Toshiba Qosmio G55

It’s been a long week here at LAPTOP with the Toshiba Qosmio G55. Even the “big” Eee PC looks like a child’s toy when sitting in the shadow of this 18.4-inch monster. We’re still checking out the abilities of the G55, including its gesture control, video encoding capabilities and HD imaging

What have we learned? What computing power do you yield with a dedicated Quad Core HD Processor, 2GB RAM, Harmon/Kardon audio, and NVidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics?

You can play Solitaire. One-handed. Without a mouse.

Seriously.

We hope Toshiba includes support for Web surfing, or at least Hulu-watching, in its next iteration of gesture control, but in the meantime, we’re happy with solitaire.

Check out the fun below.

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Toshiba is looking to redefine desktop replacement notebooks in a a big, big way, and we’re the very first to bring you a hands-on with the groundbreaking Qosmio G55, which will go on sale next month for $1,549. This 18.4-inch beast isn’t notable just for its futuristic good looks (a combination of a slick black chassis, LED illumination, and metal highlights), but because it’s the first notebook to boast a dedicated Quad Core HD Processor (powered by the same Cell Processor that runs the PlayStation3). This enables gesture control, blazing fast video encoding, and more. Read on for our first impressions.

Hands-Free Media Control

Thanks to the dedicated Quad Core HD processor, the G55 is the first notebook that lets users control music and video playback (Toshiba’s DVD player and Media Center), as well as PowerPoint, using just their hands-no remote or keyboard required.

The webcam senses your movement from 3 to 10 feet away and the Quad Core HD processor interprets your hand motions in real time. This was, obviously, the most talked about feature when the Qosmio G55 arrived in the office. After getting some significant time with the control scheme, we can say that we’re quite impressed.

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