New RoHS-compliant Toshiba Satellite comes to Wal-Mart
By Paul Miller 
posted Feb 23rd 2006 1:40PM
posted Feb 23rd 2006 1:40PM
[Via PTP]
posted Feb 23rd 2006 1:40PM
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
sticker orgy, bad.
You can always peel off the stickers. For $699 this isn't bad at all!
I wonder what the battery life is like...
Nice billboard
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.
The biggest thing for manufacturers right now is choosing components that are Lead free in order to be RoHS compliant.
How come the sticker is clearly Centrino while the article says Celeron?
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?
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.
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.
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!
Did any one else thing that RoHS == Rojas?
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?
"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).