New RoHS-compliant Toshiba Satellite comes to Wal-Mart

Toshiba and Wal-Mart are joining hands for a bit of environmental sustainability, bringing the new RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substance) compliant Satellite A55-S1064 to Wal-Mart shelves. RoHS is a European law, which doesn't really have a counterpart in the US, but it's nice to see Toshiba and Wal-Mart following it anyways. Plus, the laptop, a little sub-$700 number, isn't too shabby on its own, including a 1.6GHz Celeron M processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a 15-inch screen, 802.11b/g WiFi, a 40GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM optical drive.

[Via PTP]

[passerby @ Feb 23rd 2006 2:44PM]

sticker orgy, bad.

[Michael @ Feb 23rd 2006 3:10PM]

You can always peel off the stickers. For $699 this isn't bad at all!

[LordJezo @ Feb 23rd 2006 3:16PM]

I wonder what the battery life is like...

[Chris @ Feb 23rd 2006 3:24PM]

Nice billboard

[Aaron @ Feb 23rd 2006 4:20PM]

Nothing better than a bunch of stickers on a product. I like that anyone that knows anything about electronics *usually* peels them off but occasionally you'll see a parent with a camcorder and a sticker taking op 1/4th of the screen usually bragging about how bright the low res LCD is. It also seems like these are the same people who also leave the protective clear cover over everything.

[Matt @ Feb 23rd 2006 5:20PM]

The biggest thing for manufacturers right now is choosing components that are Lead free in order to be RoHS compliant.

[Rob @ Feb 23rd 2006 5:30PM]

How come the sticker is clearly Centrino while the article says Celeron?

[streetstealth @ Feb 23rd 2006 7:43PM]

So what does this mean, no Hg in the backlight?

Or less of it?

Is it dimmer because of this?

Or is the restriction on other hazardous materials?

[mark @ Feb 23rd 2006 8:54PM]

RoHS is - in my opinion - a misguided law that somehow thinks removing things like lead, cadmium and flame retardants is magically good for the environment. They ignore the fact that lead in solder for example, can be used safely with no emissions with all scrap recycled.

The electronic devices that use lead solder can be recycled under the complementary EU WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) rule. Lead/tin solders have tremendous stability and meet strict DIN and MIL-SPECS. Lead-free solders suffer from "tin whisker growth" that will have a negative impact on reliability. That's why RoHS exempts medical devices and analytical equipment.

You'll also see there is absolutely no agreement within the EU countries on ROHS and WEEE. But it makes great ad copy for Wall-Fart, ignoring the fact the other 99.99976% of their electronics are NOT RoHS compliant.

[Rob @ Feb 23rd 2006 10:54PM]

I dont think many people would choose to buy RoHS-compliant (lead free) electronics if they had a choice and knew any better, lead-free solder joints are more brittle and less reliable, it will make something like a laptop that is being moved around more delicate and prone to failure.

[SG111 @ Feb 23rd 2006 11:14PM]

I own one of these and the battery life is pretty weak. (2.5 hours with no tweaking of settings.) But on the positive side of things it was cheap, and gets the job done!

[Jay Graves @ Feb 23rd 2006 11:48PM]

Did any one else thing that RoHS == Rojas?

[passerby @ Feb 23rd 2006 11:57PM]

Ok I'm probably petty, but aren't these product pics suppose to show the item in pristine condition? shouldn't someone at least remove the stickers or photoshop it out before showing the product off like this, with all the stickers attached?

[GarrettW @ Mar 18th 2007 5:40PM]

"How come the sticker is clearly Centrino while the article says Celeron?"

well, because Centrino is not a processor. it basically means that there are about 3 certain parts in the laptop that are made by intel: processor, wireless card, and i don't remember the third one.

centrino's usually use either a celeron M or a pentium M (faster).