Toshiba changes gears

By PETER GRIFFIN

Champagne-coloured cases, built-in water cooling and longer battery life are central to notebook maker Toshiba's plans to hang on to its high-end market share.

Unveiling additions to its Tecra and Portege ranges of notebooks last week, Toshiba chose the ostentatious surrounds of an Auckland Audi car dealership, comparing the bodywork of its new notebooks to that of the sought-after Audi TT.

The connection is no coincidence. Toshiba is keen to associate itself with the sleek designs of the automobile industry. The company is even talking to Audi about joint marketing campaigns.

The notebook manufacturer has overhauled the look of its high-end Tecra and Portege designs. Its new models, the corporate-aimed Tecra 9000 and the Portege 4000, look better and weigh less - under 2kg for the Portege - than their predecessors.

But increasingly tech-savvy notebook users are basing their purchasing decisions on technical specifications as much as looks.

Toshiba's new models will come with Intel's 133Mhz front side bus. Battery power has been increased 15 per cent to four hours and water circulates through the machines to keep their temperature down.

The models also have built-in 802.11b wireless local area network (LANs) and Bluetooth cards. The Tecra model introduces "hot swappable" functions allowing users to change from wireless to wired LANs without reconfiguring their network.

The new models also incorporate "Secure Digital" expansion slots. The slots take SD Cards - portable, postage stamp-sized memory cards offering additional storage capacity. The cards have capacity of 128MB but a 1GB version is expected next year.

Like the Sony Memory Stick, the SD Card will be compatible with mobile devices.

Ralph Stadus, Toshiba's general manager for information systems, said the proposed mega-merger of Hewlett Packard and Compaq could offer advantages to Toshiba. Notebook buyers might shy away from models they feared could be phased out in merged product lines.