May 9 - 12:25pm EDT   Toshiba has announced plans to launch two new commercial products based on Sony's PlayStation 3 technology, according to a Japanese news site. Tech-On! writes that a forthcoming TV will use the PS3's core Cell processor, in order to enable some high-end features; among these are real-time upscaling of SD signals into HD resolution, and the ability to play and record multiple TV shows at the same time. Unusual is the description of another option, "displaying video as if it is being viewed through opera glasses." This may simply refer to a zoom function. [full story]

May 9 - 2:30am EDT  Apple has been ranked the worst among all major PC vendors and other large electronic firms in the fight against climate change. Climate Counts this week released its second annual Company Scorecard hoping to create a "simple, easy-to-understand ranking of companies would motivate both companies and consumers to step-up their efforts on climate change." Apple was ranked in last place among the list of 12 electronics companies, while companies such as IBM, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard were near the top of the electronics industry. Top honor went to Nike, which passed last year’s high scorer, Canon, to become the top scored company among the 56 companies evaluated. Apple was the only ... [full story]

April 22 - 10:35am EDT   Toshiba this morning gave the same attention to its Satellite Pro notebooks that it did for its new Satellites. Hoping to jumpstart interest in students and pro users, the company has launched five new models with both a redesigned look and new internals. The L300 and L300D serve as Toshiba's baseline with either Intel Core 2 Duo (L300) or AMD Turion 64 X2 (L300D) dual-core processors and a 15.4-inch screen while offering just the essentials; systems start at $699 for an L300D with a 1.9GHz AMD chip as well as 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive, scaling up to a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and a 160GB disk in the $799 L300. [full story]

April 16 - 4:30pm EDT   PC shipments in the first quarter of 2008 reveal a changing landscape both in the US and in the world at large, according to preliminary results released today by IDC. While positions remain largely the same, shifts in growth percentages reveal that some companies are gaining at the expense of others. Dell in particular has recovered from its long slump in 2007 and has had a second consecutive quarter of strong shipments, leading US charts with 30.9 percent of the country's computer market (4.9 million units) and a 15.6 percent boost to shipments over the same period a year before. [full story]

April 14 - 3:45pm EDT   Toshiba on Monday announced the delay of its DynaBook SS RX1 notebook, the first with a 128GB solid state drive (SSD). The company's Japanese DynaBook site said the laptop, scheduled for release in mid-April with web sales commencing on March 25, has been pushed back to June on account of parts delays, and apologized to any customers already on the waiting list. If the parts shortage in question involve the SSD drives and can't be reconciled soon, Toshiba may not be the first manufacturer to sell 128GB SSD drives in laptops, as it previously claimed. [full story]

April 9 - 3:10pm EDT   Toshiba on Wednesday announced the launch of four lines of high-end LCD TVs; the ZH500, ZV500, RH500 and CV500, all under the company's REGZA line. The ZH500 and RH500 series come with a built-in 300GB hard drive for recording videos or TV programs, while all four offer a recording option to a Toshiba Qosmio media-oriented notebook via USB. Furthermore, the ZH500 and ZV500 TVs feature built-in LAN and DLNA network support, as well as Bluetooth connectivity to sync photos with cell phones. [full story]

April 8 - 3:45pm EDT   For other electronics companies, Toshiba has begun shipping the SpursEngine TM SE1000, a video stream processor meant for use in various AV products; it encodes and decodes MPEG-2 and H.264 clips, in resolutions up to 1080p. It is notable however for being one of the first third-party products based on Sony's Cell Broadband Engine, the processor technology behind the PlayStation 3 gaming console. In its SpursEngine incarnation, the processor runs at 1.5GHz and consumes between 10 to 20W of power. [full story]

April 8 - 9:20am EDT   In addition to re-revealing its new Satellite designs, Toshiba on Tuesday updated its Satellite X205 gaming notebook to take advantage of newer hardware. The 17-inch desktop replacement now draws on at least a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo from Intel's Penryn era that offers both extra speed as well as better battery life. It also includes at least 320GB of storage split across two drives, each of which spin at 7,200RPM: the speed provides desktop-like load times without sacrificing space, according to Toshiba. [full story]

April 7 - 2:20pm EDT   Toshiba launched the world’s smallest 3CCD camera head, the IK-HD1. The IK-HD1 is capable of delivering 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution video at 30 frames per second from its 1.6-inch deep body and 2.3-ounce weight. The required controller box outputs video via a choice of connections, namely digital HD-SDI, analog RGB or component. There is an RS 232C serial interface and white balance can be adjusted manually or automatically. [full story]

April 1 - 12:25pm EDT   Toshiba on Tuesday completely overhauled the look of its Satellite notebooks with four new systems, as well as an old-look 17-inch model. Following a similar update in Europe, the company has changed from its longstanding silver-and-gray to a new subtler look. Referred to as Horizon, the design both adds an imprint design as well as a completely flush trackpad and a much subtler glossy, dark gray finish. It also adds touch-sensitive CD and DVD movie playback controls similar to recent HP systems. [full story]

March 26 - 4:30pm EDT   Toshiba on Wednesday showed off a talking, learning robot it calls the ApriPoko, which asks questions and learns remote control functions to make jobs such as turning on various electronic devices a voice-operated task. Users can tell ApriPoko to switch channels or turn on the TV when they’re out of remote range, which operates on line-of-sight. Still a prototype, the robot functions by asking questions from its chest-mounted speaker. Once it detects an infra-red signal from a remote, it will ask what function just took place; it then commits an answer to memory thanks to a built-in microphone and sends a corresponding IR signal when it hears the same words in the ... [full story]

March 24 - 2:25pm EDT   Seagate may pull a lawsuit as its trump card if solid-state drives (SSDs) threaten to undermine its conventional hard drive business, company head Bill Watkins has said in a new interview with Fortune. The executive alleges that both Intel and Samsung are violating patents dealing with the interaction between computers and storage and that a formal complaint could follow that would either force them to change their technology or else compensate Seagate for their purported infringement. [full story]

March 24 - 12:00pm EDT   Toshiba is about to ship its 128GB solid-state drive, the first SSD from the company and the first it says to offer the speed of faster drives with the storage of slower models. The 1.8-inch drive uses the same multi-level cell (MLC) process as the flash memory used in portable music players but also relies on a new controller that boosts its speeds well past the sometimes slow speeds of these cheaper drives. As promised, the unit can read at 100MB per second and writes at 40MB per second, making it faster than many 2.5-inch, notebook-sized drives. [full story]

March 21 - 8:35am EDT   A patent infringement claim may lead to blocks against importing both Blu-ray technology as well as cellphones and other storage, the US International Trade Commission said today. The potential impasse has its roots in a complaint by patent holder and Columbia University emeritus professor Gertrude Rothschild, who claims that bringing numerous foreign-made devices with short-wave lasers and LEDs violates her own claims to the technology in the US. Most companies affected by the dispute are those producing Blu-ray optical storage drives and involve chief backer Sony as well as LG, Pioneer, Samsung, and Sharp. [full story]

March 19 - 11:50am EDT   Best Buy hopes to satisfy disaffected buyers of HD DVD players by offering them a $50 coupon, the retailer announced today. Worth $10 million, the deal will hand out the in-store discount to anyone who bought either a dedicated HD DVD reader or add-ons such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD drive on or before February 23rd, the Saturday that followed Toshiba's discontinuation of the format. The decision was made to head off concerns from customers who unknowingly bought into the now-obsolete format and will help them make their own decisions, whether to switch to Blu-ray or something else altogether, Best Buy claims. [full story]