The challenge to incorporate the high-end specification display into the notebook was laid before Intel PC makers by Apple six months ago when it released the world's first notebook computer with a 17-inch LCD screen in February.
Australian consumers might have been clued in to Toshiba's plans by what appears to be a content oversight on the company's local Web site. Pictures of the wide-screen laptop, the Toshiba Satellite P20, have found their way on to parts of the site prior to its official release on the local market.
Toshiba Australia product marketing manager, Laurie White, said the company had been holding off on officially releasing the laptop until it could guarantee that adequate stocks were available for its channel partners.
While it has been slow to catch up to the Apple's Powerbook G4 specification, Toshiba has managed to deliver the unit at a comparatively low price. The 17-inch Powerbook G4 retails for around AU$6,300 -- Toshiba expects the P20 to retail for around the AU$5,000 mark.
White agrees with industry observations that Apple has developed a culture around its products that make its customers more loyal. Apple is frequently first to introduce innovations into its products like the wide-screen display but demands a hefty premium when it does.
Cramming higher specifications into laptops targeting the mass market has always been the challenge facing the Intel camp. White estimates that adding the 17-inch display automatically pushes the base retail price of the laptop unit up by AU$1000.
Apart from the 17-inch display, the Satellite P20 carries some of the highest technical specifications that Toshiba has incorporated to date. It includes a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor, a 60GB hard drive, 512MB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5200 graphics controller.
A DVD drive is also a standard feature of the P20. However, it's not clear whether the unit released locally will have DVD recording capability.
Well, well, Austrian laptop producer GERICOM has released a 17" widescreen laptop already months ago,
roughly about the same time as Apple.