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The company announced the newest Qosmio model today, the X500 series, and the most notable new feature is the overdue, inevitable inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive or burner–Toshiba’s first. (The one-time proponent of HD-DVD formally announced it was getting into the Blu-Ray game last month.) The X500 also has Intel’s new mobile version of its Core i7 processor, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 graphics with a gigabyte of DDR5 memory, HDMI, Harmon/Kardon sound, and room for two hard drives (one of which can be a solid-state disk).

How much will all this run you? Toshiba says it’ll announce pricing on October 13th, and that the system will be available on October 22nd–which, uncoincidentally, is Windows 7 launch day.

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And then it took another eighteen months for Toshiba to announce the inevitable conclusion to the whole saga: It’s joining the Blu-Ray Association and will be selling Blu-Ray players and laptops with Blu-Ray drives. I feel for the the company, I don’t think its stance that HD-DVD was the superior format was utterly irrational, and if and when the day comes that I buy a Blu-Ray player, it’s as likely to come from Toshiba as any other company.

But a panel of relatively well-informed consumers could have figured out the likely outcome years before Toshiba ditched HD-DVD and embraced Blu-Ray. Wouldn’t it have made sense for everyone involved to get here more quickly?

(Note: The Toshiba Blu-Ray Disc logo shown above is my quick mockup–I wonder if Toshiba still winces when it sees its name and “Blu-Ray” in close proximity, or if it’s over it?)

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The Mini NB205-N312BL I reviewed lists for $399.99 and sports the components and features you’d expect to find in a current $400 netbook: a 10.1-inch screen with 1024-by-600 resolution and LED backlighting, a 166-MHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 5400rpm 160GB hard drive, 802.11G Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, three USB ports, an SD slot, VGA output, a Webcam, and a six-cell battery. And oh yeah, it runs Windows XP Home SP3.

The $399.99 version of the Mini is available in blue, brown, pink and white; all versions have two-tone cases and a bit of texture to the plastic on the lid. They’re among the slickest-looking netbooks at their price point. (There’s also a $349.99 version with a black case, a more basic keyboard, and no Bluetooth; I’d spring for the extra $50 for the top-of-the-line version.)

Here’s what the blue Mini I tested looked like:

The Mini weighs 2.93 pounds and is a reasonably trim 1″ thick, but -the six-cell battery extends from the back of the case and adds a bit of bulk, as seen in the second photo above. It’s not the world’s most aesthetically-pleasing design (and Toshiba doesn’t even sell a version of the Mini in the U.S. with a smaller three-cell battery), but it’s a common one, and it does provide the netbook with a sort of a handle to grab onto as you tote it around.

The single best thing about the Mini is its keyboard, the most impressive netbook one I’ve used to date. (Other netbooks with outstanding keyboards include Samsung models such as the N110 and Asus’s EeePC 1000HE.) Toshiba’s keyboard comes as close to full size as you can cram into a 10.1″ netbook, it’s got the comfy, MacBook-like “Chiclet” design, and there’s no ridge around the edge of the case to interfere with your hands as you type. The touchpad is nice and large too, with buttons right where they should be below the pad, rather than to the left and right. I did miss the MacBook-style two-finger scrolling offered by the EeePC 1000HE, though.

Toshiba didn’t resort to any of the minor but annoying cost-cutting measures that are common with netbooks: The caps-lock key has a light to indicate when it’s on, and there are a full complement of status lights on the front side of the case for features such as the Wi-Fi.  The hard drive has a sensor to prevent damage from drops, and the USB ports offer Sleep-and-Charge, which lets you charge up your phone and other devices even if the computer’s turned off. In other words, it feels like a Toshiba notebook that happens to be small, lightweight, and inexpensive. Along with some of HP’s Mini models, it’s also one of the few netbooks to receive the Epeat Gold rating for its environmental qualities.

When you write about netbooks you’re supposed to wring your hands about their less-than-supercharged performance and point out all the things you’re not going to want to do on them, such as play 3D games and watch DVD movies. As usual, I think that netbooks can perform perfectly acceptably, as long as you use ‘em for the the tasks that they’re designed to handle–which include a high percentage of the things that most people want to do with a computer. I didn’t perform formal benchmarking on the Mini, but I ran applications such as Office 2010, Paint.net, and Google Chrome and never felt that it was unacceptably slow, and YouTube videos played just fine. (Laptop Magazine’s extensive speed benchmarks for the NB205 show it performing respectably in most respects compared to other netbooks, although its bootup time of 85 seconds is slow.) If you buy the Mini, I’d recommend upgrading the RAM to 2GB so you can run more applications at one time without getting bogged down; upgrading is easy, since you can get at the system’s memory slot by removing one screw on the case’s underside.

Toshiba quotes a battery life for the Mini of “up to 9.08 hours.” When I used it to do real work, staying online more or less continuously via Wi-Fi or Verizon EvDO, I got 5.5 to 6.5 hours on a charge–about what I’d expect given Toshiba’s figure, the six-cell capacity, and the fact that the way I use notebooks never gets me battery life anywhere near vendor estimates. Laptop Magazine ran its battery benchmark on the NB205 and got nine hours and 24 minutes of life–even better than Toshiba’s estimate, and pretty spectacular for a laptop of any type.

