News Bits: Next-Gen Toshiba Qosmio, IRS Lost 490 Laptops, Suede Laptop Skins

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Next-gen Toshiba Qosmio details released

Image courteousy Electronista

Details have been leaked about Toshiba's next-generation flagship multimedia notebook, the G40 Qosmio. Instead of the current all-black look, it will take on a white base. Major performance upgrades are in store for the G40, including Nvidia's GeForce Go8600GT graphics card with 512MB of dedicated memory. Also included in the G40 are an HD DVD-R drive, HDMI 1.3 for output to HDTVs, and a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.

Pricing is not yet official but the G40 is expected to sell in June in Europe for 2999 Euros, or about US$4,022.

Read More (Electronista.com)

IRS lost 490 laptops

When laptops are lost containing the tax information of millions of Americans, it's a problem big enough that even the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration looked into the problem and released a report. Inspectors found that 490 laptops had been reported stolen between Jan 2, 2003 and June 13, 2006.

The IRS currently has about 47,000 laptops in use; the report released suggests that the agency should take better precautions. Taxpayer data needs to be protected - a large number of the stolen IRS laptops had unencrypted data on them.

Security is yet another problem. 111 laptops were stolen out of IRS facilities according to the report. Had the laptops been secured the number of stolen machines could have been drastically reduced. Backup media was also unsecured - employees of the IRS use CDs/DVDs and flash drives to carry around unencrypted data.

The IRS has pledged to follow what the report recommends for improvement. The IRS had been warned about unencrypted data in 2003 but did not take sufficent action to correct the issue.

Read More (Ars Technica)

Intel to announce next-gen UMPC design

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) on April 18, Intel will announce a new set of processors for the next generation Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). According to a leaked PowerPoint presentation, the reference design for the UMPC is called &quot;McCaslin&quot; and will feature a codename &quot;Stealey&quot; CPU. The CPU is based on Dothan and fabricated on a 90nm process with a 600 or 800MHz clockspeed. The FSB is set at 400MHz and the CPU has a 512k L2 cache. It has a thermal design of only 6W. Intel GMA X3000 graphics are included.

The low-powered Stealey processor is designed to compete with Via's C7M. While the C7M runs at 1.5GHz, the Stealey outperforms it thanks to a more sophisticated architecture and larger cache.

UMPCs based on the new reference design are expected to hit the market later in 2007. A follow-up to McCaslin will debut in Q2 2008 with CPUs fabricated using 45nm technology. Intel projects the UMPC will rise rapidly in market share over the next few years and by 2010, the UMPC will hold 10 percent of the total PC market.

Read More (Ars Technica)

Laptop sales: Acer on the rise, Dell down

Acer is currently the world's #4 notebook manufacturer and is aiming to surpass Lenovo for third place. Much of Acer's success has been attributed to agressive pricing.

While HP and Dell hold the most notebook market share, Dell had a poor Q4 last year; shipments fell 1.5 percent from Q3 according to a report from iSuppli. Dell wasn't helped by the Sony battery recall catastrophe last year, where it had to recall over four million defective batteries. Lenovo held onto its fifth place spot in Q4, shipping 9.1 percent more units than it did in Q3.

Read More (The Register)

AMD to miss Q1 revenue target

AMD has updated its Q1 outlook and says that it expects revenues to be around $1.225 billion, which is roughly 23% below the target that AMD had provided previously in Q4 ($1.6 - $1.7 billion), which was already dim. Reasoning for the lower revenue was due to &quot;lower overall average selling prices and significantly lower unit sales, especially in the resale channel&quot; according to AMD.

AMD's future does not look good - its plan to undercut Intel and its Core architecture with lower pricing for its mobile, desktop and server/workstation processors is backfiring, as the company's profit margins are vanishing. AMD announced this morning drastic price cuts of its single- and dual-core processors; now AMD does not occupy a spot in the upper mainstream of the desktop processor market.

AMD said it is planning to restructure its business model to increase operational efficiency and lower its operating cost structure this year.

Read More (TGDaily)

Schitckers.com announces new Suede laptop skins

Schitckers.com has launched a new product not yet seen on the laptop accessory market - Suede Skins. They are made of Ultrasuede and will retail for under $30. According to the company, the product allows customers to turn a boring laptop into a &quot;chic luxurious experience in just seconds.&quot;

The Suede Skins are very durable - made of Ultrasuede, the best microfiber suede on the market, they hold up to rough use. They can be cleaned with simple soap and water.

