Toshiba A3X, A7, A6 manual Cooking up new Ways to handle heat, Bringing new Batteries to life

In 1985, Toshiba developed the

world’s first industry standard Notebook.

We’ve come a long way since then.

Designing and building Notebooks is a complex exercise. It requires innovation on many fronts, and a careful balance between competing priorities. This section outlines some of the key challenges, and introduces a few of the technologies we’ve developed over the years to overcome them.



Cooking up new

ways to handle heat.

Thermal management is one of the main challenges in Notebook design, and heat is one of the leading causes of failure. The faster the processor, the hotter it gets. So dissipating heat is essential if you want more power and more reliability.

Fortunately, we can draw on the expertise of other divisions to help our efforts. For instance, our refrigeration engineers helped develop the world’s first water- cooled Notebook.

Bringing new

batteries to life.

A battery’s usefulness depends on its size, its energy density, and its ability to be recharged. All three need to be optimised for a Notebook. Toshiba has pioneered many innovations in this area, including developing the nickel metal hydride battery, and its successor, the now almost universal Lithium-Ion battery. Recently, another innovation emerged from the laboratory. To see what’s so remarkable about it, see page 22.

Shrinking

components to fit.

To make Notebooks smaller and more powerful, parts need to be made smaller and more powerful too. Toshiba’s expertise in areas like components (hard disk drives, screens, batteries and so on) and semiconductors (chips of all types) helps us drive this process. For instance, we’ve pioneered generation after generation of ever-smaller hard disk drives, culminating with the current World’s Smallest. For details, see page 22.

Reliability that’s

built in, not bolted on.

From a user’s point of view, reliability is the single most important attribute a Notebook can possess. And that’s why it is for us, too. Easier said than done, though. Reliability isn’t something that can be bolted-on, it has to be built in. So we’ve structured our business to do this. For instance, we still design and manufacture our Notebooks in-house. And we develop most of the main components – screens, drives, memory and so on – ourselves. The result? Industry leading levels of reliability.

To make sure we last, we aim to be first. 

We think that innovation and creativity is fundamental to our long-term future as a business. It’s this attitude that led to the development of the world’s first Notebook. And it’s why we’ve driven its evolution ever since. Here are some of the firsts we’ve accumulated in that time.

1985		1987			1989		1991		1993
1985 – Toshiba	1986 – World’s first		1987 – World’s first	1988 – World’s first		1989 – World’s first	1991 – World’s	1992 – World’s first	1993 – World’s	1994 – World’s
develops the world’s	Notebook with an		Notebook with an	Notebook with		Notebook with	first Notebook	Notebook with	first pen-based	first Notebook with
first industry	Intel® 286 Processor.		Intel® 386 processor.	an internal		a nickel metal-	with an active	a colour thin film	Tablet PC.	an Intel® Pentium®
standard Notebook.				hard disk drive.		hydride battery.	matrix screen.	transistor (TFT) display.		processor.