Toshiba on Tuesday brought three new pro notebooks to the US to take advantage of Intel's 2011 Core (Sandy Bridge) hardware. Leading the group is the Portege R830, the latest refresh of its full-speed ultraportable. The inch-thick system now packs a newer, full-power Core i3, i5, or i7 and the much faster Intel graphics while adding a USB 3.0 port and the option of Bluetooth 3.0.
Toshiba late yesterday rolled out the Tecra M11 as its key mid-range pro notebook. The 14-inch system gets a completely new redesign with a texture designed to reduce fingerprints. Inside, it gets much faster processors that start with a 2.13GHz Core i3 and scale up to a 2.4GHz Core i5; an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 2100M at the high end gives it dedicated workstation graphics.
Toshiba today quickly followed up its Canada-first notebook launches with their American equivalents. The Portégé lineup gets three updates that include the R600, its ultra-lightweight 12-inch portable that weighs 2.4 pounds while still carrying a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, an internal DVD burner and up to a 128GB solid-state drive for storage; the upgrade further boasts a better LED-backlit, transflective display suitable for use outside. Prices start at $2,099.
Toshiba Canada recently bolstered its notebook lineup with four new products, including an all-new Tecra R10 premium notebook meant for business users, which the company is touting as the fastest and most secure Toshiba notebook to date, a Wednesday report reveals. The remaining three include updated ultra portable Portégé-series notebooks with the A600 and an update to the R600, while a new M750 Tablet PC was also introduced.
Toshiba today slipped out US editions of two of its pro-oriented notebooks. The 15.4-inch Tecra A10 and its 14-inch M10 sibling both bring Intel's Centrino 2 platform to the line and start off with a minimum 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Quadro NVS 150M dedicated graphics that give Vista and 3D rendering tasks a boost.
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.
