BOSTON - Both Toshiba and Dell released large notebooks that offer desktop-like performance Tuesday, but Toshiba is targeting
home users while Dell courts the design engineer or high-end software developer.
Although Intel recently released the Mobile Pentium 4 processor designed for this type of notebook, sometimes called desktop
replacements, Toshiba is sticking with the desktop version of the Pentium 4 for its new notebooks.
The Mobile Intel Pentium 4 is designed to run at hotter temperatures than Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M or Pentium M chips targeted
for smaller notebooks. But the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 comes with technology that regulates power consumption of the processor
on an as-needed basis, reducing its power consumption between application tasks.
Toshiba is currently involved in litigation over its older Satellite 5005 notebooks with desktop Pentium 4 processors that
did not run at their advertised clock speeds due to overheating. Chips without power management technology are forced to throttle
back their speeds when they reach a certain temperature.
The company will investigate the use of the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 for future desktop-replacement notebooks, a spokesman said.
Toshiba has released several large notebooks with desktop processors since the 5005 series without reports of any significant
problems.
The Toshiba A20/A25-S207 series notebooks come with Intel's 2.66GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive,
a 15-inch display, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, and integrated 802.11b connectivity. The A25-S207 costs $1,499 with Microsoft's
Windows XP Home Edition, and the A20-S207 costs $1,579 with Windows XP Professional Edition.
The A25-S307 notebook comes with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, a 15-inch display, a DVD-R/RW
drive, integrated 802.11b and 802.11a wireless, and Windows XP Home Edition for $1,899.
Dell's new Precision M60 is a workstation-class machine that allows designers and developers to take their work with them.
A base configuration with a 1.4GHz Pentium M processor, 256MB of PC2100 (266MHz) DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous
dynamic RAM), a 40GB hard drive, a 15.4-inch widescreen display, and a 128MB Quadro FX Go700 graphics card from Nvidia for
$2,599.
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