Toshiba enters 17in notebook market
Like a PowerBook only cheaper
Posted in Personal, 15th July 2003 14:56 GMT
Toshiba has launched a 17in notebook into the European market in a bid to catch up with Apple's technology lead.
The Satellite P20 series (in the US it's the P25 series) is - surprise, surprise - aimed at the desktop replacement market. Models within the series are based on the Pentium 4 processor, clocked at up to 3.06GHz and running an 800MHz effective bit rate frontside bus.
Every machine, says Tosh, has "DVD-burning capabilities" thanks to DVD-RAM and DVD-R/RW drives. The company has "added desktop publishing on a big, widescreen ratio display" to the list of applications its machines are suitable for. Thanks to the HyperThreading-enabled CPU, the notebook is ideal for "making your own music". There are even built-in Harmon Kardon speakers. If that's not signaling Tosh is after Apple, we don't know what is.
But what of the display itself? It's a 1440x900 - just like the 17in PowerBook. The Toshiba's screen is powered by an Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5200 graphics with 64MB of dedicated DDR video memory (though the web site says 32MB), which is, it has to be said, rather better than the PowerBook's GeForce 4 440 Go chip.
The Apple makes up for it in portability, however. It weighs 3.1kg to the P20's 4.5kg, and is 2.6cm (1in) thick. The Toshiba is nearly double that: 4.7cm (1.9in). It's also bigger: 41.9 x 29.3cm (16.8 x 11.7in) to the PowerBook's 39.2 x 25.9cm (15.4 x 10.2in).
We'd say the Tosh isn't as stylish, either, but we're sure some of folk will prefer the P20's looks over the aluminium PowerBook's.
It's hard to see anyone not preferring the P20's price, however, which at around £2199 ($3550) is four hundred pounds cheaper than the Apple, which is currently priced at £2599 ($4196). That gives you built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but 20GB less hard drive space and, as we've said, a lesser graphics chip. But is does look nicer...
The P20 ships later this month. ®
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