toshiba

Wednesday morning I visited the new Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters of Zonbu, makers of the low-cost, service-supported Linux computer I mentioned last month (here). I met with Zonbu CEO Grégoire Gentil, who gave me an overview of the company's business plan and a demo of the system. He also offered… Read more

One of the few disadvantages left to owning a laptop is having to stare longingly at your desktop-owning buddies while they fill up their massive 500GB hard drives with all sorts of (completely legally acquired) audio and video content.

While it's still not at the half-terabyte level, Toshiba and Samsung are both working on ever-larger laptop hard drives. Toshiba is taking the standard 2.5-inch drive up to 320GB, as well as working on a 200GB drive that runs at desktop-like speeds of 7,200rpm. Both of these should start showing up around November.

Samsung, on the other hand, … Read more

Ah, the emails and voice mails were flying fast and furious yesterday after Paramount and DreamWorks made their little announcement about going HD DVD exclusive. At just after 4 p.m. in New York, Fox and MGM put out a press release saying they were unveiling "an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy, including 29 new release and 'must-have' catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year."

The release went on to say that Fox intends to put out "at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD 'firsts'" and highlighted the fact that "Blu-ray was out-performing HD DVD 2-to-1 at retail in 2007." Among the 29 new releases, my eye was drawn to Master & Commander, Ronin, Cast Away, Independence Day, A Bridge Too Far, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Die Hard trilogy.

After the email went out, the phone started ringing: All the CNET the home-theater editors were contacted, so the PR folks at GCI Group in LA were working overtime, trying to do a little damage control. The basic message was, they may have this, but we have a whole more of that. And, did you hear that the Paramount deal doesn't include any of Spielberg's movies and that the deal only ran for 18 months? Tit for tat. Tat for tit. The war was raging.

Then, thanks to a New York Times article, word got out this morning that indeed (as I suspected), someone was getting paid off. The article noted that, "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified." Microsoft denied paying anything, but wouldn't rule it out as a tactic in the future. There was no word on who might be paying Universal for its exclusive HD DVD agreement, but you gotta think there's a pretty sweet deal in place there, too.

… Read more

A big fuel cell from UTC Power was in the news here in Silicon Valley this week when Fujitsu installed it as a backup power source for its local campus. CNET's Michael Kanellos wrote a good story about the event here, and took pictures ("Photos: Fujitsu unveils king-size fuel cell").

Although the fuel cell itself runs on hydrogen, there's no convenient source of pure hydrogen in Silicon Valley, so UTC Power also provided a steam methane reformer that yields hydrogen from natural gas.

One place where pure hydrogen is readily available is NASA's Cape Canaveral … Read more

There are many reasons to do your laundry: grass stains, spilled wine, and the sloppiest of Joes. But if you find yourself doing loads mostly because you've been sitting around the house sweating up a stank, then here is the ultimate godsend for you.

The Toshiba TW-3000VE washing machine also packs in an air-conditioning unit.

According to the Gizmodiva write-up (translated from Japanese), the machine not only washes your socks, but also cools the air in your laundry room and keeps it clear of mold.

The machines won't separate your lights and darks automatically, but it will be … Read more

The nano-sized heir to the highly-esteemed Toshiba Gigabeat S MP3 player has arrived and we've just posted the full review up on CNET.

As you might suspect from our previous musings on the Gigabeat U, the player is by no means revolutionary. Still, its certainly a classy, rugged, and affordable alternative to an iPod Nano or Creative Zen V Plus. Quench your thirst for gadget pictures by taking a gander at Crave's Gigabeat U slideshow.

Yes, you've seen this headline before. For the third month in a row, Toshiba customers are being urged to exchange potentially dangerous notebook batteries for the nonexploding kind.

This time around, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says 1,400 of the lithium-ion batteries containing Sony-made cells sold with Toshiba laptops pose a fire hazard. There have been three reports of models with those batteries overheating in other countries, but none of the incidents caused injury, according to the CPSC.

Users of Toshiba's Satellite A100, Satellite A105 and Tecra A7, it's your turn. If your notebook was made … Read more

Following months of hints and peeks, Onkyo has finally made the details of its first HD DVD player official. Available this fall, the $900 DV-HD805 is a return to the high-end for the HD DVD format, which has seen prices dropping as low as $250 this year. In addition to the Ethernet port, Web connectivity, and built-in memory found on all HD DVD players, the DV-HD805 looks to have all of the bleeding-edge HDMI 1.3 features of the newly announced third-generation Toshiba players, including support for 24-frame 1080p video, Deep Color compatibility, and lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master … Read more

It's no secret that we have a soft spot for supersmall laptops. Ultraportables, as they're called, generally have 11- or 12-inch screens and weigh in at less than four pounds--perfect for lugging around all day or hanging at the local coffee shop with. Unfortunately, these guys are usually plagued by the twin devils of high prices and poor battery life (not to mention occasionally underpowered processors).

This, however, has clearly been the summer of the ultraportable, with a generous handful of exciting new systems generating heavy buzz. But with all these new choices, which one is right for … Read more