Toshiba Satellite notebooks come into orbit

Notebook maker Toshiba on Monday took the wraps off three new machines designed mainly for budget-conscious small and midsize businesses. All three Satellite series notebooks are Wi-Fi enabled.

Two of the machines--the Satellite A70-256 and Satellite A60-166--use Mobile Intel Pentium 4 chips that run at speeds of 3.06GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively. Intel launched these new notebook chips only two weeks ago.

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The third new laptop, the Satellite A60-156, is a low-end machine that uses a Celeron 2.8GHz processor.

The Satellite A70 notebook, with a 60GB(3) hard disk, 512MB memory and 15.4-inch diagonal wide-screen display, is intended for use with high-end applications. Preloaded with Microsoft Office OneNote and Microsoft Works, along with Windows XP Professional, the notebook has an estimated price of $1,499.

Except for the different processors, the A60 machines have similar configurations: a 40GB hard disk, 256MB of memory, a 15-inch diagonal display and similar bundled software. The A-60-S166 is priced at $1,249, and the A60-S156 costs $1,099.

The notebooks, which each come with a DVD and CD writer, plus a built-in V.92 modem with 10/100 Ethernet, are available now.