Toshiba has updated its consumer and business notebook lines with
computers running Intel's new mobile Pentium 4 chip.
The new consumer Satellite 5105 and Satellite Pro 6100 for
medium-sized business customers will ship with 1.7GHz mobile
Pentium 4 chips built on Intel's NetBurst architecture, said Masa
Okumura, director of portables and worldwide product planning for
Toshiba's Computer Systems group. Toshiba will also use the chip in
the Tecra 9100.
The faster processors should help speed various multimedia
applications such as streaming video and gaming. In addition, the
Pentium 4 chip includes hyper-threading technology that can let one
chip appear as two processors to the operating system, helping a PC
run numerous applications at once.
While the Pentium 4s do increase software performance, Okumura said
that the new chips can shorten battery life. Users should expect
around two hours of battery life with normal usage.
The Satellite 5105 comes with a LCD touchpad call the cPad. Located
on the main body near the keyboard, the cPad has a black and white
display that allows users to launch applications such a calculator
or clock and to input signatures. Users can set their own grayscale
pictures as the cPad's background and customise the control panel
to run various programs, Okumura said.
The Satellite 5105 includes a Nvidia Corp. GeForce4 440 Go GPU, a
15in display, 40Gbyte hard drive and memory card slots for $2,499
(£1,762).
The Satellite Pro 6100 is targeted at small and medium-sized
businesses and touts 256Mbytes of DDR SDRAM memory, a 40Gbyte hard
drive and Nvidia's GeForce4 420 Go GPU. The notebook also includes
built-in support for 802.11b and Bluetooth wireless technologies.
The Satellite Pro 6100 will be launched in mid-March with a
starting price of $2,399(£1,692).
The high-end Tecra 9100 also ships with 802.11b and Bluetooth
support, along with 256Mbytes of DDR SDRAM memory and 40Gbyte hard
drive. The notebook starts at $2,829 (£1,995).