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Toshiba Italy has announced the availability of the Portege M800 notebook in all of Europe sometime in during Q3 of 2008. Sporting a stylish design with white pearl finish, Toshiba is marketing this product towards business professionals who are always mobile, as attested by its light weight, which is a little less than 4.5-pounds.

Like the other Toshiba Satellite laptops, the Portege M800 was also treated with Toshiba’s Fusion design that provides for a smooth and slightly rugged exterior finish. Now, here’s the skinny on the other features of the M800; a 2GHz Core 2 Duo T5750 processor, 1GB RAM, 13.3-inch WXGA display with a 1280 x 800 resolution, 250GB SATA hard drive, Super multi-DVD and running Windows Vista Home Premium.

Product [Notebook Italia]

Toshiba has announced that it is now shipping its new A300 series laptops with three models to boot – the A300-S6845, the A305-S6839 and the A305D-S6831. These models boast of Toshiba’s new Fusion design with horizon pattern which is blended with the laptops’ chassis.

The three laptops are equipped with Toshiba’s Sleep-and-Charge USB ports, LED-luminated “Feature Touch” multimedia command keys, and built-in webcam with Toshiba’s facial recognition software.  Plus the laptops come equipped with a 15.4-inch widescreen TFT LCD with a native resolution of 1280 x 800.
Aside from these similar features, the three laptops feature their respective technical details which also determine their unit prices.

The Satellite A300-S6845 retails for $1,299.99 and is equipped with 2.10GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 400GB hard drive. The Satellite A300-S6839 retails for $1,149.99 and has a 2.10GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 3GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. And finally the Satellite A305D-S6831 retails for $949.99 and has a 2.2GHz AMD Turion X2 Dual Core Technology processor, 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.

Product [Satellite A300] Read [Business Wire]

Product: Maxtor Fusion
Price: $799.95
Rating: 7.8/10.0 (Good)
Pros: Lightweight web-top application, makes sharing easy
Cons: Expensive, no photo-editing capabilities, difficult to navigate with so many unfamiliar icons - need to hover to see what they do
Overall: Convenient storage solution that makes sharing with friends and co-workers a breeze

Shortly after we got our hands on the Maxtor Fusion, we pumped out a Peep Show – then some exclusive news surfaced.  Now we’re ready to give you an extended review.  Lets get right into it.

The Fusion is essentially an external storage device that has built in organization software called Fabrik.  It’s not just a hard drive though – it’s a personal web server.  When you connect this guy up to your home / small office network via your router, you no longer need to waste a USB port on it.  Simply pull up the software in your web browser, and you’re on your way to organizing the chaos on your computer.

Read on for a complete review of the Maxtor Fusion.

Installation - 8.0 - I have to say, it sounds intimidating to install a personal web server, right?  You’re probably wondering, what if I don’t know anything about networking or servers at all?  Don’t worry Maxtor / Fabrik have got you covered.  The device is very close to plug-n-play.  All you need to do is hook up the hardware to your router via an Ethernet cable and then go back to your computer.  On your computer, launch the setup file on the included CD and you’re guided through the user-friendly process. 

There are a couple of things that may strike you as confusing – 1) I have to set up a DNS?  And 2) I have to read the serial number off the back of my router?  The answer to the first question is yes, but the install process makes this completely painless.  All you have to do is make an account on the DNS provider of your choice and copy/paste the information back into Fabrik.  Oh and the thing about the serial number on the router – all I’ve got to say is you better put on your glasses for that one.  The DNS thing is only relevant if you plan on sharing the files outside of your network.  If not, then all you need to do is about half of the setup pages, just click the handy “skip” button and you can get to the end in a jiffy. 

And if you plan on setting it up for external access in the future, but don’t want to right now, don’t worry because you can always change your mind and go back to the preferences.

Usability - 7.5 - The GUI is very simple.  The problem is if you make a GUI too simple, it starts to get confusing.  It’s kind of an annoyance when you have to hover over things just to see what the button does.  On a more positive note, the design is crisp and does a really good job at acting as a “web-top” application (a desktop application that lives on the web).  With the use of AJAX, you’re almost never taken to a new page – elements just load on top of another, or in another element’s space.

There are many different views that you can use.  Similar to in your operating system, you can view as a list, by details, by files/folders, and even by timeline.  For each files and folder, you can add tags and a description so when you lose something in the future, it’s accessible through search.

The file import process is also very good.  There are several ways to go about this.  The way that I used was through the network, so it was not listed as attached storage on my computer.  In this case, I had to use the web-based import process.  When you click the Import button in the top right of the screen, you’re presented with a series of text boxes with corresponding browse buttons.  Since this can get annoying if you have a bunch of files to upload, they’ve included a java-based drag-and-drop uploader that is linked on that window for easy access.

Similar to desktop navigation, when you want to view a file in full size, all you need to do is double click on it and it pops up.  Pretty nifty.

Features - 7.0 - Within Fabrik, you can share files by either making a “Public site” or by sending via email.  The email route is done by connecting to your email host similar to how Outlook does.  All you need is your outgoing SMTP hostname, and your username and password.  The software then will send an email sharing the items you selected with the recipient.  If you’ve got a bunch of people that you regularly share with, you can create a “Group” – so in the future, you can send to all of the members with one click.

One setback of using Fabrik / the Fusion is that unlike iPhoto or Picasa, there is no photo editing software built-in.  This means you cannot remove red-eye, resize pictures or anything.  The only thing you can do is rotate the pictures.  This could start to become bothersome if you have to keep replacing the files on the server.  This is of course when you’re using the drive as a network server – since I’m sure when you have it plugged into your computer you can just open up the files and edit them.  In the future, I’d like to see integration with a web-based editor such as SnipShot.

Performance - 8.5 - The device is a well performing beast of a drive.  It’s huge size will even satisfy the craziest of photographers and music archivers.  The uploading tool goes relatively fast – which will obviously depend on how you choose to connect to it.  Over my network, I uploaded (imported) 77 pictures (which were about 1 MB a piece) in about 3 minutes.  I’d say that’s pretty fast.  If you connected up via USB 2.0, I’m sure you’d be down to about 1 minute.

The GUI is also quick.  For having so many elements preloaded in AJAX, it doesn’t seem to be bogged down at all.  I have to say, Fabrik and Maxtor seem to have done a great job at bringing a desktop application to the web.

Editors Note: The categories were weighted in the following manner to reflect the importance of some features over others (in our humble opinion). Installation 20%, Usability 30%, Features 20%, and Performance 30%.

Since we’re in need for some major file organization on our cluttered computers, Fabrik sent us over the 500GB Maxtor Fusion personal web server to try on for size.  The device comes preloaded with Fabrik’s new software, which lets you store, and organize all of your media files and documents (read our post about their new service Myfabrik here).  The Fusion will also plug directly into the Internet so your files can be accessed anywhere (notice the ethernet port on the back of it)!  We’ll get you a full review soon, but for now, feast your eyes on the huge piece of hard drive they sent us after the break.