Toshiba and Penryn: A Happy Marriage

I was searching the New York Times wedding page for the announcement of the lovely marriage of Intel’s Penryn and Toshiba’s notebooks. Between our just-out-of-the-oven review of the Toshiba Qosmio G45-AV690 and our mini review of Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi4, it becomes clear that Penryn and Toshiba are a match made in multimedia machine heaven. (Though of course Mr. Penryn does share his seed with other lovely notebook vendors.)

The Qosmio notched some great scores:

Powered by Intel’s new Penryn-based 2.5-GHz processor, 3GB of RAM (expandable to 4GB), and twin 5,400-rpm 160GB hard drives, the G45-AV690 notched a very good PCMark Vantage score of 3,470—nearly 700 points higher than your average desktop replacement.

The Satellite promises similar multimedia success. Stay tuned for our full review on this system.

Though Penryn doesn’t seem to improve everyday usage (i.e. working in the sometimes sluggish Vista), media-centered systems like the Qosmio G45-AV690 and the Satellite X205-SLi4 see serious improvement in processor-intensive apps, like video editing software. With desktops dropping in popularity, it is nice to see some multimedia power house notebooks that really deliver.