Posted 11/05/09 at 01:30:52 PM by Paul Lilly

The most capacious 1.8-inch hard drive on the planet now checks in at 320GB, says Toshiba, who just introduced a new line of tiny HDDs

Toshiba's targeting thin and light mobile PCs and portable external HDD contraptions with its new storage series, which also includes two other models sized at 160GB and 250GB. All three drives sport a perpendicular magnetic recording head, efficient power consumption, a high level of durability, and quiet seek operation, Toshiba says.

The new drives come equipped with a SATA interface and spin at 5400RPM. All three models also include a 16MB buffer. Combined with improvements to areal density, Toshiba claims you can expect data transfer rates to improve by 15 percent over previous drives.

Toshiba's tiny drives will start mass production in December. No word yet on price.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 02:40:16 PM by Paul Lilly

Sony isn't the only one in hot water with U.S. antitrust regulators. Both Toshiba and Hitachi have also fallen under the watchful eye of the U.S. Department of Justice and will have their optical device divisions investigated, The Inquirer reports.

Once again, not a whole lot of details are yet known, but just like with Sony, it's believed that the DoJ is sniffing out something afoul with each optical makers' Blu-ray line. More specifically, it's likely each company is being probed for potential price fixing allegations.

Before being knocked out of contention, HD-DVD players could be snagged for as low as $99, which coincided with a promotion to receive a small handful of free HD-DVD movies through the mail. For the most part, Blu-ray pricing has yet to come down to the same level. It should also be noted that Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba account for about 60 percent of the optical drive market, according to some statistics.

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Posted 10/27/09 at 09:12:10 PM by Jason Barry

The mobile phone market boasts worldwide sales growth of 29 percent year-over-year to reach 180 million units. Smartphones are expected to account for 37 percent of global handset sales by 2012 with forecasted revenue of $191 million by 2012. So, what does that have to do with PC’s?

Analysts think that PC makers want a piece of that huge growth action. The growth percentages mentioned above are already far above that of worldwide PC sales numbers and outside of Apple, few PC makers have been able to cash in. Although, “PC vendors will find it difficult to simply use existing supply chains and channels to expand their presence in the smart phone market,” according to Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

Despite the difficulties, it is inevitable that more PC manufacturers will dip their toes into the success of mobile markets even though it is a very different ocean. Acer, Asus and Toshiba have all announced smartphone launches and this trend is expected to continue.

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Posted 10/23/09 at 02:46:28 PM by Bart Salisbury

Toshiba has introduced the Dynario, a Direct Methanol Fuel-Cell (DMFC) charger for portable electronics. The palm-sized Dynario consists of the charging unit and methanol fuel, which mixes with ambient oxygen to produce a charge sufficient to power up a mobile phone or a digital-media player via a USB cable. With methanol fuel sold separately, the Dynario is reusable.

For the technically inclined, a DMFC is a type of proton-exchange fuel cell. Methanol is the chosen fuel because it is energy-dense yet reasonably stable. Proton-exchange fuel cells are not particularly efficient, which limits there application to portable applications where energy density is more important.

The Dynario will only be available in Japan, and only in limited quantities. Toshiba will produce 3,000 units, then sit back and gauge consumer reaction before deciding to make more. The Dynario goes on sale October 29, and will set you back ¥29,800 (roughly $324) for the device itself, and another ¥3,150 (a bit more than $34) for a set of five fuel cartridges.

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Posted 10/22/09 at 07:26:13 PM by Bart Salisbury

Toshiba’s $328 million acquisition of hard drive maker Fujitsu is bearing some early fruit.  The deal, made earlier this year, was an effort by Toshiba to increase it’s presence in the enterprise storage market. Toshiba acquired all of Fujitsu’s hard drive related business including design, development, manufacturing, and sales.

The result: Toshiba saw it’s global hard drive market share jump to 13.2%. Toshiba’s share of the 2.5-inch drive market rose 6.5 points, from 16.1% to 24.6%, while it’s share in the sub-2.5-inch market grew even more, 8.3 points, from 18.3% to 26.5%.

Toshiba’s future plans involve the development of solid-state drives that combine Toshiba’s NAND flash memory technology with Fujitsu’s enterprise hard drive technology.

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Posted 10/16/09 at 01:00:00 PM by Katherine Stevenson

In our August 2009 ultraportable notebook roundup we fell hard for Toshiba’s Portégé R600—the lightest, sleekest ultraportable notebook we’d ever tested. At $2,150, however, that notebook isn’t cheap.

This month we tested Toshiba’s more affordable ultraportable, the Portégé A605, to see how this consumer-class model compares with its fancier business-class kin.

In looks, the two machines are quite different. While the R600 wowed us with its silver, svelte stylishness, the A605 looks more commonplace. Inside and out, it’s adorned with that shiny black plastic you see everywhere these days, which looks really good… until you smudge it. Its keyboard, thankfully, has the same fingerprint-proof silver coating as the R600’s, and more importantly, sports the same full-size dimensions that make typing on it easy. The A605, which measures 11.3x8.8x1.2 inches, is close in size to the R600, just not as wafer-thin, and it’s a noticeable three-quarters of a pound heavier. Like the R600, the A605 offers a generous selection of ports and expandability options, including a USB/eSATA port (in addition to two standard USB ports), an ExpressCard slot, and an SD media reader.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Posted 10/14/09 at 02:00:33 PM by Paul Lilly

If you think you're excited about the launch of Windows 7, you should check out Toshiba, who today announced a boatload of laptops ready for the OS's release.

Running the gamut from netbooks to full-blown desktop replacements, the lowest model in Toshiba's upcoming totem pole includes the 10.1-inch NB200 netbook series. For $400, you'll find a typical spec sheet consisting of an Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB of DDR RAM a 160GB hard drive, and other decidedly netbookish specs.

Further up the pricing ladder is Toshiba's Satellite A500 series, which will sport a 16-inch HD screen. Underneath the hood, users will have a choice between an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Turion II Ultra foundation. Pricing starts at $590.

Towards the top sits the Satellite P500 series. These laptops will come with an 18.4-inch HD screen and also give users a choice between an Intel or AMD processor. Some models will also include a Blu-ray player and illuminating LED backlit keyboard.

And then there's the Qosmio X500 desktop replacement laptop, which will be available in two configurations. One will come with an 18.4-inch HD screen, 320GB  hard drive spinning at 7200RPM, and 4GB of memory, while the other will boast two hard drives and a 64GB SSD, along with 6GB of memory. Pricing will start at $1,450 and $1,900 respectively.

Toshiba has plenty of other models on tap for an October 22nd launch, and so will everyone else. Stay tuned!

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Posted 10/07/09 at 08:15:28 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Super Talent and Toshiba today announced a new range of co-branded SSDs called the UltraDrive DX. The official press release was largely dedicated to UltraDrive DX’s twin-layer encryption. It features password encryption as its first line of defense and hardware data randomization technology as the second.

Data randomization occurs with every write to the drive but still fails to prevent the drive from marching at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

“As the first Toshiba co-branded SSD on the market, UltraDrive DX features a Toshiba controller and Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memories. The DX provides superb security and reliability features combined with cutting edge performance in both read and write speeds,” said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent. 

Hit the jump for pricing details.

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