Toshiba: 'Laptops will be bigger than desktops by 2007'

With a brand new Qosmio laptop for 2005, it seems that Toshiba is rather more excited about Media Centers than our computer expert Chris. We'll have to wait until the end of the year before they incorporate digital TV tuners, but in the meantime the G20 features a new piano black chassis, a 17-inch TrueBrite screen, DVD and HDD recording and RAID technology for the first time.

With the size of the Qosmios limiting their use as a portable computer, Toshiba is also introducing new business and consumer models. Toshiba challenged one of the assembled journalists to drop its new Portégé R200 from about 1.5m. Despite the embarrassed hack doing a nice job of landing the laptop on its corner, the laptop's 3D 'accelerometer' detected the movement and braced the hard drive for impact. Fortunately for Toshiba, the laptop booted up without a glitch, making it the perfect machine for butter-fingered executives.

Toshiba has finally released its much-anticipated Gigabeat this week. The MP3 player looked attractive sitting in the standard dock, and the final models come in 10, 20, 40 and 60GB versions with 16 hours of battery life each. Is the world ready for a change from the iPod? Crave has a review model coming in soon, so we'll let you know if Apple finally has something to worry about. -GC