Toshiba Launches Dual HD Consumer Notebook

Although high-end notebooks have offered dual hard drives for a while, Toshiba is bringing the concept to the masses with its Satellite A135-S4499 notebook.

Some high-end laptops aimed at gamers, computing-intensive professions, content creators, and media junkies have frequently sported dual hard drives—at the expense of battery life and bulk—Toshiba is bringing the dual-hard drive notebook concept to everyday notebook computer users in the form of its Satellite A135-S4499 system.

“Toshiba’s new Satellite A135 notebook PC with dual hard drives offers consumers advanced multimedia performance and maximum storage capacity,” said Jeff Barney, VP of marketing for Toshiba America Information Systems’ Digital Products Division, in a statement. “The Satellite A135 series provides consumers with the customization, price and performance that has become synonymous with the Satellite notebook line.”

The Satellite A135-S4499 sports two SATA drives boasting 120 GB capacities, bringing total storage for the A135-S4499 to 240 GB. Toshiba touts the idea of using one drive for business documents and applications and reserving the second drive for music, photos, and other media, but another idea might be to use the second drive as a live backup of your primary storage.

As for other specs, the Satellite A135-S4499 doesn’t carry many surprises—and actually offers somewhat fewer features than its many brethren, owing to the need to cram an extra hard drive inside. The system sports a 15.4-inch widescreen display (1,280 by 800 resolution) with Toshiba’s TruBrite technology (driven by Intel integrated graphics), a 1.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 MB of L2 cache, and 2 GB of RAM. Also on board: a fingerprint reader for secure access, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi wireless networking, S-Video output, an i-Link IEEE 1394 port, a PCMCIA Slot, a Dual Mode touch pad which can provide one-tap access to common applications, a DVD±R double layer drive, four USB 2.0 ports, and a 5-in-1 media reader.

Expect to see the Satellite A135-S4499 on sale February 20, 2007 at a suggested price of $1,499.99—and it ships with Windows Vista Ultimate.