Toshiba's new entertainment powerhouse: the Satellite A500

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The 16’’ Satellite A500  brings high-class multimedia features to the mainstream laptop market segment.

Toshiba Computer Systems Division today announced its new Satellite range including the 16’’ Satellite A500 laptop. Designed to easily handle today’s demanding multimedia and entertainment tasks, the Satellite A500 offers a full set of high-quality video and audio features. The new Satellite A500 will be available during summer 2009 throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa. 

“The Satellite A500 is specifically designed with multimedia and entertainment in mind,” says Thomas Teckentrup, General Manager, Toshiba Computer Systems Division Europe. For an ever-increasing number of consumers, enjoying multimedia means more than just consuming content – it’s about creating and publishing it too. People are editing videos plus ripping, creating and editing audio files. "To really allow our customers to enjoy these ‘creation’ activities along with consuming content, we’re bringing sophisticated features from premium class products to the mainstream market, and at an affordable price,” adds Teckentrup.

Multimedia at its best
With the Satellite A500, consumers can truly enjoy casual gaming, and watch movies or TV at home or while on the go. The multimedia machine comes with a 16" HD Toshiba TruBrite® display with 16:9 aspect ratio that offers a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and a luminance of 200 cd/m². An inbuilt TV-Tuner¹ is able to receive analogue and digital programmes over DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial). High-end Harman Kardon® stereo speakers provide for a vibrant sound experience.

Two different design flavours
The Precious Black LCD cover of the Satellite A500 comes with a new Toshiba Fusion finish based on IMR (In-Mold Rolling) technology. To meet customers' different design and price expectations Toshiba gives consumers the choice of two variations: One comes with an LCD mask, with hinges and rims painted in silver. Adding to its sophisticated allure, a premium version offers an edge-to-edge display (Flush Screen) with a glass mask, while rims and hinges are made of chrome, further improving the elegant looks. The backlit keyboard with flat keys in a matt black finish transforms the Satellite A500 into an elegant multimedia powerhouse.

Improved usability for easy content creation
The Satellite A500’s full-size keyboard features a numeric keypad. The Touch Pad with Multi Touch Control² facilitates scrolling and other often used operating functions. Thanks to the REGZA-Link, a HDMI CEC (High-Definition Multimedia Interface Consumer Electronics Control) interface, the Satellite A500 can be operated with a remote control that is normally used for other consumer electronic devices such as a Toshiba REGZA TV. Toshiba is the first manufacturer to implement the CEC specification for HDMI onto its laptops.

Eight feather touch buttons give direct access to audio/video functions and also to Toshiba's Eco utility³, which makes the reduction of power consumption easy and visible. Toshiba ConfigFree™ facilitates wireless network configuration and online access via the embedded WLAN interface and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR⁴.

The right power for the job⁵
The Satellite A500 has an integrated DVD Super Multi (DL) drive, a 5-in-1 Bridge Media slot for the most popular media cards, three USB 2.0 interfaces and an additional eSATA/USB combo port that supports Sleep-and-Charge, allowing users to charge an MP3 player, mobile phone or other device while the laptop is switched off.

Depending on configuration, the Satellite A500 is powered by Intel CPUs up to Core 2 Duo (Satellite A500), an AMD CPUs up to Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Processor (Satellite A500D). The new Satellite laptop provides up to 8 GB DDR memory and has a hard disk drive which offers a capacity up to 500 GB. Additionally the Satellite A500 can be configured with a 64GB SSD drive (Solid State Drive). A HD web camera records videos in wide format. For advanced graphics performance the Satellite A500 offers ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD GPUs with up to 1GB DDR3 VRAM.

As a responsible global corporate citizen, Toshiba ensures that all laptops are RoHS-compliant, effectively reducing the environmental impact by restricting the use of lead, mercury and certain other hazardous substances. Additionally, the Toshiba Eco utility and PC Health Monitor help to reduce power consumption. The new Toshiba Satellite A500 is ENERGY STAR® 5.0. ready (certification in process).

• ¹Availability of specific features are subject to local configuration
• ²The Touch Pad with Multi Touch Control provides an innovative alternative to conventional scrolling and buttons. It features pinch gesture to zoom in or out, ChiralMotion Scrolling for smooth scrolling, momentum motion for smooth, fast, trackball-like cursor motion. ChiralRotate facilitates rotation of images and graphics.
• ³The Eco utility allows the user to work in the Eco Power Plan in a simple and easy way. When the Eco mode is on, the system works according to Eco mode parameter and when the Eco mode is off, the system works according to the power plan. By opening the Eco utility Graphical User Interface (GUI), the user can see the real time system power consumption and experiences the difference of power consumption between the Eco Power Plan and the previous Power Plan.
• ⁴These features are part of the Toshiba Easymedia concept that has been created with easy usability in mind
• ⁵Availability of specific features are subject to local configuration