Officials won't reveal details, yet, but they are showing a prototype of a device they've created to spur development ideas. The tiny handheld (shown in the main pic below) reminded us more of a UMPC than a notebook, with the keyboard ditched in favour of a touchscreen keyboard.

We're told the device runs Vista, and Intel's Atom processor, and in our brief hand-on play, it ran relatively smoothly, though it was a bit awkward with the virtual keyboard taking up two-thirds of the screen.

The 5.6inch screen prototype has a motherboard half the size of the motherboard on the Portege R500 notebook. Onboard is a 64GB solid state drive, and GPS. Toshiba also said they have found a way to make antennas follow a curved surface.

"We don't think this [prototype] is commercially viable, it's too small," said Toshiba's Mark Whittard. "Having said that, we will have a ULPC soon."

Among the possibilities is a 9inch screen device, but Toshiba won't necessarily be bringing out an Eee PC rival, with officials identifying "six or seven" possible segments.

"We've been sitting back and looking at the marketplace," said Whittard.

Toshiba may have a point. Since the launch of the Eee, notebook prices have fallen to the point where it's possible to buy a 15.4inch Windows machine with a better spec for the same price, or less, than a netbook like the Eee PC.

With price no longer an advantage in the ultra low-cost notebook space, Whittard said Toshiba is looking for other ways to stand out from the crowd - hence the prototype.

via pcauthority 

Toshiba and Matsushita Electric Industrial will jointly manufacture small electroluminescent displays in an effort match the output from Korea-based makers, according to a Japanese report.

The two companies will set up manufacturing lines in Ishikawa Prefecture in the fall of 2009, aiming to produce 1 million "high-quality" 2.5-inch organic EL displays, according to a report in Monday's Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

This is a first for domestic Japanese production of EL displays on this scale, the report said. The displays are targeted at cell phones and other small devices.

EL displays are based on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that uses electroluminescent organic materials. The display panels are extremely thin because they don't need backlights. The electroluminescent layer contains a polymer substance that directly converts electricity to light.

The companies are chasing Samsung, which has already begun mass production. The goal is to bring costs down and stabilize quality. This then can be applied to the manufacture of larger-size TV panels.

In December, Toshiba said it would postpone production of larger (up to 30-inch) organic EL displays and would focus initially on mass production of smaller displays.

Toshiba has a 60 percent stake in the venture Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology, while Matsushita holds 40 percent. The operation is capitalized at 15 billion yen ($140 million).

via news.cnet 

The Japanese government will team up with several Japanese companies to develop key-technologies for producing large-size OLED panels. The aim is to cut the development cost for the Japanese companies, to be better able to compete against Samsung and LG, and the Japanese government will pitch in around 32$M. 

The project will also try to make the displays more efficient and have longer lifetime.

One report says the project will run till 2013, another that it will run until 2015, and the aim is to produce 40" OLED TVs by then. We'll have to wait and see...

The companies include -

• Sony
• Toshiba
• Matsushita
• Sharp
• Idemitsu Kosan
• Sumitomo chemical
• Dainippon Screen Mfg
• Shimadzu
• Hitachi

Interesting to see Sharp in there, after having stated that "OLEDs will not threat LCD for at least a decade".

via oled-info. 

Exclusive Photos of Toshiba's Hot New Qosmio X305 Gaming Laptop

ust as the laptop gaming market is heating up we snagged some exclusive leaked pictures for you of Toshiba's hot new upcoming gaming laptop, the Qosmio X305.  If you think the X205 was impressive wait 'till you see this baby! 

A sneak peak at some of the specs includes a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX with turbo cache VRAM, Intel's hot new 3GHz dual core processor that we hear can be over-clocked for even more frames per second, dual high-speed 7200RPM hard drives of 200GB each for a total of 400GB, up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 17 inch WSXGA+ with 1680 x 1050 resolution.  It also packs a couple S/P DIF and REGZA link HDMI ports and a sweet four speaker (that's right 4!) Harmon Kardon stereo speaker system with subwoofer.

We expect entrants like the Qosmio X305 over the next few quarters to really accelerate the laptop gaming market and will soon have a gaming laptop buyer's guide for your pleasure.  Launch date is expected to be July 14th. LogicTV will have a first look at this unit soon...

via logictv 

Toshiba 'gets high resolution' from current DVDs

The Yomiuri Shimbun

By the end of the year, Toshiba Corp. plans to release a DVD player capable of producing high-resolution images from regular DVDs, company sources said Thursday.

The planned release of a model compatible with the current DVD format signifies an effort by the major electronic manufacturer to recover from a humiliating setback suffered in March after announcing its decision to withdraw from its HD DVD business, the sources said.

Toshiba's withdrawal meant its defeat by a group of electronics makers, including Sony Corp., striving to promote the Blu-ray DVD format.

Standard DVD format is capable of playing a 350,000-pixel resolution. Blu-ray and other next-generation DVD formats have a resolution of about 2 million pixels, about six times greater than the current format.

Toshiba's new technology has been made possible by developing a large integrated circuit that can instantly convert images produced in the current format into high-resolution images.

This technology makes it possible to reproduce high-quality images comparable to Blu-ray video from current standard DVDs.

Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida said his company will not market DVD players that are compatible with Blu-ray.

