Toshiba A7, A3X Coming any second batteries that recharge in a minute, A very small achievement

When you spend around A$4 billion a year on R&D (approximately six times the CSIRO’s annual budget) you tend to come up with a

lot of new ideas. In fact, we earned over 1,250 patents in the USA alone in 2005 (and over 1,300 the year before) - the ninth highest of any company in the world.

This river of ideas is what drives the evolution of ever smaller, more powerful, more versatile and more reliable Notebooks.

Here are some of the technologies that are moving out of our laboratories and into production. They’ll be popping up in our Notebooks in the near future.

Coming any second –

batteries that recharge in a minute.

Downtime is frown time. So a recent breakthrough in Toshiba’s research labs is good news. A bit of neat nanotechnology has led to the development of a battery than can be recharged sixty times as fast as the advanced lithium-ion varieties in widespread use today (which were, incidentally, originally developed by Toshiba).

The result: a battery that can reach 80% of capacity in 60 seconds flat.

A very small achievement.

Modesty aside, Toshiba leads the world in hard disk drive technology. In fact, we developed both the current industry-best 1.8” variety and the ubiquitous 2.5”.

Now we’ve pushed the envelope even further – and picked up another envelope from the Guinness Book of Records – by producing a 0.85” hard disk drive that holds 4GB of data. All that info on a disk smaller than a 10-cent piece! It’ll open up brand new opportunities to think small in Notebooks.

Who needs batteries anyway?

Without a power point, a Notebook with a flat battery is just excess baggage. So developing alternatives is a priority at Toshiba.

That’s why we’re working on fuel cells. One day, this technology may replace all sorts of things, including power stations and the internal combustion engine (that’s a decade or two away!). In the meantime, fuel cells are on the verge of moving into Notebooks.

Toshiba’s most advanced model is a thumb-size unit* that’ll run an MP3 player for 20 hours on a single fill of methanol. Next? Notebooks that’ll go for days between refills.

*recognised by the Guinness Book of Records 2006 edition as the world’s smallest.

Get up to speed with WiMax.

WiMax is the next generation of wireless. It’ll let you to connect from a longer range at

higher speeds – we’re talking 3km and speeds of up to 15 MB/sec. Think of it as broadband without wires. Or the best thing since, er, wireless.

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