toshiba

Toshiba Excite Android tablet coming in January

Toshiba's new Excite tablet will just miss the holiday season, reaching consumers sometime in January.

The Excite's product page on Toshiba Canada's Web site is promoting the new tablet as a holiday gift even though it won't arrive until sometime next month.

As the follow-up to Toshiba's 7-inch and 10-inch Thrive tablets, the Excite will offer a 10.1-inch 1280x800 LCD display with LED backlighting. Powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 1.2 gigahertz processor, the Excite will be equipped with Android 3.2 Honeycomb.

A 2-megapixel Webcam will face front, while a 5-megapixel … Read more

Intel denies $100 subsidy on ultrabooks

Intel is not providing a $100 subsidy on ultrabooks, the company said today, contradicting an Asia-based report.

In that report, Taipei-based Digitimes asserted that Intel is offering a $100 subsidy for ultrabooks, which, in turn, will allow manufacturers to drop prices aggressively on the ultraslim laptops.

"There is no $100 subsidy for ultrabooks," Bill Calder, an Intel spokesman, told CNET. "The report from Digitimes was false," he said.

Intel does offer various marketing incentives as a normal course of business. An example of an Intel co-marketing campaign includes Intel Inside, where Intel provides some advertising dollars … Read more

Ultrabook pricing cuts close to cost

The latest report on ultrabooks from Asia is the typical mix of odd assertions, gossip, and a smattering of speculation that could be categorized as news.

Tuesday's Digitimes report says, "Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba are expected to lower retail prices for ultrabooks to below US$1,000 by the end of 2011."

Let's see, we're well before the end of 2011 and already we have three ultrabooks priced under $1,000. The HP Folio 13 starts at $899, ditto for the Toshiba Portege Z835 (Model: Z835-P330--which was priced briefly at $799), and the Acer Aspire S3 (… Read more

Best Buy, Verizon, Dell launch Cyber Monday deals

Best Buy, Amazon, Verizon, and Dell launched Cyber Monday deals featuring discounted laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Best Buy is calling its sale "Cyber Week" and puts Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba laptops at the top of the list on its launch page. All three come with Windows 7 Home Premium.

Best Buy laptops listed on Cyber Week page:

Lenovo, $299.99: Model: 1450ABU. 15.6-inch LED-backlit display, AMD dual-core E-450 accelerated processor, 4GB memory, 320GB hard disk drive, and optical drive. HP Pavilion, $349.99: Model: g4-1229dx. 14-inch LED-backlit display, Intel dual-core "Sandy Bridge" Pentium B950 processor, 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive, and optical drive. Toshiba - Satellite Laptop, $379.99: Model: C655-S5305. 15.6" LED-backlit display, Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3-2330M processor (2.2GHz), 4GB memory, 320GB hard drive, and optical drive.

… Read more

Ultrabooks to MacBook Air: Time to step up your game

Having reviewed the first four ultrabook laptops to hit stores, and spent some hands-on time with a just-announced HP version, it's clear Apple's dominance of the superthin laptop category faces a serious challenge.

Acer, Asus, Toshiba, and Lenovo all have impressive systems, all under 18 millimeters thick, and all with second-generation Intel Core i-series processors and solid-state drives (SSDs). The key is that these 13-inch laptops start at $799, while the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299.

That said, stack all of these systems together on a table and we'll still pick the Air for general everyday use, as long as price is no object. To date, no one has matched the multitouch trackpad experience of the MacBook, along with its excellent keyboard, and simple sleep/hibernate quick-start states.

But, if you're looking for the best value based on system specs, the field is suddenly wide open.… Read more

MacBook Air, ultrabook spell doom for optical drive

With Apple likely forgoing optical drives across all or most of its MacBooks, and ultrabooks doing the same, it's no surprise that the venerable whirring drive will spin away, albeit gradually, into obscurity.

Next to go driveless at Apple is the 15-inch MacBook Air. 9to5Mac says Apple almost brought out a 15-inch Air in late 2010 (but didn't because of a problem with the hinges). Apple now has plans to make this happen next year when Intel's graphics-centric Ivy Bridge processor ships.

Ultrabooks will do their part to hurry the otherwise slow demise of the optical drive. … Read more

Intel: Ultrabooks have to be 'cool'

At an Intel Capital conference this week an Intel executive spelled out how and why the market will transition to ultrabooks over the next few years. In a word, ultrabooks need to be "cool."

Intel is driving the PC industry to ultrabooks with a $300 million ultrabook fund--principally for hardware development--and a second fund announced this week, the $100 million AppUpSM Fund, targeted at applications for future ultrabooks.

Erik Reid, the general manager of the Mobile Platforms Division at Intel's PC Client Group, detailed Intel's thinking in a session at the Intel conference this week in Huntington Beach, Calif.

The coolness factor: "Users want something that's cool," said Reid. Intel research shows that when people see an ultrabook they think that "it must be better engineered because it's thin. It's harder to make a thin device than a thick device. It's more forward-looking." … Read more

Get a Toshiba Thrive 10-inch tablet for $299.99 shipped

Now this is more like it.

For as long as I can remember, I've dinged the iPad and its 10-inch competitors for being way too expensive. I mean, come on, $500? That's Core i5 computer money!

But today, Newegg has a tablet deal that's much more reasonable: the Toshiba Thrive 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet for $299.99 shipped. You even get a free Blue Moon back cover (a $13.99 value).

Update: Sigh. Sold out already. (Do check back later, though, as Newegg sometimes manages to free up more stock.) That's why you gotta get here … Read more

Ultrabook pricing heads south

With Best Buy getting ready to sell a $799.99 Toshiba ultrabook and the Acer Aspire S3 now going for $839.99, the prospect of affordable ultrabooks is real.

Surprisingly, this didn't take long to happen.

"I think Intel is cheering right now--that the price came down that low that fast," said Deron Kershaw, an analyst at Gap Intelligence.

"What's the magical price point that sales really begin to take off? That's probably $599 to $699 next year. But we didn't think we were going to see anything around $800 this year," … Read more