Suede Skins join an existing line of Laptop Skins - for more information, go to http://www.schtickers.com.

Product Link

Read More (eMediaWire)

 

I reached out to touch but only felt the lifeless feel of my LCD. Those do look cool though. Ooh la la indeed

As for AMD, laptops only, they seem to have really taken their eye off the ball as soon as Intel brought out Core Duo last year. Not exactly picked up and Intel seem to be ahead of the game now

 

Is it just me or does the keyboard on the G40 look incredibly small?? I know they went for aesthetics when they put the speakers on the side, but proportionally speaking it looks like a lot of wasted real estate.

 

Those look pretty cool. I still have my skinit one on my laptop (although my laptop is dead )
Tim

 

Nice looking G40, 8600GT 512mb awesome too!

 

i cant wait for the next gen of laptops

 

WOW! That toshiba g40 looks amazing! That hdmi graphics card is gona be so freeking fast. The volume button looks so nice. i want one!

 

Nice notebook (I sure wouldn't mind having one in my household), but OUCH. The next-gen Qosmio is sure expensive. I mean, $4000 bucks American? What were they thinking? I can get a 30"+ HDTV, an X-Box 360 and a Blu-Ray+HD-DVD hybrid player and still have money left over.

edit: And yeah, it's nice to see Toshiba going back to the more "squarish" designs of the good ol' days. Let's hope it's the same case for the successor of the A100. That'll totally rock.

 

hmmmm 2Ghz C2D seems a bit weak for the G40...I was expecting like a 2.4-2.6Ghz C2D.

 

Pricing will likely be closer to $2999 in the US with a similar release date. A full photo of the system is available after the jump

 

If the government wants to make sure their data does not get stolen as often, just buy desktops. I'm tired of wondering if I'm going to be the next identity crime victim just because the US government hires a bunch of fools.

 

The new Qosmio looks really nice, but it's way too expensive, the HD-DVD drive should be optional (it's not something I waste money on), and it needs a keypad. There's no excuse why they couldn't have gotten a keypad in there and still had that nice design.

And what's gotten into AMD? It's starting to sound like their management changed within the past 2 or 3 years to the bad kind of executives. You know what I mean. I'm talking about the executives who take over a company, run it into the ground, position it to be sold or merged by cutting back on certain things, and then complete the sale/merger while getting a huge severance payoff. It's all the rage today, even moreso than outsourcing.

The whole IRS thing is just another excuse for them to raise taxes. The government steals up so much of our money it should be unbelievable that this kind of data-insecurity is tolerated.... They say in most of the major border or port cities you can buy identities for as little as $15 because they're so easy to come by. That's just sad. I'm furious I have to pay taxes to these idiots in government that can't even do a simple thing like secure their systems.

 

Uh, "Schtickers" is misspelled as "Schitkers" in the sub heading about suede laptop skins

 

Such a big notebook and where do they place the fingerprint reader? Yes between the left and right mouse buttons. I mean: come on!
And 3000 euro's is just too crazy. I at least expect a T7700 2.4 GHz, 2 GB and two 160 GB hard drives for that.

But Qosmio is known to be expensive. Let's see how other companies are going to do.

 

The Qosmio looks good , I really like the "new" style line of white/black .

Don't know how good is the 8600 but so far Toshiba skimped on GPUs in their precious Qosmio line , I hope it is not the case here .

Besides that I already see some major design flaws , some that weren't even in the older models .

 

I wonder if the consumer Satellite line is going to get a make over. Toshiba is coming out was some really nice looking machines. I think it is about time Dell got on the ball here. =P

 

oooooh, suede. mesa like. And coincidentally, Suede is a good britpop band.

 

AMD is getting gg'd. I believe you can get an X2 3800+ for $99 or less even.

Their laptop platforms (processors/chipsets) are pretty bad and only saved by ATi's good integrated graphics.

Thank you AMD for screwing up a good Canadian company. (also thanks for buying out a company that almost had as much revenue as you therefore crippling you and leaving you no margin for error ...[and then C2D comes out])