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Acer Announces HD-DVD Laptop - Aspire 9800

Toshiba Launches First Notebook With HD DVD-ROM Drive



Acer Announces HD-DVD Laptop - Aspire 9800

Acer is going all out with its new Core Duo based Aspire 9800 notebook. While the Aspire 9800 has some impressive hardware specifications to justify its estimated $2,600 price tag, the one feature garnering the most attention is its optional HD-DVD drive. This would make it the second announced HD-DVD notebook after the Qosmio G30.

While the HD-DVD drive is rather noteworthy, the Aspire 9800 has a lot more to offer. For one thing, it comes with a massive 20.1" TFT LCD display. Although it has such a large screen, the maximum resolution is "only" 1680 x 1050 -- the same as 20.1" desktop displays like the Dell 2007WFP. It would have been nice to have seen a WUXGA (1920x1200) display offered as an option. Powering the 20.1" display is a GeForce Go 7600 GPU backed up with 256MB of dedicated graphics memory. The Aspire 9800 is able to support dual SATA hard drives up to 240GB in a RAID 0 configuration.

As for other odds and ends, the notebook features a built-in analog/digital TV tuner, 3-watt speakers backed up with a 4-watt subwoofer and Dolby Digital Live support, a bundled VoIP Bluetooth phone, 1.3MP digital camera, 802.11b/g, GbE and Bluetooth support.

The Aspire 9800 can be configured with either Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition or Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition and comes with a 1-year Carry In warranty. Impressive as this new notebooks sounds, there is no word on availability in North America yet.

Source: DailyTech

Toshiba Launches First Notebook With HD DVD-ROM Drive

Toshiba today announced the launch of the world's first notebook PC with an HD DVD-ROM drive. Qosmio G30/697HS will be available in the Japanese market in mid-May, as the latest product in Qosmio line-up of AV notebook PC series. Along with playback of HD DVD content, the new Qosmio can read and write to current DVD and CD discs, including DVD+/-R DL (dual-layer) and DVD-RAM.

The slim-type 12.7mm-thick HD DVD-ROM drive achieves this thin form factor with an optical system requiring only a single objective lens to read HD DVD discs and to read and write to DVDs and CDs. The HD playback is supported by Intel Core Duo Processor T2500 CPU (2.00GHz) and NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics.

The Qosmio G30/697HS integrates two TV tuners, one for digital terrestrial broadcasts, the other for analog terrestrial broadcasts. As users watch their choice of program - analog or digital - the separate tuners allow them to record both, what they are watching as well as a program from the other tuner all at the same time.

The novelty also features a 17-inch diagonal widescreen with 1920x1200 resolution. Beyond this, the new Qosmio also integrates an HDMI output in its external interface, allowing the PC to be hooked up to an HDTV and to act as the video source for a large-sized TVs or home theater projectors.

Key specifications:

Source: Toshiba

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