I’d love to see Toshiba release a competitor to HP’s seriously upscale Mini 5101, a business-class netbook with a higher-resolution screen, an aluminum case, and options like sold-state storage. But the NB205 I reviewed is an impressive netbook debut for Toshiba–one that looks good in every important respect compared to the competitive set priced around $400. Right now, it’s among the models which I’ll mention first when people ask me, as they often do these days, “Which netbook should I buy?”

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When I got an advance peek at the NB205 last week, Toshiba representatives told me that the company decided to wait to ship a netbook (er, a mini notebook) until it could do it right. And the units they showed me did look decidedly upscale–the first models I’ve seen that compete with Samsung’s for general luxe feel. For $399, you get a 2.9-pound machine in a textured, metallic-finish case (in blue, brown white, or pink). The keyboard boasts the comfy and practical through-the-case design and is  as close to full-size as you can get in a machine with a 10.1″ LED screen, and the list of specs is respectable: a 160GB hard disk with a movement sensor, a Webcam, USB that charges even when the laptop is powered off, a decent-sized touchpad with well-postioned buttons, 802.11g/b WiFi, Ethernet, and Bluetooth. For now, it runs Windows XP.

The NB205’s CPU is a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N280, and Toshiba says that the six-cell battery (which is standard) will go for up to nine hours. Even if that’s as optimistic as most notebook battery-life claims, the NB205 should be competitive.

The only spec that gives me pause is the same one that gives me pause with all netbooks: The NB205 comes with 1GB of RAM. I persist in being frustrated by Microsoft licensing terms that make it impossible to sell a low-cost netbook with 2GB of RAM and a Microsoft OS. It seems especially silly to hobble machines as appealing and attractive as these Toshibas with an artificial restriction on RAM capacity. But there’s nothing Toshiba can do about it, and you can add more RAM yourself.

Toshiba is also releasing a $349 version of the NB205–it’s largely similar, but comes in a less fancy black case, has a plainer keyboard, and lacks Wi-Fi. I’d spend the fifty bucks to get the higher-end version. Both versions will be available on June 23rd.

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Ars Technica reviews USB drives.

A USB drive for backups.

Switching to Gmail made easy.

512GB SSD notebook from Toshiba.

Vodafone banishes international roaming charges.

Destroying Microsoft Office: surprisingly difficult.

AT&T bans (and emulates) SlingPlayer.

More e-readers to choose from.

Is Gmail having spam problems?

Sony loses a billion bucks.

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Larry Ellison is buying Sun.

Adobe puts Flash on TVs.

The post-Windows era begins.

TiVo to sell user data.

YouTube’s new comment filtering system.

Toshiba’s netbook starts at $600.

iPhone refurbs: a good deal.

Apple leads in customer experience.

A review of iPhone Quickoffice.

Microsoft gets $15 per netbook.

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The TG01 is one of several new phones at the show to sport a 480-by-800 display–others include LG’s Arena and HTC’s Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2–which gives it 2.5 times more pixels than the iPhone’s 320-by-480 screen. Toshiba also says it incorporated technology from its Regza flat-screen TVs into the TG01’s screen, and while I don’t know if that’s hype or mundane fact, the results are impressive.

What will more pixels bring to phones? Prettier interfaces, for one thing, since it’ll let typography look crisper at the same font size, for instance. And high-res phones will be able to fit more of a Web page or document on screen at once (although at some point it’ll be debatable if that’s a benefit–if text is too teeny-tiny it’ll cause eyestrain).

I’m not sure if any of the high-res handsets at MWC fully take advantage of the potential of the extra pixels–the iPhone has a slicker interface than the TG01 despite its resolution handicap. But I’m looking forward to what the technology will permit in future phones, and I’m wondering how long it’ll be until there’s an iPhone that matches it. Resolution is one of several ways in which the new phones at the show are leaping past Apple’s phone from a hardware standpoint–while continuing to lag it on the software front. More on that in a future post.

Oh, and when I do get a high-resolution phone it most likely won’t be the TG01: Toshiba doesn’t sell handsets in the U.S., and has no plans to bring this one stateside.

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Mass production of the drives is set to begin in the second quarter of next year. The drives would be able to read and write data faster than the typical HDD, with a 240MB/sec read rate and 200MB/sec write rate.

Toshiba’s move is likely an attempt to get a foot in the door in what will be the next big thing in storage drives. One in ten computers will ship with SSDs in 2010, ramping up to one in four by 2012. This would also benefit users through decreased load times, quicker waking times, and higher durability.

Moving parts in HDDs are more susceptible to data loss and errors from sudden movement and drops. SSDs do not have this problem, mainly due to there being no moving parts. Additionally, they are far quieter.

Pricing has not been announced as of yet. However, I’m hoping that these companies work on ways to produce them much more cheaply — I’d love for my next laptop to be SSD based (the form factors can be so much smaller), but right now they’ll break the bank.

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Today, the alliance announced that 14 more companies had joined its membership rolls, and that those companies would either be manufacturing compatible devices, introducing complementary products and services, or contributing code to the Android open source Project. Google was the founding member of the alliance, and is the primary contributor to Android.

The new members include AKM Semiconductor, ARM, ASUSTek Computer, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International, Huawei Technologies, Omron Software, Softbank Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba and Vodafone. They join a conglomeration of nearly 50 other companies, including carriiers, device manufacturers, and chip makers’s G1, the first phone powered by Android, stacks up well against comparable smart phones and has received reasonably favorable reviews.

More importantly, the G1 is partly credited for driving device maker HTC’s record profits last month. With proven sales appeal and its royalty-free license, other device makers are likely to follow HTC’s lead and adopt Android.

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