RUMOURS ARE CIRCULATING about a Toshiba 13.3-inch notebook that is set to be the world’s lightest 13.3-incher at about 1kg when fitted with an SSD drive. But that isn’t all, as it will come with a secondary battery that uses Toshiba’s proprietary SCiB (Super Charged ion Battery) technology, which allows the battery to charge from empty to 90 percent charge in as little as 10 minutes.
It’s not clear what the primary battery will be though, nor is there any explanation as to why the SCiB battery will be a secondary unit rather than the primary battery of the notebook. Details of the new notebook first appeared on a Vietnamese website called vozExpress, although some details have since been removed at the request of the original source, though this is meant to only be temporary. However, Engadget snagged the details and posted the pictures on its site, so the few details that are available can be seen there.
A super light 13.3-inch notebook is in itself not a big deal. Sony has been making them for a while, albeit not quite this light. However, Toshiba is using a novel design of a honeycomb rib structure that apparently is a first when it comes to notebook chassis design. It also has a new cooling system, although we’re not sure what it involves, just that goes by the name of Blaze Mountain, which sort of sounds like an Intel code name. So far it’s all very intriguing, but actually it gets better.
Somehow Toshiba has managed to kit out this super-lightweight notebook with 35W TDP mobile Core i? processors. This means that it won’t just be a light notebook, but it should also have great performance. Add to this 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB hard drive, or go with the super expensive option of a 512GB SSD and we’re talking about a pretty impressive notebook here, but those are not quite all the tricks it’s got up its sleeve.
Toshiba has also conjured up some kind of docking solution for it with USB 3.0 support, which should allow for quick backups among other things. There’s really only one picture of the notebook itself, so far, but there are two version of the same picture, one revealing a Toshiba logo. The design, what little of it that can be seen there, looks fantastic. What appears to be the rear of the notebook looks like it’s made out of some kind of chromed metal, while the lid and sides of it are made from a ribbed black material.
We can’t wait to find out more details about this very unusual notebook from Toshiba and it once again it proves that there’s a reason why high-end notebooks are being made by Japanese companies. Sure, it’s going to cost more than what most of earn in a month or two, but it doesn’t matter, as this is going to be one of those aspirational products that will produce a halo effect when it comes to sales of Toshiba’s other notebook products. Sometimes it’s frustrating to be a gadget lover and not have enough funds to afford all the nice new shiny toys that all the clever companies out there come up with.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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