Toshiba outs Satellite U945 and P845t Ultrabooks, Satellite S955 thin-and-light
In addition to unveiling that U925t laptop / tablet hybrid yesterday, Toshiba is announcing some more conventional-looking PCs this week at IFA. These new models include the Satellite U945, a low-end Ultrabook; the Satellite P845t, an Ultrabook with a touchscreen; and the Satellite S955, a 15-inch thin-and-light. Across the board, these will be available October 26th, the day Windows 8 formally launches. For now, too, Toshiba isn't revealing prices, though we already know plenty about the specs. Join us after the break where we'll spell out those nitty-gritty details.%Gallery-163544%%Gallery-163742%
Satellite U945: If you thought the U845 was reasonably priced, get a load of this guy. This 14-inch Ultrabook, expected to cost roughly $50 less than its brother, trades in the U845's metal-clad design for textured blue plastic. It's a less premium look, to be sure, but on the inside, the specs aren't all that different: you'll have your choice of a Core i3 or i5 processor, and the 500GB hard drive is paired with a 32GB SSD for faster boot-ups. Toshiba isn't saying exactly how much it weighs, except that it's "less than four pounds" (we do know that it measures 0.78 inches thick). On the outside, that slightly bigger footprint means there's room for three USB ports (two 3.0, one 2.0), an Ethernet jack and an HDMI socket.
Satellite P845t: Though you'll see plenty of PC makers unleash Ultrabooks with touchscreens, the P845t is a little more substantial: what you have here is a more full-fledged 14-inch notebook, with room for plenty of ports and a more capacious 750GB hard drive. Design-wise, it's fashioned out of etched, champagne-colored aluminum. Under the hood, it runs Core i3 and i5 CPUs, buffered by six gigs of RAM. As one one of Toshiba's high-end machines (that "p" is for "premium," after all), this has Harman Kardon audio, Sleep-and-Charge and well as Sleep-and Music. All told, there are three USB 3.0 ports, along with HDMI output, an Ethernet jack and Intel's Wireless Display tech baked in. One area where this isn't a premium notebook is the screen: the resolution is fixed at 1,366 x 768.
Satellite S955: It's not an Ultrabook, but it's 30 percent thinner than Toshiba's current 15-inch S series laptop. Inside, it packs either an Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU or an AMD A8 APU. You can also get it up with up to 8GB of RAM and up to 750GB of hard drive storage. Though we don't yet know the price, we know that it will be more affordable than Toshiba's high-end P series, which is to say it's missing nice-to-have features like Harman Karmon audio and Sleep-and-Music ports. You do get a Sleep-and-Charge port among the three USB ports (two are 3.0, one is 2.0). HDMI output, an Ethernet jack, a DVD drive and Bluetooth 4.0 round out the specs.
