Tecra - The Customer's Choice

TOSHIBA Tecra laptops have raised the curtain on its movie-playing 750 notebook computer -- the first to include a DVD drive. A DVD drive can read about 4.5 gigabytes of data from digital video disks (DVDs), and can also read standard CD-Roms.

Toshiba's information systems division informed that one DVD can store the equivalent of six CD-Roms. The Tecra 750 DVD has built-in MPEG-2 decoding which enables the computer to display movies and video footage stored on DVD.

Though DVD is most often associated with storing movies but the arrival of DVD on mobile computers will focus attention on business uses, such as presentations, for the storage technology. DVD is large enough to be practical to store multiple tracks for language or music, so presentations on one disk can be customized for different markets. The computer can also be fitted with an optional camera for telephone or Internet-based video-conferencing. The computer's high-speed PCI/ZV video capture card and port provides fast image capture and video processing of up to 15 frames per second. The Tecra's display is powered by a S3 Virge MX 3D graphics accelerator and 4Mb of memory. It can run simultaneous displays running at different resolutions.

The system is powered by an Intel 233 Pentium MMX processor, 64Mb of memory and a removable 4.77GB hard disk drive as standard.

Intel Corp. acknowledged recently that some components it supplied are causing to heat up these laptops so much that they break down. The defect, which first appeared in Toshiba's Satellite 4100 models, have an effect on certain laptops containing 400-MHz Pentium II and Celeron processors.

Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptops also could be exaggerated, as could laptops of other brands.

Intel spokesman informs that "They are working with their clients, and luckily it affects less than 1 percent of the total mobile Pentium II and Celeron shipments."

The defect is in the unit, or daughter card, containing the processor. The unit is letting too much of the heat produce by the processor escape to heat up the rest of the laptop, without delay it gets shut down until repaired.

A number of affected laptops shut down instantly, while it can take 60 days for troubles to surface in others. More than a few hundred happenings already have been reported, as per Toshiba executive.

At the same time as Toshiba is the only PC maker reporting the trouble, sources close to Intel admit other laptop manufacturers have acknowledged defective units.

Toshiba said "customers would take delivery of replacement units at no charge i.e. free of cost". The security, which Santa Clara-based Intel pays for, takes about an hour for nearly all laptops.