Toy Box: Toshiba detaches keyboard

Did we decide not to bother calling them notebooks? Laptops seems to be the name of the game, though Toshiba's latest might give your legs a bit of an ache.

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Did we decide not to bother calling them notebooks? Laptops seems to be the name of the game, though Toshiba’s latest might give your legs a bit of an ache.

Its most recent round of “my battery overheats and it burned a hole in my trousers” lawsuits aside, Toshiba’s new desktop replacement monster is the 4.3kg Satellite 1955-S803 (pictured). Why 1955? Who knows. In 1955 there were no artificial satellites in orbit around the planet, but it is the year when the space race could officially be said to begin, with the Americans and the Soviets both declaring their intentions. So it kind of makes sense.

That aside, the biggest problem with laptops, apart from the battery life, that I’ve found is the cramped keyboard. The 1955 should sort that out because aside from all the usual points of interest (a 16in screen, 2.5GHz Pentium 4 chipset, varying degrees of RAM and hard drive yada yada), it comes complete with a wireless removable keyboard. Set up the laptop on a nicely situated shelf or stack of phone books and pop out the keyboard and add the wireless mouse and — hey presto! — you’re in business.

Because it’s a weighty fellow, country manager Steve Ford describes it as more of a mobile office than a laptop. It isn’t the kind of thing you lug around with you too often.

Sadly, the beast won’t be coming to NZ any time soon unless you all lobby Toshiba, but in the US it costs $US2500. Nice idea, Tosh.

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