BD display the extra dimension with movies when using (bundled) active shutter glasses.
Toshiba has teamed up with GQ magazine on auctioning off notebooks designed by four famous men. The 'artists' include Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, actor and writer Rainn Wilson, rock musician Joe Perry and actor and producer Omar Epps, with each designing the exterior and interior look of four different Toshiba Satellite notebooks.
Toshiba on Wednesday updated its notebooks with Windows 7 and a rare promise among Windows PC makers. The company promises that all of its systems running the new OS, including its touchscreen models, will go without any icons on the desktop except for the default Recycle Bin. System performance should get a boost as the PCs will run as little software in the background as possible, in many cases only running anti-virus tools.
Quickly following the UK release, Toshiba has brought out an American version of the Qosmio X500. The 18.4-inch desktop replacement notebook is the PC builder's first to use a Core i7 processor and revolves around the 1.6GHz quad-core chip's added power for games and movies. It similarly comes with a 1GB GeForce GTS 250M for video. The 1080p display is stock, though for the US release Toshiba notes that not every model will have a Blu-ray drive.
Toshiba UK on Wednesday announced it has added a new flagship gaming notebook, the 18.4-inch Qosmio X500. The system is just the second notebook driven by Intel's mobile Core i7 CPU, which normally runs at 1.6GHz but can operate at 2.8GHz when in Turbo Boost mode. Toshiba also regards it as a media system beyond the processor and gives it both a 1080p display as well as a Blu-ray burner and HDMI-CEC support for remote control from other peripherals.
Toshiba on Friday introduced three new Dynabook Qosmio-series notebooks for its home territory of Japan, with the multimedia-focused G50 and GX and FX pair meant for gamers with nearly identical specifications. All three feature a dual-core 2.4GHz Intel CPU set into Intel's PM45 Express mainboard and an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics card with a dedicated 512MB of memory, along with 4GB of RAM. The two gaming notebooks get 320GB hard disk drives and an integrated draft-N 2.0 Wi-Fi module. The key difference between the two is the GX notebook's 18.4-inch, 1680x945 LCD screen and the FX notebook's 15.4-inch, 1280x800 display.
Toshiba this morning gave the Qosmio X305 a major upgrade by updating nearly all its architecture. The 17-inch gaming system's new Q708 variant adds a 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme quad-core chip and upgrades from the GeForce 9700M video hardware of before to dual GeForce 9800M GTS graphics chipsets that should provide more desktop-like 3D performance than before. Like the MacBook Pro, however, the X305 also uses a GeForce 9400M as its mainboard chipset and so is not only more space-efficient but can switch to integrated video to save power when the system isn't attached to a wall outlet.
Sony and Toshiba today said they would start producing 45 nanometer versions of the Cell processor next year. The process is 50 percent more complex than the 65 nanometer process used for most current Cell chips and will allow the PlayStation 3 to use both a much smaller and cooler-running processor but also to cost less. Versus the current manufacturing process, the two companies' new technique can produce about 50 percent more chips at a time, reducing the cost for each processor.
NVIDIA today quietly published details for its two highest-end GeForce 9M series notebook graphics chips following leaks by PC makers. The 9800M line is now NVIDIA's flagship and is much closer to desktop-class graphics than the earlier 9600M; the top-end 9800M GTX has 112 effects processors that compares closely to the 128 of the desktop 9800, suiting it to desktop replacement portables and very compact desktops. It runs at 500MHz at its core with a 1.9GHz effective memory speed.
With announcements from HP, Lenovo, and Sony, Toshiba also took the opportunity to announce (and ship) new Centrino 2 versions of its recently announced notebooks for faster networking, better performance, and improved battery life. The Satellite Pro S300 laptop, updated with latest Core Duo processor and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, offers Toshiba's fourth-generation EasyGuard technology, sleep-and-charge USB ports, optional SSD/flash-memory drive configurations, built-in docking capabilities and Webcam with business card reader software (starts at $1,2993). For its business-oriented Tecra models, Toshiba is using Intel's Centrino 2 with vPro micro-architecture to manage and secure mobile workforces using hardware-assisted remote isolation, diagnostics and repair: the Tecra M10 has a starting MSRP of $1,399, while the Tecra A10 pricing has yet to be determined.
Toshiba this morning revealed a near-total overhaul of its Qosmio notebooks with three new models, all of which are the first with new features. The Qosmio G55 is the first-ever notebook to build in a variant of the Cell processor from Sony's PlayStation 3. In the portable, the chip is set to use just four cores but uses them to transcode video far faster than would be possible using the main processor. A 10-minute video that would take an hour to process takes just one minute to handle on the G55, the company says. It also upscales DVDs to 1080p to minimize the low-resolution artifacts that creep up on an HD-capable screen.
In a late addition to its PC range, Toshiba on Monday revealed its first-ever portables to support HD DVD re-recording. New versions of the 15.4-inch Qosmio F40 and the 17-inch G40 each sport HD DVD-RW drives that allow them to be used hundreds or thousands of times for HD DVD content, such as large data backups or for videos. An update in February will allow either of the systems to burn copies of unprotected HDTV broadcasts pulled from their built-in digital TV tuners, the company adds.
