Toshiba T100 Notebooks Join Light-and-Thin Market in October

With Windows 7 fast approaching, I figured we’d see more vendors jump into the light-and-thin notebook market by now. Oh wait — Toshiba joined the party this very morning! I was just chatting on the phone with the folks at Tosh, and they pointed out two new Satellite models in the T100 line. Both will come with Windows 7 Home Premium and have Oct. 22 availability, just like the OS.

The  $549 T135 is a 13.3-incher weighing 3.88 pounds, while the $449 T115 (shown) has an 11.6-inch display and is slightly leaner at 3.49 pounds. Both run on Intel platforms, and there are at least three CPU options: a Celeron 743, Pentium SU4100 or Pentium SU2700 — all should help contribute to power efficiency. (Note that there’s some buzz today that the SU4000 CPUs will be Intel Core 2 Duo chips.) In fact, Toshiba says that with the 6-cell battery, nine hours of computing time is possible. We’ll see how that pans out in the real world, but I know my Toshiba netbook is engineered well in terms of power savings, so I have high hopes.

Other common features include:

• 802.11b/g/n
• 250GB or greater hard drive (5400 RPM)
• DDR3 RAM
• Bluetooth 2.1 (only on the larger model)
• A eSATA/USB combo port with USB Sleep-and-Charge and two additional USB 2.0 ports
• HDMI out
• Multitouch trackpad support
• Webcam with Toshiba’s facial recognition software

For the moment, all we have to go on is the press release and high level specs, but I’m hoping to get a review model of the smaller T115 once they become available — if not sooner — so stay tuned!

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