toshiba

Back to School 2011 laptop roundup: Top picks for every budget

A laptop is practically required equipment for today's college or high school students (and even grade school kids are getting in on the act). And with the back-to-school season currently in full swing, many laptop shoppers are hunting for a new computer, which may need to fill diverse roles, from research tool to dorm room entertainment system.

To help find the perfect system for your academic needs, we've picked our recent favorites from brick-and-mortar stores, online retailers, and build-to-order PC makers, and listed them below, grouped by price.

For this particular list, we've stuck to only laptops … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1523: Global cyber cold war imminent? (Podcast)

On today's show, security researchers report that Anonymous and LulzSec are, if anything, just distracting us with their antics while the true threat is a years-long cyberwarfare campaign that's stolen everything from private intellectual property to high-level government secrets. So, that'll probably lead to some reasoned and logical cyber-security discussions, no? No. Also, is the Amazon App Store screwing developers, and are you finally getting what you pay for, broadband-wise?

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Toshiba announces 1TB 2.5-inch standard internal hard drive

Following Western Digital, Toshiba announced today that it's now shipping its first 1TB standard 2.5-inch, 9mm-thick internal hard drive for laptops, the MQ01ABD series.

This is the company's first 2.5-in internal hard drive that's based on the 500GB-per-platter technology that offers the areal density of 744Gb per square inch.

Previously, most high-capacity 2.5-inch internal hard drives came in the new 12.5mm thickness standard and therefore were not compatible with most laptops and other applications.

The new drive comes in capacities from 250GB to 1TB, features SATA 2 (3Gbps), and spins at 5,400rpm. … Read more

Hands-on with Toshiba's Qosmio F755 glasses-free 3D laptop, hitting US stores this month

Back at CES 2011, Toshiba's glasses-free 3D laptop wowed us, going on to win our Best of CES award for the Prototype category. We didn't expect the proof-of-concept hardware to work its way into a final product anytime soon, but apparently Toshiba had other ideas. The Qosmio F750 was previously announced in the U.K. for an August release, and now Toshiba's American arm has put a firm price and date on the U.S. version. Here, it'll be called the Qosmio F755, and will be available starting August 16, for $1,699.

Like the CES … Read more

Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 review: Big-screen 3D and Blu-ray in a very large laptop

In stark counterpoint to small, fast systems like the MacBook Air, big-screened, heavy, packed-to-the-gills desktop-alternative laptops are still alive and well, although sometimes a little hard to justify. Toshiba's Qosmio line of laptops has been a well-known example of that type of massive machine for years, and 2011's update to the Qosmio largely continues the trend with a new design. The $1,899 Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 is bulky, heavy (8 pounds), and expensive, but it's also got top-of-the-line features. A quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 graphics, and dual hard drives with a … Read more

Toshiba Thrive accessories offer functionality, shallow cosmetic changes

The Toshiba Thrive Honeycomb tablet has garnered a lot of interest due to the fact that one, it's a tablet in the year 2011, and two (and maybe more importantly), it offers a heftier, more laptop-like experience than other tablets with its full ports and removable battery.

The Thrive's identity crisis doesn't end there, however, as Toshiba offers a number of accessories, including swappable back plates that let you literally change the device's color. Using the same color tablet day in and day out can get boring, and Toshiba offers you a healthy way to spice things up.

To be sure, it's a superficial change that doesn't change the device's functionality, but it could make you more excited about using your tablet, at least for a while.

I've compiled a number of photos of Thrive's accessories (including more functional ones) here.… Read more

Intel Sandy Bridge chips land in sub-$400 HP, Toshiba laptops

Intel's Sandy Bridge processors aren't just for Apple MacBooks and elite Windows laptops anymore. The latest and greatest Intel chip technology is now landing in sub-$400 lappies from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.

To wit, behold HP's $349 Pavilion g4-1104dx. In addition to goodies like a 14-inch LED display, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard disk drive, a multiformat optical drive, a Webcam, and integrated Ethernet, you get a Pentium processor B940 with integrated Intel graphics silicon.

No, that's not the Pentium processor of yore. The new Pentium is a bona fide Sandy Bridge processor, which … Read more

Toshiba TL515U review: Passive 3D but short of LG

Along with Vizio and LG, Toshiba is the only other TV maker selling a passive 3D TV in 2011. That model, the TL515U series reviewed here, performs basically the same with 3D material as its LG doppelganger, and in short we like the image produced by active 3D TVs better. Meanwhile, the Toshiba's 2D picture quality, which is much more important in our book, didn't quite match that of the LG or the better LED-based LCDs in our tests, due mainly to its overactive backlight. Given that the two are very similar in price--the LG is even a … Read more

Android 3.2 official, coming to a tablet near you

The latest version of Google's Android operating system for tablets is official, which means the update will likely be arriving on a range of tablets in the near future.

Motorola has already begun to roll out the update on its Xoom tablet, the company confirmed with CNET on Wednesday. Other tablet candidates for a 3.2 rollout include Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer's Iconia Tab 500, and Toshiba's Thrive.

Huawei last month announced what it claims is the "world's first" 7-inch Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet to pack a dual-core processor.

Android … Read more

Toshiba Thrive review: Heft earned?

Tablets are generally expected to be "thin and light" small computers with unobtrusive interfaces. Some tablets are thinner and lighter than others, however.

While we've praised tablets like the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 for their sleekness, and dinged the HP TouchPad for being too bulky, the Thrive poses an interesting question. Is a bulky tablet inherently a bad thing or can a tablet justify its extra mass?

In an attempt to answer that question I take a long hard look at the Thrive, including its full ports, swappable battery, and removable back panel. I … Read more