Instead, Toshiba intends to compete with the Blu-ray camp by selling DVD players fitted with LSIs at lower prices than those of Blu-ray models.

To achieve this goal, Toshiba will advertise its new player as a device with which consumers can enjoy a broader array of content than is available in the Blu-ray format, the sources said.

Toshiba's withdrawal decision in March marked the end of a six-year competition between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps.

Each was seeking to make its format the global standard...

via yomiuri 

Toshiba's Dynadock USB video docking station gets reviewed

It took Toshiba long enough to get its socket-infused Dynadock onto store shelves, and considering the rough reputation held by the vast majority of USB video docking stations out there, you've probably been holding back on this well-spec'd unit due to fear alone. If we just rang your bell, you'll be glad to know the critics over at Trusted Reviews were able to spend some quality time with the device and test out all those features that may or may not work as advertised. Overall, reviewers felt that the Dynadock performed adequately in everything save for "entertainment," so be sure and give the article a bit of your time to determine whether or not it'll handle the tasks you have in mind for it...

via engadget 

Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists

Canonical chief executive Mark Shuttleworth

In 1999, the South African-born Mark Shuttleworth sold his internet company, Thawte, which provided digital certificates for websites, for more than $500m (£254m). After spending $20m on a trip into space, he started the Ubuntu project - named after an African word meaning "Humanity to others", or "I am what I am because of who we all are" - which has since become the most popular GNU/Linux distribution.

Technology Guardian: To what extent did your space trip feed into Ubuntu?

Mark Shuttleworth Going to space and seeing the Earth from a distance makes it very clear just how interdependent we are. So I wanted to do something that was really global; free software is a phenomenon that is truly global.

TG: What are the implications of choosing that name?

MS That this is a platform for people. Linux has come from a tradition of being a platform for specialists. We articulated the challenge for us very clearly in our name: "Let's make this something that we can proudly give out to people who are not passionate about technology."

TG: How does your company, Canonical, fit into this?

MS [Ubuntu] has its own release cycle. It has its own governance structures. Canonical plays a significant role in those, and we are the largest underwriter of all the work that gets done. We make sure that it releases on time; that it's available globally; that it meets criteria; that it works across a certain portfolio of hardware that third parties have asked us to certify. But we don't take credit for all of the smart thinking that happens in Ubuntu. In fact, in almost every release there's been an idea that came from volunteer participants that turned into a profoundly important feature in that release.

TG: I gather that you had a rather unusual way of picking the people you originally employed at Canonical.

MS I simply read a large amount of correspondence between the developers on one of the projects that is key to the way we do Ubuntu, the Debian project. It's amazing how much jumps out in terms of the way people think, the depth of their experience. So open source is not only a great way to develop your own talent and skills, but it's also a great way to get a job, and a great way to go looking for people.

TG: What's the business model for Canonical?

MS Our business model is entirely based on services around our software. Because Canonical plays such a key role in Ubuntu, even though it doesn't monopolise access to it, we're a preferred partner for Ubuntu. Whether it's technical support, which we think people are more likely to buy from us than from anybody else, or whether it's engineering, customisation, or the enablement of the platform on particular hardware, Canonical has a privileged position.

TG: How close are you to breaking even?

MS Not close. It will require time and ongoing investment. We've positioned ourselves for what we see as the future of software - unlicensed software, people having access to the software that they want at the time that they want it. The service ecosystem around that software will fund it. And if we are the company that has best anticipated that future, then we will be best positioned to benefit from it.

TG: How did the deal to put Ubuntu on Dell PCs come about?

MS We found out about it after it was a fait accompli. [Dell are] very much a numbers-driven company. They asked their users what they wanted to see. They had a lot of data and that data pointed to us. That was a little unsettling, because we didn't have a relationship. But it was a significant step up in our corporate profile. It will be very interesting to see what we're able to do with companies like Dell, which are aimed at a wider audience. That's my number one challenge: how to make the Linux desktop something that you want to keep on your computer.

TG: Will you be coming out with a tailored version of Ubuntu for the ultraportable sector?

MS We're announcing it in the first week of June. It's called the Netbook Remix. We're working with Intel, which produces chips custom-made for this sector.

TG: Do you think that GNU/Linux will ever become a significant force on the desktop?

MS I think that depends on how people define a desktop. If people continue to define a desktop as the thing that they run Microsoft Word on, then Windows will retain its position. My sense, though, is that people are increasingly defining the desktop as the thing that they get access to the internet from. In that case, there's a real possibility that we're able to shift people onto different platforms. I think it's the emergence of the internet as the killer application, the thing that describes what you want from the computer, that opens the door to us.

TG: Recently you publicly criticised the ISO for the way the way it handled the voting on Microsoft's OOXML; how seriously do you think ISO's credibility has been damaged by that episode?

MS Very seriously [for] anybody who is passionate about open standards. The ISO process has traditionally worked very well; it's quite an academic, considered process, but it really wasn't designed to handle a case with very, very vigorous corporate lobbying and an enormous amount of money being spent to try to get a particular outcome. And with hindsight, there were a number of very serious flaws in the process.

TG: As Ubuntu gains in importance, do you feel that you have an increased responsibility to speak out in this way?

MS I think we all have a responsibility to contribute to the public discourse. I have a level of economic independence, which is perhaps a good and a bad thing, but at the very least my opinion can't be bought that easily.

via guardian