Toshiba officially unveils 17in notebook

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 16 Jul 2003 at 11:11

Toshiba Europe has announced the availability of its 17in notebook.

Apple has lead the way with its 17in G4 PowerBook, and the likes of the Rock Quaddra have followed. And now Toshiba is joining the party. The machine in question is the Toshiba Satellite P20.

Aside from the 1440-by-900 pixel widescreen display, the spec includes hard disk drives starting from 60GB, Nvidia's GeForce FX Go5200 graphics processor with 64MB of memory, harman/kardon stereo speakers, three USB ports, a TV-out port, InfraRed support, a V.92 modem, 10/100 Ethernet support, and a FireWire port. And topping it all off, a Toshiba Remote Control.

Toshiba's boast that this is a fully mobile, fully-powered multimedia editing system is backed up by the option for a DVD rewriting optical drive (DVD-R/-RW)

With the unit weighing 4.5kg, the engine inside is an almost top-of-the-range 3.06GHz Pentium 4 (with a 800MHz system bus).

'Now we have added desktop publishing on a big, widescreen ratio display to the list of functions that used to be considered exclusive to desktops,' said Willem Poterman, general manager of Toshiba's EMEA Computer Systems Marketing Division. 'Whereas notebooks were once a poor cousin, today they are a more competitive rival to desktops and the best developments are arriving in the notebook first and we are seeing an increase in the mobile digital consumer embracing this technology.'

The 2.8GHz model, with a 60GB hard drive, will set you back £1,899 (inc. VAT). The 3.0GHz P4 processor, with a 80GB hard drive, will cost £2,199 (inc. VAT).

It's a retail-only model from Toshiba, available from the likes of Staples and Gultronics, as well as Dixons/PC World.